Where are my millions?

Where are my millions?

This was the best phrase of today's duolingo language learning lesson in the task translate this sentence into German.

If you must know, it is an easy one: Wo sind meine Millionen?

If you have ever learned a foreign language, you may know why we find sentences like this so wonderful. 

As practical as "where is the train station", or "where is the bus stop" or all the other immutable phrases of old are, they are terminally boring.

They are also of no help outside of their single purpose context.

In contrast Where are my millions? has many good uses.

For example, while your hedge fund manager may love to hear you ask for the nearest train station, the question you really want to ask is Where are my millions?

If you bump into a bank robber on entering the discrete private bank in the small country of Banking Heaven, once again, Where are my millions? would be the question you need, wouldn't you agree?

So, if you want to learn a new language, please use duolingo. No, we have no stake in the company, but we do feel that their free courses are more than worth their money.

Unlike, say, the offerings of Langenscheidt. While we find the fact that the company was founded 150 years ago nice, we never spend money on products whose color, in this case some shade of yellow, was defended in court - successfully - because we customers are obviously to dumb to distinguish between different companies and their products.

Langenscheidt does offer some German on German learning, too, with their new course on Cursing and Swearing in Bavarian.

This is a must have for northern, eastern, and western Germans. We do not recommend the book as reading material for new immigrants.

Before you get the impression this post is all about money, it is not.

We can easily think of many other areas in which the question is useful.