I didn't mean to criticize Duolingo for not being a silver bullet, but they definitely do market it as one. They literally say right on their homepage that using it for 34 hours is equal to a semester of university language class. When googling it I got an ad with the text "All you need to learn your next language".
FWIW I like duolingo, but I wish they were clearer about their strengths and weaknesses. I've maxed out Arabic, and am halfway through French. I got about 1/3 through Japanese before giving up because their approach just doesn't work for it. It clearly works much better for latin languages, and even in Arabic it's great for vocab but lousy for grammar and idioms. As I said in my top post, I think phone typing is an underrated skill, particularly for a foreigner in a new country.
Nothing short of time and immersion are going to solidly teach just about anybody a language, but I have some friends who've tried it and then got discouraged on language learning all together because of the frustrating parts of the app, and the fake sense of progress that's inherent in some of their marketing =(. On the other hand I'm on a 600+ day streak and have gained a ton from the app pressuring me to come back every single day.
Lots of people learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, etc. without immersion. Immersion is nice, but it assumes the point of learning is to chat, rather than interacting with great minds using the language that may be long dead (whether or not the language in question is).
FWIW I like duolingo, but I wish they were clearer about their strengths and weaknesses. I've maxed out Arabic, and am halfway through French. I got about 1/3 through Japanese before giving up because their approach just doesn't work for it. It clearly works much better for latin languages, and even in Arabic it's great for vocab but lousy for grammar and idioms. As I said in my top post, I think phone typing is an underrated skill, particularly for a foreigner in a new country.
Nothing short of time and immersion are going to solidly teach just about anybody a language, but I have some friends who've tried it and then got discouraged on language learning all together because of the frustrating parts of the app, and the fake sense of progress that's inherent in some of their marketing =(. On the other hand I'm on a 600+ day streak and have gained a ton from the app pressuring me to come back every single day.