How do you go about learning a new language?
I've been playing with the idea that I might try to learn a second language. I have sparse memories of my great grandparents and grandparents speaking their native language, but it didn't get passed down beyond them.
In my daily life I have no immediate need to communicate outside of English, but I think it would be more than interesting anyway. I've played around with Duolingo and while I can see what it's doing (very early stages), I struggle to feel it will be useful for long.
What are the methods that folks have used to learn a new language? Is there a path that is "best" or "easiest"? As an old, I'm used to the traditional method of learning with a teacher, but I don't know how to find one locally for the language I'm interested in (modern Greek).
Any advice is very welcome, thanks!
P.S. I hope this lands in the right section, I wasn't sure if I should post it here or in Hobbies.
Duolingo is OK as a starting point. But you really need to jump off as soon as possible. It's somewhat infamous in the language learning community - it just goes too slowly, to the point where you start to forget what you learned in the beginning.
I would recommend starting by learning whatever glyph system the language uses first. For some languages, that'll be trivial - like Spanish, or another language that uses the latin alphabet. For Japanese? Not so easy.
Then, go find a 1k or 2k word anki deck. These exist for basically any language. The point is to bootstrap an initial vocabulary by brute forcing the most common ~1k words (which is typically upwards of 80% of common conversation).
In combination, start processing "input", which is to say, read or listen or watch to content in that language. These processes work in conjunction - you'll be able to watch harder content as you go through the Anki deck.
Eventually, you'll finish the Anki deck, and at that point you should just keep on consuming input, and also consider ways to speak or write the language. Like with your native language, you'll progressively learn by osmosis.
What about grammar? Take it easy with grammar. You'll learn much of grammar simply implicitly by reading content. It's OK to occasionally look up grammar rules, but there's no need to obsess about it. This IMO is one of the biggest issues of school courses on language learning.
For what it's worth, I know 3 languages, and they're fairly distant from each other.
Anki + immersion (watching/reading/listening to native content) is the winner in my opinion.
I’ve been working on learning Japanese on and off for around a decade and a half now, having approached it from various angles. Earlier on it was memorizing kanji by writing them (as was recommended at that point). I tried the Genki textbooks for a while. Later on, I tried WaniKani, which is an Anki-like learning service. In recent years, I’ve memorized most of a core 2k word Anki deck a few times (usually with something else more urgent pulling away my time and energy before I can finish).
Through all of this I’ve picked up a decent amount and became able to get the gist of what people were saying, but there were big holes in understanding and speaking was very difficult. Full blown conversation was out of the question.
Since early February I picked my deck back up and have been following a grammer guide, but also in addition have been making a point to immerse. So far this has been through listening to a combination of a native speaker podcast and “
compressedcondensed audio”, which is the audio tracks of anime with all the parts without speech cut out, so the entire runtime is voiced. I’ve started dabbling in reading and shadowing but haven’t put a significant amount of time into either. Most days I listen to at least a couple hours but there’s been some days where I was able to push it up to 4-5 hours. Some of it’s more passive (e.g. during work) while some of it is more active (e.g. when sitting eating lunch, where nothing else is splitting my focus).In just that short time it feels like my ability to understand the spoken language has made a tangible leap. Memorization of vocab from Anki is sticking better because I’m using it and throughout the day my brain is making connections. Sometimes I catch myself mouthing basic sentences I might say in a conversation. I still have a long way to go, but there’s no question that spending time with the language itself is acting like a multiplier on studies. Acquiring the language feels like an inevitability now as long as I can keep this up, where it didn’t before.
I'm not even conversational in Japanese because I've also had life stuff pull me away from my learning (and I've had to hard pivot to learning Thai.) That said, I like The Moe Way Japanese guide. They mention a lot of great tips and techniques. I was hoping to try Visual Novels as an immersion technique before I had to pause.
I didn't like WaniKani because I wanted more control over the pace/timing and the stories felt way too wordy, so I would write out my own shorter/more informationally dense ones. I was ultimately putting them into a modified version of the excellent All In One Kanji deck for Anki, created by Jo Moko. It appears that deck was removed, though.
For Japanese and other languages, I want to call out a really great tool: Yomitan. This browser add-on allows you to provide a dictionary file, then when you hold a modifier key and hover over a word in your target language, the definition appears in a popup. You can even set it up to allow for quickly making Anki cards from the word.
[Edit: And yes, I'm applying techniques I learned with Japanese to approach Thai! I have Yomitan profiles set up for Japanese and Thai, using Thai dictionaries that I found in this GitHub repo.]
