
Ask HN: To those who became fluent in a second language, what did you do? - snowdragon
I&#x27;m overwhelmed by all the options out there. Duolingo, pimsluer, classes, books, etc. What did you do to become fluent in another language? How long did it take you?
======
alphydan
There is no substitute for living in the country and avoiding your native
speakers like the plague. Immerse yourself completely (take a few language
courses, move in with locals, make an effort to avoid English speakers at all
costs). Give yourself little challenges: Groceries, info about the train,
museum, read a leaflet, book an activity, ask questions at a restaurant (even
if you don't quite get the answer)...

People will want to practice their English with you. Be stubborn. Reply in the
foreign language and let them talk in English.

For the first 2 months you will feel incredibly tired at the end of each day.
Your brain will fight to stay afloat but that stress will make it learn so
much faster. Around the 3rd month something clicks and you start to talk more
and more. After that, the progress becomes almost automatic. Try to study
something, or work or be part of some local group.

One key element is to avoid perfection. Understand that you will never speak
perfect grammar for years (just like kids make silly mistakes, you will too).
Embrace it, have fun, make mistakes ... enjoy the trial and error discovery
and the challenge of communicating ideas with rudimentary tools. Be patient.
You will get frustrated because your brain has complex and nuanced ideas but
your language is as basic as "me not good" or "me good". You will learn that
body language and tone already communicate more than you can tell with your
basic language.

After a year you'll be pretty fluent (You'll be able to hold a conversation
with anybody, on any topic, but still peppered with clarifications and
questions). Mastering a new language would still take many years (with lots of
reading, writing, talking, etc).

(source: I speak French and Spanish as native languages, English as third
language and German as 4th which I learnt as an adult living in Germany for a
year)

~~~
spoiler
Another, slightly unconventional way (which is how I learned English as a
native Croatian speaker), is to find an online community about something you
really enjoy.

For me it was the combination of Harry Potter and online roleplaying[1]. I
know that English isn't quite the same as other languages as it's quite
widespread, but I believe it's possible to do the same for other languages.

I also improved my Spanish a little through a website called lang-8.com, but I
am not sure how active its community is these days; when I joined it was new
and the community was relatively small. I stopped using it since I lacked the
time and motivation to pursue Spanish more vigorously.

[1]: As a side-note, I met my best friend this way; I was 13, she was 11 when
we met. She'd would always go out of her way to help me with my English and
would help me prepare for a roleplay and also analyse it afterwards, pointing
out all the mistakes and potential improvements, taught me colloquialisms,
etc. Although, everyone would help from time to time, too. So, meeting the
right people/community also matters.

~~~
ivanyv
This is how I learned english. I fell in love with computers at an early age
and everything from programs to documentation and the few communities were all
in english. So I _had_ to learn. I winged it at the time, just used a
dictionary, some books, and whatever other resource that I found or fell on my
lap.

I used to tell everyone who cared to listen that learning english would open
up your world like you can't imagine (as it did for me). How many people even
tried? 0. The common denominator is _having_ to learn, and the only two ways
that I've seen really work, is moving to another country OR having a __strong
__interest about something and using a language to learn more about it (and
you 'll learn two things at once!).

------
cgag
I think the guy from fluentforever has the general pattern down correctly:

1) learn phonetics and pronunciation

2) learn a base of of the most common words (he has a list of 625 words, I
think wikipedias "simple english" word requirements would be another good
source). Do this with anki.

3) start studying grammar

4) move onto native materials (while continuing with anki)

I also think that most people massively underrate vocabulary study. With
consistency, at only 15 words a day you could deeply learn ~5400 words a year
with anki. I think it would be pretty easy to do more if you were dedicated,
but 15 is pretty sustainable. The rate you tend to be taught vocabulary in
college level courses is crazy low.

[0]: [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/07/16/how-to-learn-any-
lang...](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/07/16/how-to-learn-any-language-in-
record-time-and-never-forget-it/) I swear this guy isn't the type of charlatan
you'd expect to be associated with Ferris.

I hope this doesn't feel too spammy but I'd love if people had any feedback on
the basic idea behind the tool I posted here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12717657](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12717657)

~~~
ced
Totally agree on vocabulary, it's by far the most important part. You can
mostly understand and be understood without grammar.

I pick comic books in the target language, that I've already read in my native
language, and start making word lists. Comic books are cool because obviously
the pictures help, and the story will follow a theme, so the same words will
come back over and over again. And they're not so long as to feel like you'll
never make it through. Motivation is the #1 predictor of successful learning,
and the apps have never appealed to me as much as reading a good story.

I'll suggest that schools teach grammar mostly because it makes for a much
more "academic" lesson than teaching vocabulary. You don't need school to
learn vocabulary.

