Almost done with Irish on Duolingo. I slowed way down–I did the entire Latin course in four weeks–but while I’ve learned a lot, I don’t feel like I could mumble my way through a cafe conversation because I’m not speaking it.

I had hoped that my wife and I learning it together would allow us to practice speaking it together, but I hadn’t anticipated her competitive nature precluding that. My paternal grandfather was a military interrogator in WWII for the Allies, and my maternal great-grandfather was a linguist in the Kaiser’s army. My dad took two years of French and retained well enough that his sister-in-law remarked he was better with French than she was (and she taught it from time to time). If you can inherit aptitude for language, I appear to be a chip off the old block. Don’t come at me with Irish though, as the lack of real-world usage still makes it difficult to make real-world responses.