Yeah Duolingo is shit. I’m not an English speaker regularly, I was in Britain and the first time people spoke to me I freezed 🤣.
The best thing to do is to get a good base and go for it, hoping your interlocutor will not laugh at you (which in my experience: they don’t. They correct you and serve you a pint)
I've used Duolingo for about seven years to learn German and wouldn't really recommend it for achieving "rantability", I'm just at the point where I'm able to understand 80% or so of Rammstein lyrics. That's a fairly abysmal ROI for 7 years of study.
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