Recently I encountered a tourist who didn't understand anything I said, but said he's from Korea. Recalling that I have been studying Korean on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, then finally exclaimed, "annyeonghaseyo!" (hello), then blurted in English, "sorry, I don't speak Korean"
Later I encountered a fellow who spoke English. He told me he's from Germany. Recalling that I have been studying German on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, and finally came up with "sehr gut!" (very good), then "sorry, that's all the German I know"
Then I was at a pizza shop and realized the person at the counter only spoke Spanish. Recalling that I have been studying... finally she lost her patience and thrusted her phone at me, with Google Translate.
True story. I still use Duolingo everyday. But surely, it isn't enough to "know"
I set my phone's language to French, so I get constant practice with the UI. That means the Google Assistant talks to me in French. I've had decent luck making requests and getting information in my target language.
One night, as I was getting ready for bed, I said « okay google, reglez une alarme pour 6h du matin ». My phone responded, "Sorry, I didn't catch that?"
So I said it again, and it responded the same way. I enunciated, I changed the conjugation, I sped up, I slowed down. Couldn't figure it out. Just wanted to set my damn alarm, I looked at my wife and said, exasperated, "I don't get it. It thinks I'm speaking English." That's when the light bulb went off in my head: I speak English. It's my native language. "Okay google, set an alarm for 6am." "Okay, setting alarm for 6am."
I had actually forgotten that I spoke English and couldn't communicate with my phone.
I did Duo Korean for a while with my SO. We got stuck on a section that started introducing a lot of proper names for people - the grammar around it was really confusing.
After a few weeks of struggling, we discovered the website had PAGES of grammar notes for the section we were on. It was impossible without them and the way it was introduced even on the website made progress feel very slow compared to the pacing up to that point.
There was zero indication of the extra notes in the app and eventually googling the for tips on the duo section led us to a bunch of people complaining about it and linking to the notes.
When the pacing is good though duo is fun and easy to do consistently. I'm sure it is not super effective after a certain point but I could definitely see myself navigating Seoul with just the lessons there. The hangul character lessons seemed well done.
Thankfully for me, you can literally learn how to read and write on a long haul plane there. Had a great time despite being functionally illiterate. Just learned numbers, please/thankyou and was fine. This only fell over with the peculiar decision in Taejon to issue tourists with maps with English on one side and Hanja (Chinese character for Koreans) on the other. Completely useless to both me and the taxi driver.
Later I encountered a fellow who spoke English. He told me he's from Germany. Recalling that I have been studying German on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, and finally came up with "sehr gut!" (very good), then "sorry, that's all the German I know"
Then I was at a pizza shop and realized the person at the counter only spoke Spanish. Recalling that I have been studying... finally she lost her patience and thrusted her phone at me, with Google Translate.
True story. I still use Duolingo everyday. But surely, it isn't enough to "know"