Yep, I’ve looked at that guide and a few other similar ones. Yomitan is set up as well as Mokuro for processing manga into a form that’s readable in the browser so Yomitan can perform lookups.
The tools and resources available for language learning today are really just incredible. It’s an entirely different world than the one I found when I started trying to learn back in 2009.
Can confirm that visual novels are a fantastic resource. Since authors usually have go-to words and phrases, you gain some familiarity with their style. It's very rewarding to start out struggling through the introduction then crushing it by the conclusion!
I really like the Marugoto series - it's meant for conversational Japanese and is free online
In the defense of Duolingo: It's not the best way to learn a language. But it's damn good at gamification and building habits. I have a 3 year Duolingo streak (actually hitting it at some point this month) And while 3 years of other processes would've worked better, Duolingo is what helped me become disciplined and just doing SOMETHING every day.
I've done Duolingo daily, and it helped me with other good habits like running and drawing. Just because you become "a person that has good habits"
How much have you learned from Duolingo? I understand habits and all that, but I've never met a learner with any serious results from Duolingo.
I'm not saying use duolingo as your only source. I probably haven't learned much from it by itself. It did help me stay consistent though. I have also taken a normal spanish class, where I have learned much more than just with Duolingo.
+1 for this method: it is pretty much how I did a lot of my Spanish learning. A small addition: at the start, it can be hard to find content you can actually follow. One thing I found incredibly helpful, was "comprehensable input". If you look it up on YT, I'm sure you can find some for beginners. The idea of comprehensable input is that the speaker uses body language and context clues to make understanding easier, so you can learn words from context without someone translating them.
I agree wholeheartedly about memorizing a somewhat-functional amount of the most common words, then just trying to read/listen/talk as much as possible. However, I definitely think you have to learn the grammar too as one of the basic steps. You can infer tenses and conjugation such from reading, but honestly I think it's easier to memorize it. Plus some things like reflexive or pluperfect tenses or grammatical gender which don't really exist the same way in English are hard to intuit.
I agree with this, but I would add prioritizing getting output experience as soon as possible. I know many people that hesitate a lot to start speaking never feeling ready to jump into that pool. Unless you are a really special case, I don't think anyone ever feels ready because you need to practice the skill to get any good at it. You can read about doing a kickflip on a skateboard for years, but, again, unless you are a very special case, you won't be able to do a kickflip without getting on a skateboard and trying it many many times.
I learned Japanese at school and I was a pretty bad student. My reading and writing skills are subpar for how long I studied and lived in Japan. But my communication skills took off once I stopped worrying about making mistakes and started just letting sounds, words, sentences, ideas flow out of me without translating first in my head. The advantage of vocal output is not just for speaking but also for listening. As another comment mentioned, pronunciation is really important. When I heard languages I don't know it's very hard to repeat the sounds because I can't parse them and I can't abstract them into syllables, words, patterns. Speaking is part of the listening feedback loop because it makes the listening an active process. On your first day of studying a language, repeating as best as you can what you are hearing is hugely beneficial to building that skill.
Wow. This is an outstanding answer - thank you for the taking the time.
Learning languages has been a hobby of mine for almost 15 years. I've studied Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Esperanto, Toki Pona, and I'm currently working on Korean. Here's the method that works, based on my experience.
Short : Drill the basics, then consume tons of content, then put yourself in situations where you need to use the language.
Long verison:
The most important thing to remember is that your brain is hardwired to learn languages. When you hear or see a phrase AND you understand the meaning, your brain will automatically and subconsciously connect the two. Boiled down to its core, repeating this process is how we all learn languages.
Phase 1: Prepping for content consumption
Phase 2: Content Consumption
As early as possible, start consuming as much as you can. You're aiming for interesting content where you can understand at least 80%. If the content isn't engaging to you, it's not going to help. At this stage, most content targeted at native speakers will still be too advanced. Podcasts aimed at non-native speakers will help a lot. Watching a long-running TV show can help because the vocab and themes will repeat throughout. Graphic novels and vlogs are easier to understand because they provide visual context. Sometimes, children's books are interesting enough to hold your attention. Anything specifically made to be comprehensible input is pure gold.
At this stage, quantity is king. With repeated exposure, your brain will effortlessly acquire the most frequently used aspects the language. It'll use what you understand to contextually guess the meaning of unknown words and phrases. Through more exposure, it'll acquire those as well. You might find yourself "babbling" in your target language as your usage becomes less intellectual and more instinctual.
