I had German courses in middle and high school, but forgot most of it to the point I could barely understand simple sentences. I started re-learning it on Duol

I had German courses in middle and high school, but forgot most of it to the point I could barely understand simple sentences. I started re-learning it on Duolingo a year ago, and rapidly caught up at the level I had in high school (which was very low, but still), and now I'm making some progress. eg. I can read a newspaper article and have a rough idea of what it's about. I can't say whether or not I could learn a new language from scratch with Duolingo, but at least in my case it was helpful.