Ask HN: How did you learn another spoken language? - ramoz
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yorwba
The simplest way is to sign up for in-person lessons, do your homework and
keep attending until you are fluent.

In addition or even as an alternative, there are a few things you can study on
your own:

1\. Phonology. Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet and use it to
understand how the pronunciation of your target language differs from your
mother tongue. I like using Wikipedia's help pages of the form
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Any_Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Any_Language)
for that.

2\. Vocabulary. In the beginning, it's probably most efficient to learn new
words ordered by decreasing frequency. Once you can read simple texts with the
help of a dictionary, learn words you had to look up repeatedly.

3\. Practice. Use a spaced repetition program like Anki (
[https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) ) and make your own
flashcards. Pre-made decks are unlikely to take you in exactly the direction
you want to go.

3\. Listening. Even before you're able to understand anything, you can get a
feeling for the language by watching subtitled shows. (
[https://www.viki.com/](https://www.viki.com/) has a decent selection in East
Asian languages.) Later you can turn off subtitles (or switch them to the
target language) to avoid overly relying on them.

4\. Reading. Find something you can enjoy and read a little of it every day.
In the beginning, that might just be a single sentence; you'll naturally end
up reading more as your skill improves.

5\. Speaking. This is the hardest to do on your own, and you definitely need a
solid base vocabulary before you can have an intelligent conversation. To
speed up the process, you can try finding a partner who'll be willing to
listen to you babbling as long as you do the same for them. You need to make
sure not to fall back to your mother tongue too easily, though.

6\. Form a habit. If you have some fixed amount of time dedicated to learning
every day, you're not as likely to procrastinate on it.

------
baud147258
I'm an ESL. I started learning English at school, then I started reading
English novels (I remember reading the last Harry Potter book a few months
before it was translated). And then a lot of time spent on the English-
speaking parts of Internet.