Phase 3: Put the language to use
You don't need to move to a new country, but you'll need to find situations where you use the language for real communication. There are plenty of options here. Find a place online where your target language is used. Jump into a language learning community and volunteer to exchange will someone who wants to learn your target language. You can pay for a tutor and talk to them about anything your want.
The key here is to convince your mind that the language isn't just a toy but something useful. Let yourself make embarrassing mistakes. Let yourself feel the joys and frustration that come from genuine human connection. This is what language is for! If you've reached this stage, congratulations!
Phase 4 (bonus) : Study the language like a native speaker
Breaking into the advanced level will require deliberate study. What you do in this phase will depend on your goals. Reading "literary" works in your target language is a good way to expand your vocab. Using a monolingual dictionary is also a good idea. At this point, you could try to acquire a near-native accent (with lots of time and effort). You can replace your normal activities with ones in your target language, but quantity of exposure alone won't be enough. You'll need to deliberately engage will material targeted at educated adult native speakers of your target language.
Picked up these two for fun?
I'm also curious how you decided to learn kanji and hanzi since you mentioned Mandarin and Japanese?
Would you mind sharing the sources for things like the minimal pairs or Anki that you're using to learn Korean?
I feel underqualified to speak about how "best" to learn a language, as I'm still underway on a couple, and not conversational yet in either of them. That said, I can talk about Duolingo (on which I have a 686-day "soft" streak at the moment).
I think Duolingo is fine for regularly drilling yourself at a basic level, but I recommend keeping your expectations tempered. It is far from perfect. Depending on your target language (Korean in my case), flagging outcomes ("no, I was not wrong") has felt essentially useless. I assume that it needs maintainers to take the flag feedback and do something with it, and I seriously doubt anyone does that for Korean. Second, it happens more often than I'd like that I submit a perfectly reasonable translation (as confirmed by other services), but Duolingo considers it wrong because the DL language maintainers did not account for the slightly different translation. I wouldn't care so much, except you "lose" a bit on the site due to the "mistake". e.g. lose a Heart, or lose a correct answer streak, etc, or fail the whole lesson. Third, lessons are not stateful. If you lose connectivity, or refresh, then your whole lesson progress is lost -- AND you lose whatever you "spent" in the system up to that point, whether hearts or gems, or your time (could be tens of minutes).
With all those warts, I still use it, but I don't let myself get too invested. If anyone knows of a similar alternative (unsupervised translation drilling), I'd be eager to hear of it.
One last thing: I swear by the Anki ecosystem of apps (web, desktop, mobile) for raw memorization (like vocabulary).
It definitely depends on the language you’re trying to learn with Duolingo too. English, Spanish, and French are their biggest languages (in that order), so they get the most attention from Duolingo. Korean is #7 and doesn’t get the same investment.
For Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, I hear Lingodeer is much better: https://www.lingodeer.com/
I actually have a lingodeer account already. I don't remember why I stopped using it. I'll maybe give it another try. Update: Ah, I think it's because nearly all the content is paywalled. I'm not totally averse to paying for a good service, but I do want to get good value. The price I see seems comparable to Duolingo's paid offering, which I trialled for a year, but found not worth the money.
My experience with language learning content is that a lot of paid content is really good and worth the price. Duolingo is the exception since it's the typical micro transaction mobile game nonsense.
The short answer is comprehensible input. What that means is you should find content in your target language (modern Greek) which you find interesting and can follow decently well. Follow means you can roughly understand the meaning of what is being said by the characters. Pretty much all linguists support some portion of Krashen's Input Hypothesis which says truly learning a language is impossible without engaging, comprehensible input.
If you think about it, humans have this weird natural ability to intuitively pick up spoken languages. Before you ever went to school, you already knew thousands upon thousands of words and hundreds of grammar rules. With absolutely no formal instruction, kids will learn purely through immersion. Turns out that method works just as well for adults, but the content must be comprehensible. If you want to develop a native-like understanding of a language, it's worth learning the same way native speakers learn.
The thing about comprehensible input that's especially effective is that you're always practicing real world skills! It's fine to use Anki or a grammar book to bootstrap yourself to a beginner level to follow children's cartoons (plenty have been translated to Greek), but the goal is to study the same way you want to actually use the language! If you spend years on Duolingo, you'll get really good at Duolingo rather than listening, reading, or speaking Greek.
I'm happy to help you look for resources to get started if you're interested! The best way to get input depends a lot on your interests and personal finances. A really popular method for conversation practice is to find a bilingual speaker, so you can speak English to while they respond in simple, beginner Greek. Tandem and HelloTalk are both popular, free places to find language exchange partners.
