My first language is Afrikaans & I moved to an English-speaking country from South Africa when I didn’t speak English so learning it was my top priority. I was really young but keeping a journal helped me a lot because I would notice the words that the other children spoke most often & I would continue to write them down until I discerned their meaning. My Mum also helped me learn by giving me flash cards & playing scrabble 
Other than that I learned a little German, French & Latin throughout various parts of my schooling career (most of which I’ve probably forgotten)
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So I’m not how many of us regularly use Duolingo, but would folks be interested in adding each other on there to encourage each other?
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I used to use it a lot more, but I’ve started using other resources lately since some languages on Doulingo are limited when it comes to explanation. I wouldn’t mind adding people for if I start using it again though.
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I’ll post my user name when I can be bothered to remember it.
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Mine’s ColeRichar11
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oooof I just deleted duolingo because I couldn’t remember my e-mail or password for it, which really shows how often I use it
right now I’m mostly using Drops, Write It! Korean and Memrise to try and learn something. So far, I can count to ten, so it’s improvement.
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Drops is good once you have a solid base in a language, I’ve used it a little bit for Polish. I found that I quickly forgot the things I had learned though. Memrise is a good one
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Luckily Drops starts Korean with the alphabet, so I have at least a slight chance of learning it. I agree, though, I don’t really remember much. Hopefully repeating lessons will help me.
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I feel that learning words in a sentence helps with being able to recall them later. I think having context gives the brain something to grasp onto when learning new words, rather than just a bunch of exclusively new information. I know people who learn well from Drops though. You really have to find what works best for you when in comes to languages.
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Native : American English
I took two years of Spanish in high school and can hold my own but I’m not quite fluent. I’m also learning German and Gaelic
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German is great and in my opinion fairly easy for native English speakers, word order being the main complication. Gaelic makes my head spin.
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What resource are you using for Gaelic?
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I use Duolingo and my clan since I’m actually mostly Scottish.
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I had four years of German in high school, learned it so sis and I would have a language to speak that neither parent would understand 
Also my paternal grandmother’s ancestors were mostly German. Now wishing for career security that we’d gone Spanish instead
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My Duolingo is HarleyLecter if anyone would like to add me! That’s actually my name pretty much everywhere, so if you come across it, it’s me haha
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I speak Mandarin too! I started classes in 7th grade and have been learning for 5 years now. I just passed the AP Chinese exam 
I’m not quite fluent yet, so I have to keep practicing! I hope to study a semester in China during college so that I can really improve. My best strength is reading comprehension, my weakest is probably listening (because I don’t have Mandarin spoken at home…or anywhere). What helped me with listening the most was using CDs from AP prep books. I would listen to a section in Chinese, then summarize or translate what I think was said to a native speaker. If I was right, I would move on. If I was really wrong, I would listen again, taking notes on words that I recognize or are important. I want to get into more Chinese shows and movies but…I haven’t found any good ones (I’m sorry!). If you guys have recommendations for amazing Chinese movies, I would love to check them out.
I’ve learned that the most important thing for language learning is vocab. Learn as many words as you can, and store them in a quizlet so you can study them again and retain the info. I know so many people who learn vocab, pass the test, but forget the words a week later because they never studied them again. Quizlet also has fun games like matching and gravity that make vocab much less boring. I’ve always accumulated new vocab from textbooks, but I recently downloaded Drops. It’s an app that is just purely new words with visuals, and it comes in a variety of languages. It’s technically free to download but you can only study for 5 minutes unless you buy a subscription (which isnt too expensive).
For fellow mandarin learners, Pleco is a life saver. It’s a chinese/English dictionary with a lot of great features.
As for general language learning apps go, I personally don’t use duolingo. I felt like a lot of the vocab and sentences were random and not very useful. A better app (in my opinion!) is Memrise, which offers a bit more freedom in what you choose to learn and is more efficient.
The app HelloTalk will SAVE YOUR GRADES AND YOUR GRAMMAR. It’s a language exchange app where you can post updates and questions and homework to native speakers trying to learn English. I’ve met many pen pals on there. Currently I have 941 unread messages (and I delete often). There is no limit to the opportunities to connect to native speakers and improve your speaking and writing ability.
Ok I’ll stop ranting for now. Let me know if you guys have had similar experiences with any of these apps or if you have chinese movie recommendations 
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I just picked up Duolingo again after forever. My username is Sarahlynch0 if anyone wants to add me.
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I am arguably fluent in American English. I say arguably because having a large vocabulary has, for me, resulted in never being able to actually find the word I’m looking for and ending up sounding like a total airhead.
I know a bit of Spanish, but I’m much better at speaking and reading it because I sometimes have difficulty auditorily processing English at a conversational pace, let alone anything I’m not fluent in.
I’ve picked up an intuitional(?)/etymological understanding of some French, Italian, and Latin from my years of singing and also their similarities with Spanish.
I’d love to learn Gaelic at some point, but haven’t acquired the discipline to self study it yet. I’m picking up a smattering of old Scots-Gaelic reading Outlander, though.
I also used to have a “fluency” in what vocabulary from the Hawkbrothers’ language we were gifted in the Valdemar series.
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Yeah I totally get what you mean with that first part, having a large vocabulary in a language definitely does not mean fluency. I know at least a thousand words in Polish but still struggle to put together basic sentences, though that is also due in part to the complexity of slavic languages in general.
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The sad part is that English, the one I’m only arguably fluent in, is my native language. So I have no excuses other than that I’m searching through too large of a file system at any given time.
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