| I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different. I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated: "Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.) and:
"Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!) For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation. In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude. Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either. |