(If you want to learn more about the method, Dreaming Spanish is one of the biggest names in comprehensible input.)
Edit: Here are some places to start:
As far as old-fashioned learning goes, nothing beats one-on-one tutoring. I’ve used Preply before, and I recommend it; being addressed and watching someone speak is one of the most difficult aspects of language learning for me, and this site helped with that tremendously.
I'd also recommend proper lessons if you can find them. Immersion is great, but without understanding how the language is really formed, how its grammar works, why things are the way they are, then you'll hit an inflection point that you just won't be able to get past. I've not done much one-on-one tutoring myself, but if it can do that with a trained teacher who can guide you through the language, this will help you a lot.
Related to this: be wary of advice from hobbyist language learners. There is a hobby of almost speedrunning language learning, and it's fine for what it is, but you will struggle to ever become fluent in a language this way. Hobbyists tend to skip out on things like grammar, and concentrate on gathering lots of words and getting a lot of "input" (media, conversations with native speakers, etc). This stuff is good, but it can only take you so far - eventually, you'll reach an inflection point where you'll struggle to continue. If your goal is learning lots of languages as a hobby, this is fine! You have achieved your aim, you can communicate in that language, and you can move onto your next language. But if your goal is to get a deeper understanding of and appreciation for your chosen language, you probably want to take a slower approach but one with a stronger foundation.
For specifics, there's a guy on YouTube called Language Jones who makes various linguistics videos but has a particular interest in language learning. I'm fairly sure he's made a couple of recommendations before for online tools that work well - I can't remember what they were, but it should be possible to look that up somewhere without trawling through his back catalogue.
I disagree with this. Most linguists agree that the only thing you need to become fluent in a language is input. The human brain is naturally geared towards learning languages.
While I benefitted from studying Japanese grammar, my wife learned Spanish exclusively through comprehensible input with Dreaming Spanish. She has never studied grammar, and tutors consistently tell her that her Spanish is excellent. She doesn't translate in her head. The words and phrases naturally come to her after all the input.
This is not what I have heard from linguists or language teachers. Input is very important, but unless you learn the language at a very early age, you generally need to learn the rules correctly if you want to truly learn to speak at a native level.
I'm also speaking somewhat from experience here: my German is also very good, and I can live and work in German freely. I can think in German and not just by translation, much like your wife. But that doesn't solve the grammar issues. My German grammar is still a struggle, and it's immediately obvious when speaking German that I don't really have a good grasp on grammatical gender and cases. It is getting better, and I'm trying to be more correct with that, but it's something I actively need to work on, because grammar is important and does not come for free.
Grammar is important, but I think that traditional language teaching/learning approaches start on it too early and put an inordinate amount of focus on it.
It’s a bit like getting into the nitty gritty of the various municipal codes involved in building a house when the person in question can barely even build a birdhouse. It also doesn’t align very well with how most people acquire their mother tongue… generally kids are very capable at their native language before encoutering even the slightest sliver of formal instruction.
In other words I think grammar should be studied, but early on especially it needs to take a back seat to input and vocab memorization. It doesn’t make sense as a focal point until the learner has at least reached a conversational level.
I would've agreed with you a year ago, but my wife has a solid, intuitive grasp on complicated Spanish verb conjugations and grammar rules after purely doing comprehensible input. I don't know if it's optimal (as u/sparksbet mentioned), but engaging, comprehensible input is sufficient to develop a native-like understanding of a language. Even for written language, the best writers have usually done the most reading; they develop an intuition and gut feeling for grammar (even with rote memorization, intuition is usually the end goal).
While this is technically true, I think wording it this absolutely is a bit of an oversimplification and thus doesn't really reflect the linguistic consensus as such (though I'll admit up-front that while my degrees are in linguistics, neither first nor second language acquisition were my main focus in my studies). Input is definitely hugely important, and I don't want to downplay that importance at all, but even as children we don't learn exclusively through input, at least not strictly speaking. Studies have shown that while very young babies' language learning responds to even a surprisingly limited number of play sessions with a real human caregiver who speaks a different language, they don't respond in the same way to a television program in a different language. Engagement and interaction are hugely important to the language development -- and this includes others responding your output, not just passively absorbing input. Active participation in a language community is the way humans evolved to learn language, and while input is a massive part of that, it's not the only part. Perhaps this is something you also would classify as part of "input" as a concept, but I don't think it's necessarily an obvious part of what people think of when they hear "all you need is input," so I feel it's important to stress.
