yep I spent more time on duolingo for 600+ day streak and can barely speak spanish.
My wife only did 50 hours of duolingo in total the past 2 years. Combine that with me teasing her in Dutch and she’s actually making progress.
Duolingo is a chill tool to learn some vocab. That vocab then gets acquired by talking to me. We talk 2 minutes Dutch per day at most. So about 11 hours in total per year.
She is 67% done with duolingo. So we bought the first real book to learn Dutch (De Opmaat).
That book is IMO not for pure beginners. But for the level my wife was at, it seems perfect.
Dutch and Flemish are interchangeable though. Sometimes it falls apart based on accent, but not on language.
And even if you don’t get your grammar completely right, you will learn enough to survive in a real-life setting.
I learned Spanish through a combination of both - I took Spanish classes after I started dating my Mexican wife, enough to get conversational. Then I started interacting in Spanish with her family, which helps me now maintain the language without needing the classes.
For learners, I'd also currently recommend "Easy German" podcasts and YouTube videos, as they come in all skill levels, are free, and are well made.
If you are, that's actually quite an achievement and good. If you're talking about French outside of Duolingo, that is.
I do not normally hear of people getting to reading fluency through Duolingo.
Wonder why they took it away.