I don’t believe there is silver bullet to learning a language for anyone - especially your average human. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, whatever are great for some f

I don’t believe there is silver bullet to learning a language for anyone - especially your average human. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, whatever are great for some foundational exposure and I appreciate that service but they aren’t going to get anyone fluent. I am a native English speaker and learned to fluently speak Spanish starting at 25. I don’t think I have any natural talent for languages but I was committed. Multiple intensive full-time immersion courses, immersion in Spanish speaking countries with an effort to assimilate and a lot of watching TV and reading for me to master. My weirdo catalan-ish accent still has serious issues (applicable to anlmost any accent in the Spanish speaking world) and I still make mistakes I know are mistakes the second I make them - 15+ years later. IMO Exposure (which in my janky definition includes at least some of what I described above and required usage to manage some regular task or communication) is the only way to really learn a language. And the thing that separates the real polyglots and everyone else is some combination of intrinsic aptitude and accelerated learning as they pick up more languages that drastically reduces the amount of exposure required.