I traveled to Japan for a few weeks last year and had grand plans to learn a bunch of phrases, but got lazy and punked out. I still had a great time, everyone was super kind, but it was embarrassing how well so many folks spoke English and I couldn’t even be assed to put in a bit of work.
My wife is half Mexican and we’re in California, and she gets a lot of people initially talking to her in Spanish, which she can’t speak beyond an ordering food level, and would like to change that.
What’s the best way for us both to get to a beginning conversational level in Spanish? I tried Duolingo a while ago and it was eh, and I’ve heard it’s all AI these days. Any other recommendations?
I learned Japanese in a year in a really really really intense study program I made for myself but you can chill on it and be able to be conversational on it p quickly. Same for spanish which i also speak. (Tried to learn it on duolingo for 5 years but gave up with little progress and did it this way, like with Japanese.
Apps and textbooks have trouble teaching you languages that are spoken in REAL life. To learn a language you just need comprehensible input. I also used flashcards to study words with Anki.
The strategy I had was: Step 0: have good motivation to learn it(have friends/family/partners who speak the target language) Step 1: Learn the alphabet of the target language Step 2: Begin Study of the top 2000 most common words Step 3: Learn simply phrases preferably with those words that I would use. Step 4: begin speaking as soon as possible. I started speaking to people when I only had like 600 words under my belt. Step 5: Listen and Read childrens media related to the language(this part suuuuuuuucks) Step 6: As you are nearing the end of top 2000 words you’ll encounter new words you might be curious about or you might want to use. Add these to your study deck. Step 7: Study simple common grammar rules. BUT DONT OVER DO THIS. (If you know 100 grammar rules but 10 words you cant say much, but if you speak 100 words and know 10 grammar rules you can communicate quite a bit. Think of it like grammar is a multiplier and words are the base number) Step 8: Speak, listen, read, and (if you like) write in the language as much as possible. Replace your TV with target language TV. Music with target language music. Try to focus on listening sometimes and other times just chill with it.
You have to be ok with embarrassing yourself. You’re like a baby learning, just keep going. Eventually youll find you can string entire thoughts and jokes together. Repetition is super important, input and use stuff over and over and it becomes second nature and you understand or speak it without thinking, much like your native language.
Around 10,000 words is what is known and spoken for most young adults. Focus on stuff your interested in or stuff you think youll need to talk about. If anki sucks to do and you cant keep it up just focus more on input with the language through other sources like media or books.
Depending on the difficulty of the target language you can get conversational p fast. Remember, babies are stupid and take like 18 years to get to 10,000 words. But we’re smart adults and can structure our study towards our goals.