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I accept that some people are doubtless much more talented in acquiring languages than I am. But I did take 4 years of high school French and was considered "good." And, traveling with a friend in Paris, I clearly knew a lot more of the language than they did. But I'm a very very far way from being fluent.

Maybe the people who claim to spend a few weeks with Duolingo and get the language are uniquely talented. Or maybe they're BSing.

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A few weeks is definitely BS, but I took 3 years of German in high school and after roughly 3 months of 30min-1hr daily Duolingo I was already past the high school material.

I mean in our high school (Poland) it was like maybe 1 lesson (45mins) per week shared with a group. And of course excluding all the holidays and what not. That's not a high bar.

To be fair, you already had the high school material and you spent at least as much time on Duolingo as in the classroom.

Styles are different oo. I would say my high school was a lot more focused on writing, translation, and grammar than anything truly conversational though they did work on on pronunciation to some extent.

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