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Comment by digitalsushi | Hacker News Reader

I, like half of us, took a ton of Spanish in high school, enough to generally stick even without continuing to build it afterwards.

I tried Duolingo back before the pandemic was trendy, for maybe a year or so, to keep that streak going.

While I don't really feel that it was teaching me very well, I can relay this single anecdote. Duolingo has these stories that it figures you can read, based on the level of your scores. While reading a very short story in Spanish, I had the experience of the first time, a second language making me laugh because what I was reading, was funny. Nothing during my five years of 8th-12th grade did that. Just sharing, it's not meant to mean anything.

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> I, like half of us, took a ton of Spanish in high school, enough to generally stick even without continuing to build it afterwards.

Can confirm. My wife and I both took 4+ years of spanish in high school and college, over 15 years ago. We can almost get by on just that knowledge alone in spanish speaking countries, but it is difficult and we always have a translator around.

That said, we took a vacation last summer to a spanish speaking country and spent the 2 months leading up to it using Duolingo. We both had streaks for that entire time. Personally, the refresher course of Duolingo made conversing with people in their native language of Spanish MUCH easier compared to other attempts in the past. We didn't need to use our phones to lookup phrases or even ask locals to speak English. I even learned a few new words and phrases.

That isn't to say that Duolingo is the best or only option, just an anecdote about our experience.

Interestingly, I had a very similar situation recently, but had the opposite experience. Took 4+ years of Spanish in high school and undergrad, ~20 years ago. Had a trip to Costa Rica and I spent about 2 to 3 months using Duolingo, and I felt it didn't help much at all, other than as a refresher for very basic vocabulary.

I ended using Google translate towards the end of the trip, which was disappointing for me.

The first time you finally get to fire off your first short, stupid joke in a new language that actually makes native speakers laugh is one of the greatest feelings ever.

That first laugh at a real joke in a foreign language is precious. I remember reading a collection of short stories for vocabulary, and there was one about a fishing trip going badly anx hilariously wrong. Priceless moment for me and my confidence.

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