Falstaff: my 2nd favorite Duolingo character

The characters in Duolingo are pretty neat and the fact that they all have different personalities keep the app interesting and I can only hope that I am actually learning something. While some of the characters appear to be intentionally annoying and talk really fast - to simulate how some speakers would speak - there are others that are really laid back and speak slowly.

Falstaff is one of the slower talkers.

Falstaff regularly appears on the listening exercises where various characters pretend to be on a talk show or podcast where callers call in and tell them things. Generally it will be using the vocabulary that you have been learning mixed in with some words that you have not yet learned. It can be frustrating because you don't always know what is being said, but after time I have kind of learned that this is sort of the point. When you do get good enough at a language to try to interact with the locals, there are going to be a lot of instances where you don't understand a lot of what is being said around you but the point is, "can you still figure out what they are KIND OF talking about?"

Falstaff makes it interesting because he character is a cynical bear who doesn't understand humans but is trying to.

He starts out every episode by saying "Welcome to Falstaff's guide to humans, where I explore the strange world of humans."

By the end of it he always makes fun of what the callers are talking about and normally they are talking about clothes or food and drinks where Falstaff will normally end by saying that it is very strange that the humans don't just go to a river and pick up as many fish as they want.

He has one of the easier voices to understand and therefore, he is one of my favorites. During his "podcast" I regularly get a laugh out of his commentary. The people who write this stuff up are pretty clever.

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I discovered that there are some plush toys out there that Duolingo sells and honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I keep my number of possessions and a minimum, I would be very tempted to buy one of these.

Nevermind: I just looked it up and they want $50 for a stuffed toy. Screw that!

I think that almost everyone on here speaks English really well but if you were looking for an app that you could use your spare time with more wisely I think Duolingo is a good thing to do. I have the premium version but the free version is fine as well. The only difference is that in the free version you can only make 5 mistakes before it locks you out for the day. But most of you speak so well that it would probably take a while for you to make a mistake.