I sleep here now

I have a habit of starting to study random languages now and then, and dropping them very, very soon. That means I have an above-average knowledge of beginner's text books (the first three-or-so chapters), online courses (just after the intro level) and audio courses (up to right after asking the colleague out to dinner),

Occasionally I feel the need to go on about the terrible, terrible topics that some courses pick, especially for the first three-or-so chapters. Things like

• All the social platitudes that you are never going to need, collected here, in chapter one! You won't understand half of them, just remember them.
• "Which country are you from? I am from this country! It is a good country! People-from-this-country are very happy!" (If the folks who are stereotypically thought to speak the language you are studying are considered reasonably exoticisable, that will definitely be in the infoboxes and quizzes here.)
• Learning Gender By Introducing Large Amounts Of Family Relation Terms
• Learning Gender By Telling People Whether They Are Men Or Women (hard glance at multiple Duolingo courses here)
• Business dinner
• Business dinner where the business traveler man invites the local coworker woman
• Numbers over 10 or maybe 20. I'm sorry, people who like numbers. I don't, and I find the way they are typically introduced early, en masse and without mercy very frustrating.

Today is, obviously, one of those days, but I also remembered a few things that I enjoyed, which is always good!

So, here is a list of Good Things In Language Courses.

• That Norwegian textbook that talks about bløtkake med øl in the first chapter is definitely top of the list. Cake is great, these cream cakes look like very good even though I have never eaten any, and bonus, while I don't like beer very much, the German-related associations that these words have for me make them very memorable (it's basically "bullshit with oil" in my mind).
• Everything that is a wholesome sentence about animals. The wolves are drinking milk, I have to ask my turtle, the cat is sleeping on the windowsill. That's just solid content that makes me smile and remember things because I can relate to them, and one of the few things that I appreciate about all of the Duolingo courses that I remember right now.
• Everything that is obnoxious and kind of sweet at the same time (that one teacher made us sing this ridiculously cliché love song that was probably all over the radio when she was a teen or smth and I can still almost remember some of the lyrics 7 years later).

It is a short list, but I mean it.