I just had to learn French in middle age, and it’s been fun. They key takeaways from my experience:
- Contact is everything. The longer you spend listening, reading, speaking, just in general interacting with the target language, the better. Doesn’t matter what you do - Duolingo or PeerTube videos, novels or comic strips.
- Communication is the goal, not fluency. You can get the gender of a word wrong and people will still understand you. You can use the wrong tense and that’s usually okay. Don’t try to “sound more like a native” or “learn slang words that everyone uses,” because heaven knows nobody is going to take you for a native. But if you can get the point across and can understand what people are saying, you win.
- Speaking is 10x harder than listening or reading or even writing, because it involves not only forming sentences in an unfamiliar language, but also saying them, which involves your muscles. At first, it’s really hard to say the sounds of the language that don’t exist in your own language, and I found that very frustrating.
- Language and culture are different, but interconnected. You don’t really speak a language if you don’t understand the culture it’s attached to. For instance, at first I didn’t know what the cashiers were asking me at the checkout, until I learned that they want to see the bags you brought from home to make sure they are empty. The problem with missing cultural references is that everybody around you knows them, and they don’t understand why you don’t, or what there is to explain.
- One of the very few great use cases of LLMs is, in fact, talking with a chat bot. You give it a good prompt (look for them online) and you are forced to talk in the target language. If the bot can understand you, a native speaker probably will, too. A good tip is to try an AI conversation on the topic of something you are about to do in real life, like applying for an apartment or having a conversation about cheese.
- Personally, I found that my language skills drowned completely under certain, specific circumstances. For instance, for the life of me I cannot understand voice messages, at all. Even phone conversations are really bad for me, both in talking and listening. I can have a perfectly fine conversation with someone, but when I have to talk with them on the phone, it’s like I never learned the language.
- The tool you use is not as important as the time you spend. Duolingo was really meh: too much useless vocabulary, not enough grammar and pattern recognition, lack of ability to specify areas of interest, down to always on animations even when you had them all turned off. But, despite the heavy focus on the words, “chouette” and “trousse,” I sort of learned French to the point where I can follow everyone along and can speak and be understood. Took a year to the day and the entire tree.
En francais, s’il vous plait.
oN eSt En FrAnCe, On PaRlE fRaNçAiS !
I was thinking more of how a teacher in a French class would force students to interact in French (or so I’m told, anyway — I took latin in high school).
Ah true, I can see it now.
The absolute best way is immersion. Full on survival, sink or swim, daily brain exhaustion to cram information in that you will use, over and over.
Short of that, finding ways to practice using the language is the key. Listening to videos is fine, but you need to simulate thinking and responding to make the language part of what your brain goes to. Find people online to talk to via Zoom or discord. I like to think of conservations I have and translate them in Google and re-run the interaction 4 or 5 times in the second language.
For numbers, find videos online that are things like lottery draws.
Bon chance!
Language Transfer is free with no ads or intrusive permissions needed. The material is presented in a way that makes learning the language more natural feeling.
I second this. It also teaches without using rote memorization. Better than any other books or videos I have ever seen. I have been supporting LT with a monthly donation for several years now.
For those looking to learn Spanish, find her:
I read many great approaches here. One thing that I have the impression it was not mentioned is song lyrics. It’s like syntax and vocabulary get somehow absorbed or something. And it’s fun!
Song lyrics are difficult (for me). I have difficulty understanding song lyrics even in my native language sometimes.
Fair enough! Now that I think about it, maybe I should have specified that this is an online approach. It includes finding them, reading them and having a dictionary for translating them. Then, at some point, you learn them by heart. Also, I don’t think that just doing this is enough, but it somehow speeds up the initial process, especially for speaking.
Yeah! Songs are a good addition to learning activities. You learn several words deeply, with great repetition, and it’s fun.
But I agree you need to be looking at lyrics and using a dictionary. It can be too easy to just listen to songs as music, and not get any language-learning out of it.
Any nowadays there’s so much slang and fake words thrown in that it’s probably more harmful then good when learning languages. At least with current music anyways.
I learned most of the German I know through German music and a little bit of Spanish from Latino music
Yes! Not so much for beginners, but you can practice translation by translating songs on lyricstranslate.com. It’s good fun!
Seconding language transfer that someone mentioned, I found it to be hands down the best free resource for Greek.
Assimil courses are also some of the best materials out there, I highly highly recommend it if you can find a course for your target language.
As for apps, I use Clozemaster for drilling words (I use a premium account), but you can make your own anki decks for that purpose.
But nothing beats talking to native speakers, either using something like italki for actual lessons, or just finding random native speakers. I often forget words I repeated 1000 times during my studies, but words I learned by speaking to others somehow just get glued to my mind.
If you are coming from another language, say C or Python, try https://tourofrust.com/
“The book” is always a good option. I like the variaton of Brown University: https://rust-book.cs.brown.edu/title-page.html
(I know that’s not what they meant, I am just preaching the ghospel, here)
As far as I can tell, nothing beats persistence. Ideally persistence out of necessity, like immersion, although that might be hard to achieve.
It’s not really a thing you can shortcut.
I use flashcard apps such as Anki.
Im still not great at Spanish because I dont practice frequently but these things helped me:
- Learned alphabet.
- Learned examples of conjugation of verbs with real life examples.
- Started with children level books and increase difficulty to read and comprehend what is being said.
- Listen to music in that language and learn what its saying.
- Watching telenovelas with English captions and try familiarizing words
- Final phase I think is visiting a country who’s primary language is that language.
need an excuse , time and place to learn one.
This can depend on your personality type and self-discipline.
If you’re a methodical introvert who likes reading, go for a vocab-focused app with spaced repetition, and continue by reading actual newspapers or books (even children’s books) as soon as you can.
If you’re an impulsive extrovert with a short concentration span, you’re going to need a more human experience, if possible 1-to-1 tutoring.
In all cases, don’t get hung up on grammar and (especially not) phonetics at the start. Vocab is the key that will unlock the rest.
FWIW I speak multiple languages fairly competently and I’m a qualified English teacher.
There are lots of great things to do, but most important is to build a habit and keep working at it. Engage with the language every day, and work up to consuming content designed for native speakers.
Duolingo and similar apps are helpful, but don’t put all your eggs in that, or any single, basket. Also do Anki or some other flashcard thing. And at the very least a beginner textbook or grammar guide is good to have. Early on, mix time between textbook, apps, ‘comprehensible input’ videos. Work your way up to reading, and look for graded readers to get started.
(Also, as Duolingo gets worse, consider alternatives like Memrise and Mondly. Or even paid stuff like Busuu, Lingq, Pimsleur, Babbel, Rosetta Stone. Also, your local library may give access to Transparent Language or Mango. Although of course I can’t vouch for most of these personally.)
Another rec: check out !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz for a cool community. Good place to ask questions and get support.
There are probably a ton of cool learning resources specific to your target language. Look online for communities around it.
After learning the basics, try reading manga/comics that you are already familiar with, but in your target language.
The pictures help and you can read it at your own pace unlike listening to audio or watching videos.
I’ve read the entire Dragon Balls manga in Spanish.
Duolingo + language learning Books
