Soon, the app was not simply encouraging me to continue on a journey of knowledge. It was demanding daily fealty. If I did not promptly complete my required daily language lesson, I would be bombarded with emails, push notifications and threats that I would lose my hard-earned language learning streak. This would evolve into cartoon characters from within the app guilt-tripping you into returning. If those are ignored, presumably the friendly cartoon owl would threaten to choke me out while a hired goon is dispatched to appear at my door, strap me to the chair from A Clockwork Orange and force me to look at some verbs.

No longer am I envisioning myself walking through the streets of Cologne making small talk with a shopkeeper. I don’t long for days sitting on the banks of the Spree casually flicking through a newspaper. All I want in this world is to knock fellow language app user KenG_63 off the top spot in the Obsidian League language leaderboard and win my way back up to the Diamond League language leaderboard where I rightfully belong. What happens when I conquer the Diamond League? Nothing. You just start again the next week, such is the Sisyphean pointlessness of the endeavour that now dominates my life.

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Language learning is no longer a key to a new world. It is a survival tactic for an addictive video game. I am trapped by a cartoon owl that hates me. He plays upon the shame I feel for not knowing the language of my grandfather. He uses the lights and sounds of a pokie to keep me coming back for another hit. To my great shame, I always return.

If a hypothetical stranger was to pull out a card-based word-matching game and challenge me to prove my linguistic abilities, I would easily dominate the game well within the allotted two-minute time period and pick up all 40 well-earned experience points. It’s my only hope. I cannot delete the app and walk away. I’m too far gone. To stop is to admit defeat, and if there’s one thing a German would never do, it’s surrender.