Moreover, even if input is sufficient for learning one's native language(s), it is not necessarily sufficient for every given non-native speaker to gain any given level proficiency in the language. The evidence for comprehensible input for learning a second language is very good from what I've seen, but that does not necessarily mean that it's preferable to use that method to the exclusion of all others. I certainly don't think there's evidence of a downside to pairing it with a more traditional language course where that's available. I also think the higher levels of proficiency (beyond just conversational fluency, stuff like C1 and C2 level under CEFR) are much, much harder to achieve through pure immersion without any formal language courses.
It's also very possible for comprehensible input to be sufficient on its own but not necessarily optimal, especially in terms of speed. There are a lot of factors to language learning, and metalinguistic knowledge (which for most people is gained through formal language learning courses) has been shown to improve one's language learning abilities. Anecdotally, German word order was a lot easier for me after taking a syntax class that used German V2 word order for a bunch of its movement examples, and I credit that with me being less frustrated and picking up on how to do it more quickly than if I were left to try and extrapolate the underlying rules exclusively from examples as part of comprehensible input -- even if that comprehensible input would eventually get me to the same place, the lower frustration factor alone was very valuable! Vocabulary is definitely more important than formal grammar study, especially as a beginner to a language, but that does not mean that a language course cannot also be a valuable way to improve one's ability to learn a language, especially if paired with comprehensible input.
I also think traditional language courses can be underrated as a source of comprehensible input (as well as more two-sided interactions in the language, ideally) and as a structure that enforces actually putting the time into language learning. Traditional immersion (i.e., living in a country that speaks a given language) often overrated in language learning communities because, while it will absolutely force you to learn the basics very quickly, it's very easy to reach a threshold where you've got the day-to-day basics down but struggle to have meaningful conversations with native speakers. This could be argued to be due to the natural environment no longer offering an easy source of novel-but-comprehensible input at the right level for easy learning, but regardless of the cause it can be a difficult and demotivating stage to be at. An important part of comprehensible input as a method is that you need to actually care about what the input is, and it can be difficult to find something that interests you at a level that's comprehensible when you're at this stage in my experience. Formal language learning courses can offer an environment that is focused on language learning, ensuring you actually dedicate time to improving your abilities rather than allowing yourself to stagnate, and a good teacher will include a lot of input and practice at the appropriate level as part of the course.
I agree on every account! The biggest caveat to the input hypothesis is that the input must be engaging and comprehensible.
My understanding of Japanese skyrocketed by doing Bunpro to expose myself to targeted grammar lessons with SRS for practice. Language classes can also be a great resource. My hesitation comes from the cost and quality of most courses I've seen. There are some great ones, but it's all too common to do 3-4 years of formal instruction to barely reach an intermediate level which is insanely slow and inefficient.
Personally, I think SRS tools like Anki are fantastic accelerators for learning, especially at the beginner and super advanced levels. The question though is whether a learner would be better served doing 30 minutes of flashcards or comprehensible input. I try to take a balanced approach and sneak in 5 minutes of flashcards when it'd be impractical to watch anime or listen to a podcast.
Also, as you mentioned, the output part is the mostly hotly debated hypothesis of Krashen's theory. His monitor hypothesis implies that a learner wouldn't learn much from repeating/mirroring phrases they don't understand yet, but I'm not sure that's true since other theories of learning and memory say synthesis and production develop stronger mental models. The counter argument I've read is that language is unique, and output naturally follows from sufficient input. I'm not sure whether that's true for adults that already have a mental model for a language.
On the note of need to be engaging, I think that’s actually a problem with a lot of language courses. At least with the ones I’ve tried, they weren’t all that engaging and the way they bent over backwards to try to twist the mental workings of the target language to fit English logic made for a frustrating, seemingly arbitrary slog of an experience.
But I suppose to some degree it depends on one’s goals. If natural (if limited) speech and ability to start consuming target language content on a reasonable timetable is the goal for example, textbooks/courses/etc probably aren’t going to get you there.
This has been my problem. I think they also try to rush output before most learners understand even the bare basics of the language which adds a lot of stress.
I think whether 3-4 years to reach intermediate level should be considered slow or inefficient very much depends on the target language! For second language learners, the target language really is a huge factor in how quickly you can expect progress to be made. Getting to intermediate level in Mandarin as an English speaker in 3-4 years is making good time in a way that getting to intermediate level German or French simply wouldn't be.
This also brings another important component to the forefront -- most language learners are also trying to become literate speakers, and I don't think there's evidence that comprehensible input is useful for learning to read and write a given language. Obviously this is a major component of learning a language like Mandarin, and it's one that may be more suited to formal instruction than other parts of the language learning process.
