Ask HN: How long it took you to master a foreign language and how do you do it? - arjitkp
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monroepe
I became fluent in Russian after 2-3 months of living in Moldova. I had a
crash course in Russian beforehand, but couldn't say a whole lot more than
basic phrases before I got to Moldova and couldn't understand much either.
Obviously you need to study (grab a good grammar book). But I ended up
studying less than an hour a day when I was there. What I did do was speak
Russian as much as possible. You have to force yourself to use the language.
What set me apart from the people I was working with (in terms of using the
language) was that I was not afraid to fail. I just continued on and tried my
best. I gave myself no chance to fail. If you aren't living in country that
speaks the desired foreign language it is a lot harder. I took French in
school for over 10 years and another two years in university and I still can't
speak it. My grammar is very good in French and I can read it fairly well, but
can't speak much.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
Immersion is key. My English got much better after I moved to the UK.

About Moldova, what's the ratio of Russian vs Romanian? Did you actually speak
Romanian before? I was thinking that if Romanian is widely spoken in Moldova
and you knew the language, it might have been more difficult to immerse
yourself into Russian as you'd have an "easy way out".

~~~
monroepe
In Chisinau (the capital), where I spent roughly a year, I would say that you
hear Russian even a little more than Romanian (although there are definitely
more Romanian speakers and people really like it when you try to speak
Romanian). I would say the actual ratio in Chisinau is 65/35 in favor of
Romanian speakers, but you tend to hear Russian a little more because the
Romanian speakers learn Russian, but the Russian speakers don't learn Romanian
nearly as often. The other city I lived in, Balti, has a much larger
percentage of Russian speakers.

I didn't know Romanian beforehand though, so going with Russian was easy
enough. I did work with some other Americans who learned Romanian and didn't
have the easiest time in Moldova just speaking Romanian. They would often run
into people who only spoke Russian and they had no way to communicate. As a
Russian speaker in my two years this happened very rarely to me and then it
was usually only people from villages and young kids (even then they were
familiar with Russian and I picked up enough Romanian to communicate).

It's a very interesting dynamic in the country between the two languages. It's
not as controversial a topic as some people would have you believe. People
definitely like hearing Romanian more (for the Romanian speakers), but they
are ok with Russian too. I got yelled at one time by a drunk guy on the bus
for speaking Russian, but literally everyone else on the bus defended me and
the guy I was talking too. They all knew we were Americans based on accent
haha. Overall though, it's not that hard to immerse yourself in Russian in
Moldova in the bigger cities, but if you already knew Romanian you would have
to be disciplined because it is still widely spoken.

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kspaans
Started "French Immersion" in BC in kindergarten, then in Grade 4 moved to an
entirely French school in Ontario for two years. After that, more immersion.
Missed two years of French classes in highschool, so was catching up when I
started university. A "minor" in French (I think I was one course away from
getting it) fixed that nicely. I consider myself fluent, but I don't get
enough practice to be able to use it professionally.

Over the last two years I've been immersed in Tagalog, with the help of one
introductory book (basic vocab and grammar). Tagalog is easier than French so
far because people speak mixed English and Tagalog (Taglish) all the time. I
can follow conversations 50% of the time due to context and the odd English
word. That's letting me learn organically without really trying. Next step is
I need to spend a few minutes per day going over phrases from the
[http://tatoeba.org/](http://tatoeba.org/) database.

EDIT: I use French because "Canada", and I use Tagalog because of family.

------
kelukelugames
I've been working at it for 20+ years. I did it by moving to the US at 9 years
old.

