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I started learning Irish on Duolingo mid last year. Not with the intention of becoming fully fluent, as most things I've read indicate that you'd normally have to supplement Duo practice with other means - courses, one-on-one conversations, and so on.
But so far I've had a couple of points where there's been a small payoff, or at least the feeling of such:
With the second, I'm not sure why it feels like such an accomplishment. I was joking with another friend who's learning via the same course that it feels like for months, all you're doing is talking about horses and boys and girls and sandwiches and crabs. The course I think lacks the additional resources (stories, etc) present in the more popular languages like French and Spanish.
Forming the passive felt like a bit of an accomplishment; expanding the vocabulary periodically helps. But it hasn't felt as concrete a thing as working with the past tense.
I'm at eight months on this course. And I'm thinking back to when I started learning French, when I was nine or so. Am I further along now than I was then? Hard to say. The Canadian core French curriculum is sort of notorious for not creating fluent speakers. But it's also good enough: I can still pick my way decently through written French. I wouldn't try to speak it but I can sort of work my way to understanding.
I think that's my end goal for this: work my way up to an acceptable level of understanding with Irish. A working knowledge, I guess. The dream I had when I was younger, of travelling to the Gaeltacht, learning and speaking Irish - is this as good as gone? I'm not young anymore. Definitely maybe. And like so many people with so many languages, I'm learning it in a context that's not really going to produce many opportunities to use it. Maybe I do need to travel. Get out of my comfort zone and immerse myself in it.
But in the meantime there are easier approaches. Maybe soon I'll start reading some of the Irish language news sites. Becoming fluent in speaking it could be difficult; putting together a good understanding of written Irish is I think more doable. I'd love to attempt translations, both to and from the language. I think that's a great long-term goal. And maybe in the coming years I look for opportunities beyond the owl app to help me find a way to get there.