I agree that reading and writing are more conducive to formal instruction, but i think it still might be easier if done after achieving some level of basic reading/listening/speaking ability. It’s less to have to learn all at the same time, which makes it less overwhelming feeling, and it gives some knowledge to serve as a basis to build upon — the written component can kind of “snap on” to what one already knows.
Though I wonder if maybe it’s really just writing that falls under this. Anecdotally, I’m not having any trouble with starting to read the kind of Japanese one would find in a manga aimed at teenagers and I’ve had relatively little formal instruction that’s now so far in the past it’s likely been rendered moot. All my knowledge there has come from Anki decks and free grammar videos. Writing is another thing entirely and something I’m unavoidably going to have to dedicate structured time and practice to, but that’ll be easier when I’m not as concerned with trying to remember the characters and their meanings and can focus on things like stroke order.
Hanzi and kanji are unique challenges for language learning, but I think it's reasonable to expect a higher level of fluency from someone after 3-4 years of language study. It's extremely common for students to take years of English or Spanish classes and end up barely above a beginner level.
There's a lot of evidence that comprehensible input works for reading too. The ideas behind n+1 input apply just as well to reading as listening. The trouble is finding books that are actually at a level where extensive reading works. The sweet spot is about 98%, but that's a surprisingly high level: https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2016/08/25/what-80-comprehension-feels-like
The level that you would expect an English speaker to have after studying Spanish for 3-4 years is going to be very different from the level you expect an English speaker to have after studying Mandarin for 3-4 years. It's very well known (and pretty uncontroversial linguistically) that it's easier to learn languages that have more in common with one's native language. The US Foreign Service Institute categorizes languages by how long, on average, they take native English-speaking students to reach B2/C1 level, and these categories reflect this. They report an average of 24 weeks of intensive study to acquire category 1 languages like Spanish and French, and 88 weeks of intensive study to acquire category 4 languages like Mandarin and Korean. While the specific number of weeks cited is obviously dependent on the timelines for the pretty intense training at the FSI's School of Language Studies, the generally pattern is likely to be pretty reliable for English speakers learning languages on that list. As a result, it's pretty normal to expect very different levels from 3-4 years of a language course depending on the language -- and for an English speaker learning a category 4 language in a less intensive, non-full-time environment, being intermediate level after 3-4 years of study simply isn't bad at all.
There are definitely language courses that are insufficient in this regard even for languages that are easier for English speakers to learn -- I myself took an awful few years of high school Spanish that didn't teach me much -- but that varies a lot between courses. I also would caution you not to compare outcomes from contexts like my high school Spanish course, where students are being forced to take the course for a language they rarely expected to encounter in day-to-day life, with language learning enthusiasts choosing to learn a the language out of their own internal desire to do so. While there are language courses themselves that are flawed, that context isn't exactly setting students up to be highly motivated language learners, whereas any language learning hobbyist is bound to have a pretty high level of motivation by nature. Motivation is such a huge factor in language learning that I don't think it can be ignored when discussing comparisons like this.
There are a lot of learning methods out there, and many suit different people in different ways for different reasons. So it's important IMO to try them out. Some methods might really click with you when you have time to sit down and concentrate, but others might be easier to do while commuting or more enjoyable and therefore easier to rack up hours at. My point is to experiment and don't worry if people describe a "right way" that doesn't work for you.
Some of my favourite methods off the top of my head:
Intensive reading: read a book at your level and stop every time you don't understand a word to look it up.
Extensive reading: pick a book slightly above your level where you understand about 70-80%, read it and don't stop when you don't know a word. Let context try to fill in the gaps. You won't get them all but the ones you do will be tied to the story you were reading and easier to remember. (I tend to compromise by quickly noting the word to look up later but not stopping).
Journalling: keep a daily diary in your target language. Causes you to naturally look up and remember words that are relevant to your own life. Works at all skill levels that can string a sentence together. Low pressure. Gives a sense of progress.
The Nature Method: a type of lesson or book you can find online where you're only shown sentences in the target language along with the context to help you understand what is being said. Usually involves drawings or props.
Wanted to chime in and say I'm also learning (Norwegian) and I'm finding it really tough. I think I'm really getting bit in the ass from never really learning how to learn (throw back to that other Tildes thread) properly.
I want to succeed but the anxiety of actually doing work towards it is monumental. And I don't know why.
Right now I've been doing Duolingo, started Pimsleur and have been trying to read stuff online. But it's hard going.
