[dkaleta]

I learned Spanish, too, in about 12 months to dogfood my new app for learning vocabulary (which I just recently launched) [0]

Even though I made an app that helped me along the way to learn words, I don't believe in a single app/book/approach for learning a language. You need to expose yourself to A LOT of different language materials.

I was learning for about 2h a day, 6 times a week. I would read articles, books, websites in Spanish. I would watch YouTube videos [1]. I would read news, initially for beginners [2] and later regular [3]. And most importantly, I would have 4-5h a week itakly conversations.

After 6 months I understood quite a lot, but couldn't speak almost at all. Then magic happens and 6 months later, I was having a normal conversation (though still with some errors) about any range of topics: politics, global warming, travel, engineering etc.

I believe the key for me was to read a lot of books which were interesting to me. For example I read Bill Gate's book "How To Avoid A Climate Disaster" in Spanish, as well as about ~8 others in the first 12 months.

[0] https://www.obstino.com

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish

[2] www.newsinslowspanish.com

[3] https://elpais.com

[netfortius]

B1 in 5 months, as follows:

- radio FranceInfo [almost] all the time (when no other structure learning happening)

- TV5 https://apprendre.tv5monde.com

- french movies streaming, with french subtitles (!)

- online magazines: Le Parisian, Libération, Le Figaro, etc.

- book : "Grammaire progressive du français - Niveau intermédiaire (A2/B1) - Livre + CD + Appli-web - 4ème édition"

- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leconjugue...

- https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-monolingue

- https://www.reverso.net/orthographe/correcteur-francais/

Last two in browser with strong ad blocking, to avoid distraction.

[jgwil2]

> with french subtitles (!)

This is crucial. Watching movies in a foreign language can be difficult because of how fast the dialog is, but if you use subtitles in your language, you will always be thinking in your language first, then translating to the target language. Put subtitles on in the target language so that you can catch words that you wouldn't catch from the audio only, but you are still immersing yourself completely in that language.

[dsiegel2275]

Thank you for sharing this list of resources. I have been studying French since September of 2020 (but only got serious about it in May of 2021). There are some resources here that I was not aware of.

[diskzero]

I used the same method, in addition to going through all of the Rosetta Stone French lessons and the Defense Language Institute material (thanks to the Army.) I also went to a weekly French language Meetup where only French was spoken and any Alliance Française events in the area. It took me eight months, so you were faster than me.

[usr1106]

Without https://leconjugueur.lefigaro.fr/ I could not survive. Mostly for writing, but if there e.g. is a weird passé simple or subjonctif also for reading sometimes.

[alexpotato]

I grew up bilingual (English first language, Italian from my mother) and the "read a book you liked in your first language but translated into your desired language" is an excellent way to get exposure.

For several reasons:

- You liked the book originally so you won't mind reading it again

- You know the story so if you get to a part where you don't understand the language, you can infer the meaning based on the your knowledge of the story

- Because it was translated, it's good to see how a phrase you know well in your primary language was converted into the new language. This is particularly helpful for your own "on the fly" translation when you are speaking.

In my particular case, I knew "family" level Italian very well (e.g. how you would speak to your parents, siblings at home etc). What I didn't know was more formal and inter-adult language grammar. Reading books by one of my favorite English authors translated into Italian was a real game changer.

[aidenn0]

When I did an exchange in Germany, I picked up Der Kleine Hobbit for that reason. My first week it was mentally exhausting just reading a page or two, but things picked up quickly from there.

[jamiek88]

Never thought of this but makes a great deal of sense.

Same with movies. Watch your fav movies in French lang. for example. You’ll know what yippekayeh mother fudger is!

[athenot]

> [2] www.newsinslowspanish.com

Oh wow I've been after something like this for a long time. It's awesome because it's relevant content (news) but at a pace that beginners can follow. I don't know Spanish but knowing French, I could follow along the super slow mode and not feel lost.

Going to look for this in German and Chinese, I wonder if there's something similar.

[halfdan]

Here you go for German: https://m.dw.com/en/slowly-spoken-news-reports-learning-germ...

[DonaldFisk]

You can slow down Youtube videos without it distorting the audio. I've found it more helpful to use subtitles in the target language, though.

[patrickdavey]

Anyone know of this for Dutch?

[aeyes]

Let me add another resource to your list that helped me tremendously: https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/

They have free podcasts available on iTunes for a lot of languages, the Spanish content is absolutely amazing.

[LAC-Tech]

That's a pretty cool language learning app concept - you haven't overcooked it. A lot of apps want to make themselves the star of the show - if that makes sense - but really it's a vessel to learn vocabulary, and it looks like yours lets a user add arbitrary vocab, which means it will be relevant.

Any plans to add new languages?

[Izikiel43]

The problem with Spanish is what country’s Spanish you learn. Words can mean different things in different countries, and also pronunciation changes.

[robocat]

If you are a native English speaker, the #1 trick is to learn the vowel sounds exactly correctly.

Vowel sounds in words extremely variable in English, but are very rigid in Spanish, even in different countries. In Spanish consonants may change their sound in some countries, but the differences are fixed, and it is easily learnable. Get your pronunciation corrected as soon as you begin learning, otherwise you teach yourself bad habits that are hard to break.

