I'm like three days from my one year Duo streak. I've gone from understanding none of my wife's native language to being able to eavesdrop on phone conversations a bit, and to have short exchanges. I've probably spent half an hour daily on average. Sometimes a lot more.
I had no prior exposure. This website is weird, the comments never reflect reality for me on any topic.
Comprehensible input works really well and was popularized by a video that went viral a few years ago entitled “How to acquire any language NOT learn it!” [0]
The method described in the video involves focusing on listening for the first year by having someone read magazines and books to you in the target language, pointing and using other gestures to convey the meaning of words you don’t understand. This method works quite well but it is very difficult to find anyone who will consistently meet with you and practice like this before you have reached a certain level of understanding, and very few people want to learn this way because they see it as a waste of time.
One of the key aspects of this model is that you should not be translating between your native and your target language, which is what you usually do on apps like Duolingo. This has led to a subset of comprehensible input evangelists to fixate on insisting that Duolingo doesn’t work. The reality is that the method that works is the method you use consistently over time. Once you get to a certain level of fluency, you can have actual conversations to reinforce your learning, at which point drill methods like Duolingo will usually plateau while exposure methods like comprehensible input will still be useful for improving grammar and pronunciation.
I don't think your experience here is weird - just seems like you had a good environment for practicing a bit with your wife, which I think is more important than any other aspect of the learning methodology. Now, nitpickers might argue that "better" methods would have achieved much more in less time, but eh.
Try to force some more exchanges with your wife. Make a day of the week the day you only speak her language (for at least a few hours, but don't give up from the frustration when vocabulary runs short - keep it going even if you need to point and sign).
I had no prior exposure. This website is weird, the comments never reflect reality for me on any topic.