I do feel like I made progress in a year. I can understand parts of conversation and I am frothing at the mouth to actually be able to participate properly, yet I struggle to find the energy to go 100 percent and totally invest.
I should dedicate a full weekend or something to just studying different material in different ways or something. See what sticks, that could be a good idea. Because "I'll do it tomorrow" isn't working.
I see app recommendations; just wanted to mention the ad-free alternative to Duolingo, called Mango – free with a local library card!
I started learning Spanish with Duolingo at the beginning of last year. I know Duolingo may not be the most efficient method of learning, but it’s helped a lot for me. And while it may seem very basic, the lessons do get a lot more advanced as you continue.
My job involves talking to many Spanish speakers, and while we have someone who speaks Spanish, it’s nice not having to make her deal with everyone.
Every now and again we’ll have a different situation where I’m forced to explain something in Spanish that pushes my knowledge boundary, and that has helped a lot in my growth.
On top of Duolingo, I’ve tried consuming more content in Spanish, though I’m definitely spending enough time doing this. I want to find more resources that will help with grammar and pronunciation because Duolingo doesn’t go in-depth on grammar; it expects you to just pick it up, which isn’t super helpful when I already have a grammar system that doesn’t properly translate. It also has speaking lessons, but its tolerance for mispronunciation is too high (I presume to allow for different accents).
I’m definitely not learning as fast as I would like, but I am getting there slow and steady.
I was studying Korean for a while, and I did:
I only stuck with it for about 6 months because I stopped having the time / it was more of a hobby than a need, but I felt like I was doing pretty well with the resources I had. One issue with Rosetta Stone is that its refusal to translate anything sometimes makes you confused what the pictures are supposed to be picturing (esp with adjectives like near/far) so it's a good idea to also get a translation of the words which is fortunately now very easy to do with AI (even without copying the text, you can just screenshot and ask for a translation)
For Spanish practice (which I started learning in school and used to be relatively fluent in), I watch mediocre netflix shows in dubbed over in Spanish and try not to look at the subtitles much.
I am currently in France, and trying to immigrate here permanently. Before I left, I completed about a month of Pimsleur. It worked decently well to not be steadied of the language when I got here.
Then, while I am here, I just do cultural immersion. I think that is by far the best way to acquire language. After all, every single person has already successfully used this method for their native language.
I found this fantastic YouTube lecture recently. It’s in mono left audio, which isn’t fun with headphones, but the speaker makes a very compelling point. I purchased a French copy of a book that I know very well (Eragon) and I am slowly stumbling through it.
I think the most important thing you can do is just find a language that is fun or interesting to you. Learning Greek due to familial history is great! But, don't be afraid to drop it after a little bit if you understand that it isn't for you.
The second most important thing is to set yourself a goal. Some people are content with just being able to read, some to write, some to listen, some to speak, and some do a mix of them or all of them. There is always the question whose answer will vary depending on who you ask, and that is "What does it mean to be fluent?"
Some backstory from me, in the past I have attempted at one point or another Spanish (high school), Japanese (high school), and Italian (self-study). I enjoyed Japanese the most but I was the only person taking it in my high school at the time, and it was 100% remote so I didn't opt to pursue a second year. It wasn't until I tried Ukrainian almost three years ago that I found something that I really enjoyed. For me, the more different a language was to English, the more interested and enjoyable I found it.
So for tips and the "best way" on the journey... I did Duolingo with it for about ~2-3 months and Pimsleur as well. In the case of Ukrainian, learning the alphabet was very easy with Duolingo, but once I understood some basic grammar rules with Ukrainian, I could cheese my way through lessons very easily. After a few months, I started lessons on Preply and still meet with my tutor from back then to this day. I still take lessons with her today and consider her a friend. Our lessons aren't as productive as they were when I first started out, but I enjoy our conversations and it gives me an extra outlet for speaking.
Now, I primarily do LingQ, Anki, my Preply lessons, and some podcast series. I have read textbooks, found websites with exercises and online resources, and even built a nice little custom GPT with all my materials I purchased over the years to give me little lessons and exercises. I'm also watching Dragon Ball in Ukrainian, and will try to watch more complicated material. The thing is, you should use material you like to use and don't be afraid to drop something if it isn't jiving with you. I tried doing LingQ way too early and I ended up dropping it for about six months because I wasn't ready for it. It wasn't until I had a good foundation of vocab that I could get something out of it.
Finally, I will leave you with a couple of last bits of advice:
There are very few real polyglots in the world but a lot of fake polyglots on Youtube. They memorize some scripted conversations and put themselves in situations where those conversations work, and then post videos online showing off that they learned such and such language in a few weeks/months and now they are fluent.
