#it's got a nice balance of being grammar-focused and being simple for beginners

[lea-knows-the-devil]

Learning a new language is unnecessarily tough. You've got apps that do all the setup and prepare classes/flashcards/whatever for you, but they don't want to scare you with grammar or you can't go at your own pace or they're too pricey or they're just awful. And I get that apps, flashcards, and other stuff are just supplementary material for reading proper books and taking proper classes and immersing yourself, but like, it's language. Language is not hard to teach, at least for the basics. And it's literally everywhere. So why are the most popular free options for getting into language learning so awful?

(I know it's because a lot of apps use a subscription model which incentivises them to space everything out, make you feel like you're making a tiny bit of progress each day (not really), make you feel like this app is the only resource you'll ever need, and keep you there for the next ten years, but I'm being rhetorical)

Of course, the solution is to start reading good books, reading decent guides, watching free videos, immersing yourself, making your own spreadsheets and flashcards, and so on. That's what I've finally started doing. But it's devastating that so many people are super duper motivated to learn a new language, which is something that *IS* fun and easy if you know what to do (and avoid), and then. They look up how to learn a new language, click on the first result, and now they're in Duolingo hell memorising the names of a hundred countries for no fucking reason. As a social species of billions we can finally communicate instantly with almost everyone all the time, with the biggest limiting factor being language barriers. And we have somehow not made it priority numero uno to make learning languages as easy and as accessible (i.e. free) as humanly possible. It's just sad.