English speakers tend to really screw up the vowel sounds in Spanish, which makes words unintelligible to Spanish speakers. The one-to-one correspondence between written vowels and spoken vowel sounds actually makes Spanish quite easy to pick up.

One other trick is to speak English words using Spanish vowel sounds, because Spanish speakers with a little English will often hear the word if you do that. It also helps if you can hear English words spoken with Spanish vowel sounds by Spanish speakers.

If you are in a hick area then the Spanish language can change in other ways which can be difficult to understand (for example eating S’s, ma o meno).

The rumour is that the grammar is hard to learn, but if you only need conversational Spanish then there is one future and one past tense that is easy for English speakers to learn to speak: Voy a = I am going to, He = I have.

[bayesian_horse]

That's the least problem I'd say. Spanish is pretty conserved, especially the written language.

Listening comprehension is always the last of the skills to kick in, because it is all-or-nothing. You only understand every word in the sentence or your brain gets overloaded. While reading foreign texts you can easily skip a word you can't understand and still figure out what the rest means. Or at least, more often so, because you don't have to keep everything in short term memory.

[barbecue_sauce]

Like for instance, in the US there was once a large tex-mex restaurant chain called Chichi's (long since bankrupt). When I told my friend from Spain this, she was horrified.

[renewiltord]

Oh. Thank you for being up front about the time commitment. That helps. I, too, would like quick results but I don’t feel like I can give it the go that you did so I think I will not do this.

[fowkswe]

Do you mind sharing your age? Curious if youth played a part here - I'm in my 40s and wondering if I'll have as much success?

[wbsss4412]

I’m in my early thirties and similarly learned French from 0 to a conversational level in a bit over a year. (Though I was already pretty strong in Spanish so that helped significantly)

The age thing is mostly a myth imo. If you put in the time and effort you’ll get a lot back.

The biggest issue is the concept of fluency. A lot of people believe they have to be 100% perfect or they don’t “know” the language. In reality, from the moment you start you will continually become more and more comfortable in an asymptotic manner (no one knows 100% of a language, ie what percentage words in the dictionary do you know).

The biggest piece of advice - get comfortable in dealing with ambiguity, and don’t try to force constructs from your primary language onto the one you are learning. Meaning: don’t say X word means Y word in my native language, therefore I can use it exactly the same (it’s a different word, VERY likely with different connotations).

[laurieg]

Older second language learners have a harder time, but I don't think it's because of some kind of "weakening of the brain" with age. I think the real reasons are:

* Older people can't remember the difficulty of learning their first language. They've been using it comfortably for years.

* Older people have bigger vocabularies so the gap between their first and second language is even larger.

* The discomfort of learning new things is less familiar for older peoples

[300bps]

I am almost out of my 40s. In the past year, I've gotten three AWS certifications and learned new hobbies from scratch (ex: electronics component-level repair).

I haven't seen evidence that my ability to learn things has slowed down yet. I think a lot of "age-related" problems are more related to lifestyle until about 60.

When you're 20, you can eat sugar, fat and salt all day long while sitting on a couch and get along pretty well. When you're 40, you'll get fat and your body will atrophy.

There's a solution though: eat healthful foods, exercise, manage stress, pursue important goals, be active socially.

[adastra22]

I’m in my late 30’s and learning Chinese and Japanese simultaneously. The age thing is almost entirely a myth. There are three factors in which age matters:

1. Older people get set in their ways, and learning a language requires rethinking how you think. This limitation is purely psychological and not biological and you can avoid it merely by giving it an honest attempt. Learning a foreign language can be a great way to to keep your mind fresh.

2. TIME. Learning a language requires thousands of hours of commitment. Young people have time to commit to it. Older people with work and careers do not, and so often don’t make as much progress. But if you chart progress vs. hours studied, age disappears as a factor. (There are studies of this, but I’m on mobile right now and can’t pull them up.)

3. Truly young people (under the age of 12) still have the ability to hear sounds not used in their mother tongue. This is why transplanted kids can speak fluently and pass as natives, but adults and even teens develop heavy accents. Older people still have enough neural flexibility to retrain their ear, but it takes much more time and conscious effort. This is the only truly biological age-related factor, and countering it just requires a bit more time and conscious attention.

If you are learning a languages as a busy adult, the key is to find ways to immerse yourself in the language, even if it is just passively listening to things on a loop while you do your day job, listening to audiobooks during your commute, and always having a study book or flash cards at hand everywhere you go. You need to study not 10 minutes a day, but 5-10 hours a day—but if you’re smart, that time will double dip for other things and you can get away with just 1 hour a day of real committed study, and the rest is various forms of background practice throughout the day.

[dkaleta]

I’m 34. I don’t think age matters that much. What matters the most is not even the method you use but the time spent with the language.

[spaetzleesser]

“I was learning for about 2h a day, 6 times a week. I would read articles, books, websites in Spanish”

If you put in that much time you will learn no matter your age. Same for children. They are supposed to be better at language learning but in the end they spend a lot of time that adults often don’t have or don’t want to invest.

[amelius]

What is your age? (If you don't mind me asking)

[SneakyTornado29]

Does [0] support latex?