Don't compare yourself with others. Someone got to a B2 level in Spanish in 9 months? Cool. Maybe they are super smart, or are already fluent in an adjacent language, or they have the time to spend hours drilling Anki cards. Doesn't mean that if you don't reach B2 in 9 months that you are a failure. I liken my language learning to carving a statue out of marble. I do a little bit every day and I get a that much more knowledge and familiarity from my studying. I have a nice routine and I stick to my LingQ goal every day, but don't beat myself up if I skip a day or I can't do flash cards, or watch something in Ukrainian. As long as you are having fun, and not feeling like what you are doing is a burden in your life, you will enjoy the journey and be amazed at your progress as you stick with it. Give yourself some grace, be patient, and understand that it is a marathon and not a sprint.
I started learning Bulgarian with LingQ and have the same problem, but since I speak Polish, there is a bridge already there for vocab and some grammar and since I learned Cyrillic on my own, reading was easier.
Still, I think LingQ has that months-long “learning curve“ since you’re sort of brute forcing the language at first. I think the speed they advertise comes later when you actually learn how to learn languages.
I used a combination of Duolingo and Language Transfer (a collection of free audio lessons) for learning Spanish in preparation for travelling around Latin America a few years ago. I never got to the point of fluency but my Latino friends were pleasantly surprised at how well I managed to cope speaking to others (who very often had no English, forcing me to immerse).
Language Transfer was quite useful for helping me pick up the way the language works while Duolingo helped to expand my vocabulary and written form. The LT structure is by listening to the instructor teach a beginner how to speak in the target language and the lessons were bite-size so you could dedicate a couple of minutes each day to it. Greek does appear to be offered by it, but I can only speak to the quality of the Spanish lessons.
I was just playing this with friends, and it occured to me: What if we played in a target language? The game has options to show bombs in another language, and each language has its own separate bomb manual.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/341800/Keep_Talking_and_Nobody_Explodes/
I've done this before and it's pretty fun! They have a lot of language options, and I did it with the manual in Esperanto once (though the one defusing the bomb was not an Esperanto speaker, so it was more of a reading comprehension test for me). The official translations (26 different languages!) even have updated wordlists for modules that rely on language games (like that one module that tries to confuse you with homophones) so that they're just as challenging in each language. There are also even more language options with fan translations of the manual that work with the English version of the game.
We play that game at work as communication training!
That would make for some interesting interviewing experiences.
It doesn't really come up in the interview. I train live-in, on-call residence hall staff, and crisis response and emphasizing the importance of communication, especially calling for answers on the duty phone mid-crisis, is key!
It's a nice break from PowerPoints
Talk to people who use the language. You will learn how they use it. This doesn't mean you need to go to another country. You'll probably be uncomfortable and they'll probably just switch to English. There are apps you can use to find language exchange partners. They're also much less frustrating than going abroad because you can just yse Google Translate to figure out a phrase whenever you want. I learned French from Google Translate and messaging French people.
Even better than Google Translate is using an LLM. They will not only translate, but also correct your writing, tell you why, and tailor to suit the exact tone and formality you want.
I've been using Pimsleur to learn Japanese. I like it a lot. I completed 3 months already. You can either pay for a subscription each month or buy a full course outright.
I like that it's mainly an audio course. I do it in the morning when I'm alone. Before going to bed, I revise the flash cards visually in the app.
50% Lifetime All Access Subscription
If you're interested in learning multiple languages, they are running a 50% sale right now to unlock all languages permanently, use promo code:
ACCESS50: https://store.pimsleur.com/checkout?pid=9781668141700_694.No idea how long the code will work for. It includes all 51 of their languages along with future updates for languages that they revise or add.
Just for folks' info that's still 798 dollars
I got it for $643 CAD. I think it's around $400 USD for Americans. I think it's worth it if you're planning on being at it for a while, or redo some lessons many times. I'm sharing my account with my family. Everyone can have their own profile to keep track of their progress.
It was $798 American when I clicked your link. I'm not saying it's not worth it, I'm just sharing the cost. (It maybe showing the full price, but i'm not giving them my info to go further so eh)
Ah, that's why I put the code. You're sharing the price without the code to lower it by 50%. If you don't input it, it will show the full price. You don't need to give them any info to input the code.
The screen requires an email and password to progress and shows the price I gave. Hence me sharing it. $400 or $399 is still substantial and worth giving specifics on. However good the deal, it remains firmly out of both my personal price range and any gifts I might request, for example. Which again, is fine.