Frankly, people do not have the time to deeply research this topic. You want to learn French or Spanish for fun. Duolingo claims that it can help you. So you join, try for a few days and give up.

This happened to me about ten years ago.

I too had not bothered to understand pedagogy. It is only when I wanted to learn Sanskrit, and struggled with it, that I got pissed off at the lack of progress and began looking around. There are some people on YT who talk about this stuff:

- Alexander Argüelles

- Steve Kaufmann

- Luke Ranieri

I might be missing a few others.

You first have to know what your problem is, before you can solve it.

> no one needs to discuss their phD dissertation in 4 different languages

True. In culturally homogeneous countries, you don't need four languages to make yourself understood.

It becomes somewhat necessary in places like mine where different groups of acquaintances/relatives/friends speak different languages and finding a single language at the intersection of those groups can be hard.

> You want to learn French or Spanish for fun. Duolingo claims that it can help you. So you join, try for a few days and give up.

is that Duolingo fault or users? because that happen in any hobby. heck, take indie gamedev.! hundreds give ups for a single released game. we could also say that there are people who tried Duolingo and years later they are fluent because the app was the kickstart

you have to be quite naive/lazy to stick ONLY with Duolingo for a year or 2 and expect that you will be fluent. there's also different ways of approaching the app... like each lesson allowing one to read or discuss it with the community; meta-thinking stuff like "am i learning or just rushing through lessons?" etc.

i heard podcasts about psychologists suggesting that fluency is subjective and it happens at +4 years time span of active engagement after mastering the basics

i think Niklas Luhmann’s essay on communication is quite relevant here; https://www.unisalento.it/documents/20152/2157613/LUHMANN-Wh...

Fluency is a different topic. In the initial stages, I am more concerned about the size of my vocabulary and my ability to understand what is written than trying to speak or listen. This is where reading lots and lots of material in the target language helps.

I have seen lifelong scholars of the Sanskrit language struggling to speak in Sanskrit because they are simply not used to it.

> people do not have the time to deeply research this topic. [...] There are some people on YT who talk about this stuff [linguistics/pedagogy]

That's true, but the opposite extreme can be even worse. In YouTube and Reddit I see so many people procrastinating in their quest for the perfect learning method instead of just sticking with any of the good enough methods they already have. I know because I've also kind of fell for that trap myself sometimes.

In fact, I imagine that the average Hacker News user is far more likely to fail at language learning because they procrastinate on linguistics and pedagogical theory and not because they churned 10,000 hours at a slightly suboptimal learning methodology.

This is generally because of a lack of definite purpose. If you were serious about reading ancient Latin literature, you would use YT to try to figure out a reasonable way to achieve the purpose and then put the theory into practise instead of continuing to watch these people talk about the same things over and over. Imagine Vermeer, Moebius or Frazetta continuing to watch art tutorials on YT in their 30s and 40s instead of working on their craft.

For some people, it is because they are unsure of which method works for them. So they wander from one theory to the other.

The rest simply enjoy the meta aspect of the journey more than the journey itself.

>they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency

Sure, they've got that fig leaf covering them.