At a supposed 50% fluency in French, the vocabulary started getting much harder. Now I get words I have never heard before, and more of the strange sentence constructions that you don’t find in English. And again, despite doing my 20 XP per day, I eventually fell back to 49%. This does not affect the new words I get to learn, I guess the vocabulary is arranged in a fixed order. Perhaps I even have used up the familiar words, those I have heard in song lyrics or that are similar to English. (Although given how many English words are imported from French, that seems unlikely at just over 1200 words.)
In contrast, the “dumbbell” repetition are pretty easy. Like “Òu est ta chambre?” (Where is your [bed]room) or “L’Allemagne est en Europe” (Germany is in Europe). As opposed to in today’s new phrases: “Il est l’heure de vous lever” (It is time for you to rise, literally “He is the hour of you to rise”.) Who speaketh like that? “Je venais de recevoir votre lettre” (I had just received your letter), I really don’t know what that would literally translate to in English, but it would not be English as we know it, that’s for sure.
I am mildly amused that it is impossible to exceed – or even maintain – 50% fluency in one of the easiest languages (probably THE easiest language for English-speakers) by doing the 20 points (2 units of training) per day that is the default goal in Duolingo. It would indeed be amazing if Duolingo was so effective that you could learn a language in 10 minutes a day! Hopefully by the time you have come halfway through the game/course, you will be motivated enough to spend more time. If you’re still interested at all.
