I think you kind of answered your own question. You have to have outside experience of the words to really have them click. We all have extremely strong associative memories. And you risk associating those words with the games/sentences on Duolingo, instead of the thing they actually represent. This is why watching movies, reading books, listening to music, etc in the target language is so important.

Duolingo lessons generally fail to build up on each other sufficiently. Lesson 10 should regularly reuse the vocabulary of 1-9 (to help 'widen' the association). Instead, it tends to be lesson 10 vocabulary paired with extremely simple words to form grammatically correct sentences and learn the vocabulary of lesson 10, which is then almost entirely discarded in the lessons that follow.

> You have to have outside experience of the words to really have them click.

I always thought this was a given though. I don't think it's possible to learn a language in a vacuum. Languages are also people and culture.

> Duolingo lessons generally fail to build up on each other sufficiently.

Agreed. There's plenty of lessons that don't seem to be getting reused later, like they're leaves in the tree of knowledge. Those are the ones I have the most difficulty with when reviewing past lessons.

I have had a similar experience, not with Duolinguo but taking Chinese classes IRL. It's easy to write up the brain as some sort of computer, but I do think that with language acquisition "recall words from memory"[0] is _much harder_ than "do a thing you have already done" (which you get through a lot of actual practice).

This is why I really think shadowing is so important with language learning, because it trains you to actually put words next to another. Just sitting down learning vocabulary is of course better than nothing, but having set phrases where you use that vocab ends up actually giving you at least _some_ scenarios where you can use them.

And of course "recognize countdowns when they show up in anime" and "do the counting up to 10 yourself" is extremely different. It's so much easier to understand something than to say it yourself! Understanding is of course super satisfying, and a good target in itself, but self-production is pretty important in my opinion.

[0]: a fun exercise for people is to try and name 40 states, or 80 pokemon. Turns out that a lot of info is locked in our brains but is not easily accessible in a context-free environment

> having set phrases where you use that vocab ends up actually giving you at least _some_ scenarios where you can use them.

Duolingo does exactly that though. It introduces vocabulary first, then introduces complete sentences using the words and the complexity keeps ramping up from there. As I progress through the japanese course it's becoming increasingly difficult to remember all the kanji but it still surprises me that I can figure out the long sentences it throws at me, sometimes without even thinking.

> It's so much easier to understand something than to say it yourself!

I guess. I think I can confidently count to 20 in japanese though. No one's evaluating me on my pronunciation so I don't know how good it is. I like to imagine it's at least ok since japanese phonetics are close to portuguese.

I've experienced something similar in Finnish. The best I can come up with is the memories are connected with the app. Without the app the association with the learned content is lost. Well, it's just a theory.

All games are not addictive drugs. Some are similar to it, some not at all.

And what makes them similar to drugs is scheduled rewards. If you see a timer anywhere, it's drug-based design.

Duolingo is absolutely habit forming. It's got positive and negative reinforcements timed at many frequencies: days, weeks, months and years. It's got all sorts of rewards: XP, badges, gems, daily tasks, weekly leaderboards, yearly progress reports. It's got all sorts of punishments: loss of streak, permanent loss of monthly badge, loss of position in leaderboars.

The only thing that excuses all this is the fact it's trying to instill a healthy learning habit which leads to positive results for the user. Unlike the many Skinner's box simulators out there with the reward buttons wired to the player's credit card.

> How is this possible?

Setting and context is really important in language learning. If you're only used to practicing in a very specific and limited setting then you're only going to be able to recall under those conditions. Some apps try to resolve this by using video conversations, allowing you to chat with other users of similar levels (extremely useful!) and canned conversations (Duolingo has this one). All these are important but you also need to practice "offline." It is also important to watch and listen to content (like you're doing), even if it is far above your level. You'll probably notice in your Japanese adventure that a big thing is that you're probably way better at parsing words and sounds (e.g. hearing differences in tones for Chinese) than when you first started. Even learning to parse words is a big step, but only unfortunately comes from exposure of longer form content, something Duolingo-like apps (not all apps) don't provide.

Comic books is what really worked for me. I'm lucky that I was learning Dutch and the Belgians are great at comic writing. When you don't quite have the vocabulary you can use the pictures for enough context clues to decipher it.

When I started it took me a week to read one story. Got that down to an evening, then one hour. Now I can read them as quickly as English unless there's something very unusual happening.

> allowing you to chat with other users of similar levels (extremely useful!)

Agreed. I lurk in libera's japanese language channel in order to read the messages. It's been a big help.

> You'll probably notice in your Japanese adventure that a big thing is that you're probably way better at parsing words and sounds

Absolutely. I'm getting a lot better at parsing out the components of sentences, especially the particles, even in fast speech. My understanding is still pretty basic but this skill allows me to at least try to infer information from context. It's a great way to puzzle out meaning and it's amazing when I get it right.

> exposure of longer form content, something Duolingo-like apps (not all apps) don't provide

That's partially true. Duolingo has stories but I think they're somewhat basic. It's just not the same as really immersing oneself in another culture. I'm not supplementing Duolingo with japanese books or anything but I enjoy watching japanese stuff so I have at least some exposure.

The most important thing about Duolingo is it got me started. I've been progressing over 2 years now. Almost 1000 days.

The stories were something I really liked and they were a great break from the monotony of the usual lessons and a nice diversion. With the latest updates, you don’t get a single story (at least in Japanese) until you’re like at level 37. That’s a gigantic amount of effort to get to. It’s not like before where you had many stories relatively early on.

Yeah I really hated how the update just got rid of them. Why gate them at level 37? I'm at level 19 and I was able to understand many of those stories.

> It's simple recitation.

It should be more than that. There needs to be a connection between each word and the actual abstract concept they represent. Otherwise we're memorizing the act of counting itself without actually knowing the numbers.

> the suffixes necessary for counting different types of objects

I thought it might be that too but OP specifically said counting from 1 to 10 so it's just the numbers. Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, nana, hachi, kyuu, juu. I just don't know how it's possible to finish duolingo's japanese course without being able to say those words. It's not like the course is easy.

I mean there's some complexity and inconsistency. Words seem to randomly use different pronunciations of the kanji like 17 which is juushichi instead of juunana. Makes no sense to me but I simply got used to it quickly after hearing it enough. Days of the month were the hardest numbers for me because of all the inconsistencies. The general pattern is simple enough: number + "nichi" (日) but unfortunately a third of the numbers are special cases which must be memorized. I hate memorizing special cases. None of this applies to counting from 1 to 10 though...

For one thing it's possible you've only seen lessons in which you're choosing the right answer from a list. If all you can do is that, you almost certainly won't recall them all without that assistance.

> choosing the right answer from a list

Unfortunately this is almost always the case in duolingo's japanese lessons due to the characters. It's less of a problem in other languages.

I installed japanese input methods on my phone so I could practice writing and it's still really hard.

There's plenty of people that can read and not write.

Other than those with dysgraphia obvious disabilities, who are you thinking of primarily?