Brittany Luce

My desire was purely social.

Not only for Mandarin, but any language, right?

Like when you travel...

You know that moment when you're ordering at a restaurant or taking public transit and you can say a little bit and people's eyes light up and they're like, oh, this isn't just an English-speaking American.

This is someone who's trying.

And there's a joy there and a relief that I've chosen to struggle in their language instead of making them struggle in mine.

Yeah, I mean, that actually reminds me of something that Luke Plonsky, professor of applied linguistics at Northern Arizona University, he said something to my producer, Liam, about using translation technology over learning the language yourself.

Like, even typing a single word you don't know into Google Translate, it could keep us from learning the information in other ways and retaining that information.

That's Nicole Ziegler again, associate professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii.

Nicole's experience with Ingwer, it makes me think about like a phrase that I know in Spanish now, specifically because I learned it through a meme.

And it's this girl going, ya basta, los estupideces.

Basically like enough already with the stupidity.

And now I know whenever I hear that, I'm never going to forget it because whenever I hear that word or that phrase, my mind, in my mind's eye, I see this girl crying in the meme being like, enough, enough already.

And I'm like, sis, I get it.

Yes.

Because if you use an app,

To translate a word or phrase, like you might understand what's being said, but you're not going to get the context.

You're not going to get the emotions at the heart of it all.

And it might not stick around in that deep, lasting way.

Exactly.