How long did you take to become fluent in your target language

[Corinnebelle]

I am wondering about people's experiences. How long did it take for you to become fluent in your target language? I know some people get to be talking okay in six months, but I'm curious about your experiences, because no two people are the same.

[SweNedGuy]

The languages I am fluent in don't include those I started learning on Duolingo. I'm near fluent in German and Italian because I had some prior elementary (A1) level of both before starting to refresh them using DL. On the contrary, Swedish and Portuguese are still poor, despite the level 5 owl for Swedish and level 3 for Portuguese.

[Davey944676]

I'm absolutely in no way even currently attempting to be "fluent" in any language apart from my native English.

However, after several years of casually enjoying the learning of Polish and then other related languages on Duolingo - Russian, Ukrainian (and even Romanian, which I love, has a bit of a Slavic twist here and there), I think I now have both a "logical" and at least to some extent a "natural" grasp of the structure and "feel" of those Slavic languages.

That might not sound much for that length of time, but I had no previous knowledge at all and I have really enjoyed the learning process.

More to the point of your question, Corrinnebelle, I really do think that I could now (relatively) quickly learn how to speak one of those languages fluently if I focussed.

[duome]

The most surprising experience for me was that you actually do remember a lot even after a few years of no language practice at all, you just need to put yourself in a kind of a stressful condition, like suddenly meeting a foreign traveler on a street in your hometown or arriving to an airport in a foreign country and realizing that you need some assistance, and you can only speak your target language (which is a bliss, because otherwise most of the time most people would try to talk to you in English). It can be a bit scary at times, but you really enjoy the way the words come back to your mind rather quickly in a stressful situation, and you can actually speak, while normally you would struggle to even convince yourself to try it, thinking that no, there's no way you can handle it.