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What's the best way to (start) learning a language? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by vladmech@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] ambitiousslab@feddit.uk 4 points 23 hours ago

I used Language Transfer and Michel Thomas' courses when starting to learn Italian and found them really helpful in getting a foothold into the language.

The Michel Thomas course was longer and went in more depth, but I preferred the vibe of language transfer. The Michel Thomas course seemed to be aimed at people looking to cheat on their wife on a business trip, because a lot of the conversation was about inviting women to get a drink :( Despite that, it was still useful.

Unlike the language apps, these courses did a good job of getting me to think in real-time. Despite only being able to express and understand basic things, they gave me confidence to try and say things. Even without much vocab, I was able to express myself in a simple way: "I like that red thing over there", and I was able to pick up new words with "what does this part mean?" or "can you repeat?" etc. So far, it's the best method I've found to bootstrap enough of the language to start talking and picking up the rest by osmosis.