I’ve tried your suggestions and they didn’t work where Duolingo did. Maybe “terrible” isn’t the right word in that they work for someone forced into a language

I’ve tried your suggestions and they didn’t work where Duolingo did. Maybe “terrible” isn’t the right word in that they work for someone forced into a language (moving to a different country). In that situation, sure, Duolingo would be a bad approach. Confidence, fun, easy, whatever you want to call it: casually learning a new language when you have no pressing reason to do so is where Duolingo shines. The gamified part is an annoyance to me, and definitely doesn’t make it a hellhole. I have to click through a few different activity-screens with some “gem” currency popping up. So what? I don’t know what they’re about, and it doesn’t affect my learning. I’m grateful that someone has supplied me with a structured and organized order in which to learn the basics. All I have to do is sit on my ass for a short period of time a day to make sure I get the active recall that’s most pertinent to my learning. It’s designed from the ground up for mobile, and that’s a perfect medium for my use case. You certainly can learn a language in 10 minutes a day; it just may take 5 years to be fluent enough for a basic/casual conversation. I’m in no rush. Personally I end up spending an hour some days. The rate at which you can learn grows exponentially as you understand more and the process becomes more fun. It’s the beginning where ease/effort of learning are important I can reflect on the past few months I’ve spent learning Hebrew. It was particularly intimidating for me because the alphabet/script is very different. At this point, I can read and confidently pronounce 80% of the words in the language. This has been effortless where other approaches (like the ones you suggested) completely failed. They failed because I’m too lazy to deal with the logistics, but that highlights the success of Duolingo. Most importantly, the speed at which I’m learning relative to the effort I’m putting in is enjoyable to me. And further, an IRL textbook alone is scientifically a terrible idea. Ingraining poor pronunciation (which will necessarily happen without audio) is crippling in the long term.