[Tainnor]

It really depends on the language, Japanese takes much longer than Spanish for English speakers for example.

And yeah, you don't need to invest several hours each day - that's unrealistic for most people. But I also think you get nowhere by doing just 10 minutes a day, even if you do it every day for years. You need to set aside time for conscious learning, e.g. on weekends. Then you could e.g. do the 10 minutes a day during the weeks for reviewing vocab, or reading short texts, or whatever.

I don't think you can do it without the occasional "crunch time".

(There's also the fact, of course, that the better you get at your target language the less will consuming content feel like a chore to you and so you can tolerate more of it, and even enjoy it.)

[watwut]

I actually think that 10 minutes a day can get you pretty far, especially for beginner. Namely, to slowly get you to a stage when you are able to read those short texts over weekend. Ability to read a short text is fairly large step in learning language. And even then, reading 10 minutes day is going to be more effective then reading for 70 minutes once a week.

10 minutes a day, whether duolingo or not, will get you further then 70 minutes once a week in a crunch mode. That holds for language, playing musical instrument, sport, whatever. The hardest part in those is to keep interest and touch with activity over the long time it requires. And the big enemy are months when you pause the activity entirely.

Obviously you have to mix the learning modes. And obviously the more time you put into it the better.

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I also think that people get naive about amount of time people actually spend learning when going to classes in school or after school club. Typically, get 1-2 lessons a week plus some homework. Sometimes you get 3, but any more then that is unusually intensive. The typical expectation when going to in-person classes is that yes, it will take years till you are anywhere near good command of the language. That a year after, you can survive your way, but still cant consume most of normal media without subtitles. Those are reasonable expectations.

[Tainnor]

> 10 minutes a day, whether duolingo or not, will get you further then 70 minutes once a week in a crunch mode. That holds for language, playing musical instrument, sport, whatever. The hardest part in those is to keep interest and touch with activity over the long time it requires. And the big enemy are months when you pause the activity entirely.

My point is that you need both. Reviewing vocab etc. can be done as part of the "daily 10 minutes" (although it usually takes me longer). But learning about new grammar etc. usually takes longer than just 10 minutes. And once in a while you just have to sit down and read a more complicated text, looking up vocab, etc.

Again, it pretty much also depends on the language. For Japanese, I think it's impossible to get anywhere with just 10 minutes a day, I think.