2026-08-21
50 分钟This is The Guardian.
Hello, my name's Johan Koshy and I'm a deputy editor on The Long Read at The Guardian.
This summer, we're bringing you some of our favourite long reads of the year so far.
This week I've chosen Where Duolingo Falls Down, How I Learned to Speak Welsh with My Mother by Dan Fox.
The author of this really wonderful story, Dan Fox, is primarily someone who writes about culture and the arts.
And I remember reading a book of his a few years ago called Pretentiousness, Why It Matters.
That book made a very compelling case about why it's lazy to simply dismiss things as being pretentious.
Ever since reading it, I admit I've actually avoided using the term as a criticism,
so it clearly made an impression on me.
That said, I'd never read anything by him that was autobiographical, so it was a real treasure
to have the opportunity to publish this piece by him about his journey to try and learn Welsh,
a notoriously difficult language to learn as an adult.
The result is a really moving story that starts with his grandmother's funeral in North Wales,
where he doesn't understand a word of the service,
and ends with a tearful goodbye at an airport between him and his own mother,
which they are able to have in Welsh.
It's part family memoir, part social history,
part investigation into the tech at our disposal these days to try and learn languages.
And I think it will really resonate with anyone who's felt alienated
from and yet drawn to a mother tongue that they don't speak.