duothrowaway99

Already mentioned elsewhere, but take a look at https://www.goethe.de/en/spr/kur.html , search for "Goethe Institut" on Google Maps, consider working with someone from https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/german , search for "learn german" on YouTube, etc.

Babbel was mentioned a few times, Pimsleur as well (they're different companies/methods), https://www.languagetransfer.org/ ...

Mix and match to find what works for you - what seems fun and motivating.

Oh, and consider informal irl meetings as well - https://www.meetup.com/topics/german/ (depending where you live ofc)

I don't remember what's their impression of it, sorry. But I definitely know someone who loved and used Pimsleur in her journey to learn French (in addition to the other tools I already mentioned)

Some Alliance Française outposts offer online classes, and italki has a number of great tutors. It always depends on the teacher you work with ofc, but I know someone who had great experience with both.

There are also a number of social media influencers (who probably were language tutors in a past life) that run online paid communities aka you pay to be part of their language community, and then have access to classes, zoom calls, etc.

They're harder to find / it's more difficult to immediately parse which ones will be good. But you can get a preview of "how they are" by consuming what they publish. For instance, for Canadian (Quebec) French, these are great:

https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingfrench

https://www.youtube.com/@maprofdefrancais

https://www.frenchwithfrederic.com/

I'm sure there are equivalents for French from France, and other languages. Searching "Learn {language name}" on YouTube/Instagram would be a good start.

There are a number of institutes/colleges dedicated to language learning in the US: Alliance Française [0], Goethe institute [1] with multiple satellite offices around the country, all offering language classes for a few hundred dollars.

There are a multitude, nay - infinite! number of online classes with teachers who will use "traditional", textbook-based approaches. [2]

Young Americans regularly go for 1-2-3 month trips to Italy, France, Germany, etc. American passports give folks a ton of latitude. You can stay in a hostel and eat cheaply - many thousands of people have done it.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I will definitely push back on the idea that it's impossible.

(and will also absolutely agree that the convenience of an app will be 10,000,000x more tempting to use than doing any of the above)

[0] https://www.afusa.org/

[1] https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/index.html

[2] https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/french

Both of my parents are teachers of a European language. They both have phd's in linguistics, and rate very highly with students (who basically adore them).

All of this context to say that not once has anyone using Duolingo been able to "test out" of the first ("101") class that they teach. Duolingo self-learners come in with a very unequal mix of vocabulary and... not much else. Unable to use declension properly [0], unaware of most rules around gender, verb tenses, etc.

I'm sure (and I should look it up) that there have been academic papers written on these quite different methods/approaches: gamified learning vs "academic" learning, immersion by moving to a country, etc.

But in my parents' experience of teaching (which spans ~40 yrs), Duolingo students pretty much all became disappointed in the app: these students thought that they had developed skills when it turns out they mostly got addicted to a game that overpromised useful learning over entertainment.

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Imho, the ugly truth is that language learning as an adult is deeply hard and requires a tremendous amount of effort and "tricks" to keep yourself motivated. People who watch native media with subtitles, play with AI apps (such as the YC backed https://www.issen.com/ which is quite nice), take a mix of "classic" classes, spend time in a country where the language is spoken and force themselves into situations where they "have" to speak, etc. all do much better. But it's a ton of effort.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension