I've done Duolingo for over a year and am not much better

I originally picked up Duolingo because someone gifted me the paid version of it. I thought I would be able to study Thai on it but sadly this was not one of the options available on it. It has Klingon and Vietnamese but not Thai. Strange. I would think there would be a few people that are interested in learning Thai but I guess not enough!

Here i am though, many months later and honestly, I don't really think that this tool does all that much to help anyone gain any sort of real fluency in whatever language.

That's over a year folks of almost zero days of missing a day. You can miss a day here and there and there is something called a streak-freeze so you don't lose your streak. The streak is kind of stupid because other than some tiny rewards here and there that are basically meaningless, it doesn't do anything.

I would say that I definitely know more words than when I started but the other day I was around someone who is from Spain and tried to have the most basic of conversations with them and really struggled to even do toddler-style stuff.

I suppose my own inactivity could be to blame for this because on some days I will only do the obligatory one lesson to maintain my streak and that will be something really easy like word matching

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I don't think you really need to actually study Spanish at all in order to get this right and even if the boxes were blank you would have a 20% chance of getting it.

I think back on the times in my life when I actually did learn something or even when I learned Thai and I put a lot more effort into it than I ever did on Duolingo. Duo tries to keep things fun so that you don't hate doing it and I suppose that is a good idea. They also adjust the difficulty so that you don't get frustrated and leave - which I can also see the virtue in doing. But at the same time if I was using almost any other method to learn it and did a bit of it for 400 days in a row, one would assume that you would get a bit better than barely being able to have a super-basic conversation.

Maybe it is because I don't really like doing things on my phone. Perhaps that is what puts me at a disadvantage.

I have spoken to a lot of other people about their Duo use and all of them have kind of come to the same conclusion. I think that Duo can maybe help to reinforce other methods of learning a language, such as having a real teacher and real classes, but as a sole method of learning and the only access you give yourself to learning a language I can't imagine that there is anyone out there outside of a few outliers that actually learned a meaningful level of any language because of this app.

DuoLingo is a profitable company. A VERY profitable company as their receipts indicate that they made just over a BILLION dollars in 2025. That's crazy and I am sure it wasn't easy. They do have voice actors and tons of phrases that are read out by native speakers in all of the languages that they offer and they also have a semi-smart system that can tell what you are having trouble with and step it up or down to accommodate you.

I just find it a bit frustrating to spend so much time on something and not come out a great deal smarter on the other end.

I can barely count to 20. What gives? maybe me and languages just weren't meant to match up!

If you have ever used Duo to learn anything, including English, I would like to hear about your experiences.