[logicziller]

Having no prior exposure to any European languages, I tried using it for learning a bit of German, just to be able to sing along with some songs while also understanding what the words mean. I learned about 1500 words, but about a year later I watched a language training video and it became obvious to me that I have been pronouncing S, Z, and ß all wrong this whole time and made the wrong pronunciation a habit that I'm having difficult breaking. It taught me nothing about the alphabets and how the combination of certain letters or their position in a word can change the sound. Clicking through the words and advancing to the next level probably made me go too fast without giving me enough time to really absorb it. If I repeat a test, it's the same questions being repeated so it kind of feels like rote-learning than actually giving me an opportunity to reflect on the mistakes.

It also allows you to skip through the audio and speech tests, so these shortcuts make you chase XPs rather than actually learn the language you originally set out to learn. My biggest pet peeve about this app is that I have absolutely no idea if I'm pronouncing words correctly. Even if I intentionally pronounce a word wrong, it'll tell me it's correct.

I wouldn't say I learned nothing from it. After all, there is nobody I can speak with, so Duolingo made something impossible, possible for me, but it hasn't made me conversational at all. If I watch a German movie or a TV show, I can understand a little bit by looking at the subtitles, but the audio seems to go way too fast for me that I pick up just 1 or 2 words from a sentence. I'd imagine if someone asks me a basic question really slowly, I might be able to answer it, but if I'm in a group or something, words will just fly by too quickly for me to be able to comprehend anything.

One thing it did is make me motivated. After learning so many words, it made me pursue training courses by professional language teachers, and eventually I will join an actual classroom. I don't think I'd have gone all the way if I hadn't got my first start with this app. After all, my original motivation to learn was just cultural / music, and not because I want to move there or that it'll help professionally, but after having coming this far, it made me think I should pursue learning more seriously and become fluent.

[louismerlin]

> Having no prior exposure to any European languages

I'd classify English as a European language. It is even classified as a Germanic language.