@0xabad1dea Yep. The most commonly used words and phrases in a language or culture get the most shortened and, once they're reduced about as far as its sound structure allows, frozen in time. "God be with ye" gradually shrank to "goodbye," and "children" retains the Germanic plural in English a millennium later.

The rest of the language drifts on semantically, phonetically, and orthographically, but the parts used most often persist beyond any fit in the context of the rest. Part of the joy of learning a different language is realizing just how much of this one has absorbed unaware in the language of one's upbringing.

@0xabad1dea These sentences are useful, while very frustrating when my understanding of a language depends on the world it describes. I hear a sentence as something reasonable, but incorrect when the radishes are scheming and people befriend oranges.

Maybe they train skills I wouldn't use with English.

Tourist phrases having much harder grammar seems to be universal among the languages I know simple grammar of.

@0xabad1dea Yeah, my wife was surprised by all the weird phrases in Duolingo and asked "why would you ever need to say that!"

But it makes it a lot more fun and it can also teach you words that maybe you don't need on your vacation but are useful when reading fiction or something.

@0xabad1dea I'm definitely not going to forget "niwa niwa niwa niwatori ga iru" (庭には二羽鶏がいる, "there are two chickens in the garden")

Although it might be a bad example since it's intentionally written slightly weirdly to have all those niwas in a row. But I guess that exposes you to more grammar!