I’ve been learning Spanish using a method called “Comprehensible Input” in which basically you just… watch and listen to things in Spanish. That’s it. No translation. No grammar study, no vocab memorisation. I’ve been at it about 9 months, and almost 800 hours of listening/watching time. (Which is about half of what supposedly will get you to conversational fluency, at least for romance languages. Less related to English languages can take longer)
It works. I can understand day to day conversation easily. I’m watching Breaking Bad with a Spanish dub. I can read YA novels (and listen to audiobooks). I miss some words and phrases here and there of course, but I still get the meaning from context most time and that helps me learn.
My speaking lags significantly behind my comprehension skills of course, as I’ve only practiced that a small fraction of the time. But it’s grown leaps and bounds. I can speak 10x better than I could a month ago. Supposedly it doesn’t take nearly as long to develop that skill once you start racking up listening/reading hours and that’s been my experience.
The beginning is a slog though since you have to watch things you can understand… Which basically amounts to videos of people talking at you like a baby with drawings and hand gestures so obvious that you can understand what they’re saying even if you muted the audio, but once you get to the point that you can understand actually interesting content it becomes SUPER easy. You just replace all the time you spend watching and listening and reading things with… Watching and listening and reading things in the language you want to learn. Once you reach that point it doesn’t take effort. Learning Spanish has changed from something I’m trying to do to an inevitability. It’s honestly like magic. If I’ve gotten this far in less than a year I can’t imagine where I’ll be in two.
If you’re interested in the method check this playlist and this guy can explain in detail (turn on English subtitles if you don’t understand Spanish): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf
I’m not trying to advertise for the site he runs, you can totally apply the method through free resources (and he has hundreds of free videos for this too). But it is an incredible resource that’s super cheap and can get you past the beginning stages. I’ve moved past their content at this point but it was invaluable in the beginning.
And then, as I’ve heard reported in several European countries, when they notice your broken grammar they switch to English for both of your conveniences. Caught myself doing that to some poor student a while back because I was in a hurry and couldn’t parse what they were trying to say.
And then there’s the other language students, who studied very very well and now sounds like the voice of a kids’ TV show with their perfect “standard” pronunciation. I love seeing immigrants who were so dedicated to their language skills that they end up speaking the local language way better than any local you’ll meet. Sometimes it’s difficult too, because random words won’t have been part of their vocabulary training and they end up talking in-depth about the geopolitical landscape but don’t know what “backyard” means.
Learning languages is cool, if only I had the patience to do it.
This hits far to close to home …
저는 아기아 먹시니다
The thing that got me when finally speaking to natives was how fast natural speaking is. You think you can understand things fine but that’s because the teachers and apps are speaking clearly and slowly and waiting for you to parse each sentence. Natural conversation isn’t like that.
this made me realize how different learning is via lessons and immersion, i never had that experience when learning english since i did it by watching english media, it was just that one day it stopped being gibberish and started being language.
one day it stopped being gibberish and started being language.
I think that day is awesome for any language learner. When you realize you actually understand what someone is saying instead of trying to translate in your head. 🤌
I’m sorry for foreigners, I never learned how to properly pronounciate my owl language. It’s OK not to understand me, other natives struggle too XD
my owl language.
Is ‘my owl language’ the language you’re learning using Duolingo? Or is it a typo and you meant ‘my own language’? It’s interesting because normally I’d assume the latter, but in the context of this thread, the former makes some weird sense.
Maybe we just met a second speaker of the infamous bird/dolphin language
Obviously they were raised by owls and speak an owl language.
Oooh!
hooo*
Whom
Who?
Accents as well. You can have the rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain as much as you want, but it’s not going to help any foreign visitors to Newcastle or Liverpool.
Slang as well. Apparently my grandma was hood af so when I tried to use what little German I knew my teacher was like that’s some informal shit.
And local colloquialisms as well. I can tell you the secret to a Boston accent is to replace the r after a vowel with an h, and that’ll help you pahk the cah at Hahvahd yahd, but won’t do a damn thing when somebody tells you the food at a restaurant is wicked pissah, but warns you that it’s rainin’ feckin’ hahd out deyah so yeh better off takin’ the T to Southie.
I dont think i had this problem, but then again i had been learning a few years by watching movies and listening to songs before i met some actual English speakers. The benefit of a two way conversation is you can always ask them to repeat.
Everyone I talk to says watch TV shows in the language, you get better at hearing and understanding more fluently, for my dad English was his second language and he gave me a lot of tips about getting fluent with a language. One learn all the swear words, avoid accidently saying them, and know when people are attacking you, let go of translating, gato isn’t cat, gato is gato. Don’t translate, that’s a skill in and of itself that’s very challenging to aquire. His brothers made fun of him for making faces on sounds, particularly sounds not found in his native language, don’t avoid that, sink IN to sounds outside your language roll those rr’s until you sound like your purring, hit those gutteral sounds hard, and soften those native sounds that don’t belong. LET GO of feeling embarrassed, be a goof, say things you don’t understand, make people laugh, you can’t be precious about it. Dork it up! My dad still had an accent, but he was one of two out of his four siblings that had complete fluency.
I can’t even manage that in my native language.
I was in China once, trying to take a 3hr bus to Zhouzhuang. Instead I bought a ticket for an 8hr bus to Jiaozhuan. Lesson was always write down where you are going.
As someone currently living in China, fucking lol! Would absolutely make the same mistake.
yo necesito memes por favor