~~~
wingerlang
I have been planning to start looking (and translating) at movie subtitles in
the language I learn. My theory It should show both natural speech, common
words, common sentences and so on. Thoughts on that?

~~~
ced
Lots of people have learned English by watching Friends, the Simpsons, etc.
You could watch movies in their original language, with English subtitles to
help out. My guess is that comics are easier for your first 300 words or so.

~~~
wingerlang
I actually meant English movies with [language I'm learning] subtitles. Not
for the listening part, but for the vocabulary + grammar part of the
sentences.

------
dvcrn
I'm fluent in German, English. I'm living in Japan and am almost fluent in
Japanese and quarter fluent in Korean. I also recently started Hungarian and
Spanish.

The most important part in my opinion is to live in a country that speaks the
language you want to learn. You have to immerse yourself as much as possible
with the culture and language.

Also very important that you aren't afraid to try to use what you learned.
Even though it's very basic, you learn a lot by actively trying to understand
and use the language. It might be tiresome and frustrating at first, but you
will learn crazy fast. What I mean with that is: Change your OS to that
language and accept that you don't understand anything at first. Make internet
friends and refuse to use English with them even though you have to translate
every second sentence. Every time you see something you don't know, try to
understand why it's written that way.

Lastly, if you have time and money: Do a 6 months ~ 1 year intensive every-day
language course in the country that speaks the language you want. By doing
that every day AND surrounding yourself with the culture + language, you will
be able to speak after 6 month and become very good with it after 1 year.

On languages from a similar family (speak: English <-> German <-> French <->
Spanish || Japanese <-> Korean), you can get pretty far by buying books or
doing internet courses.

For words, I prefer the spaced repetition method of tools like Anki. Important
here is that you only create flashcards for words that you personally
encountered to allow your brain to make connections to where you saw that
word. Don't learn from wordlists.

~~~
westiseast
Can I ask respectfully what you mean by fluent?

Only because...the textbook definition and the colloquial definition differ. I
think generally when people say 'fluent' they mean 'native speaker level at
reading, writing and speaking language X', whereas fluent actually means you
can speak without hesitation on a range of topics.

Just a clarification, not an attack!

Edit: Plus, I wouldn't knock wordlists. I started trying to make wordlists
only out of words I had some connection to, but you end up spending an
inordinate amount of time making cards, and also then it's tempting to keep
interrupting your reading to make new flashcards.

I am 'fluent' in mandarin, and use HSK6 wordlists as a base. I learn a bunch
of random words and then suddenly, when I'm reading an article, there's the
word I learned a month ago. I don't need to interrupt my reading flow, and the
connection has been made. Sometimes at advanced levels, you won't see a word
that often, so it's wasteful to see it once, make a flashcard, and then never
have another chance to see the word in a real world context for another 6
months.

~~~
laichzeit0
I also have a problem with the word "fluent". Ok you say you're fluent, here's
a simple self-check: Explain to someone in the language you claim to be fluent
in how you'd go about making a fire without any matches. (hint: you need to
use words like tinder, kindling, flint, etc.). If you can't do this, or
grapple with the fact that you don't have a repertoire of these words in your
vocabulary, you might want to reconsider your definition of "fluent".

~~~
rsmsky1
Is tinder a real word? I thought it was just a made up word for an app? I
can't be expected to explain such words in another language when I can't
explain them in my native language. But I think if you said spark instead that
would be more reasonable such you need to rub two pieces of wood together and
create a spark and then a fire starts.

~~~
Mikeb85
Yes tinder is a real word. It's material used to kindle a fire.

Silicon valley has ruined all these words.

Then again, most people don't have to start fires.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Well the way I learned it, you _kindle_ fires by igniting the _kindling_. The
kindling then ignites tinder (an intermediate stage), which then ignites the
real fuel.

But I also often hear the two-step usage where tinder is includes kindling.

~~~
Mikeb85
Kindling is actually a verb, as in, the act of 'kindling' a fire, even though
it's also used to describe the material used to kindle a fire. Tinder is just
the material.

~~~
CDRdude
There are two definitions, the verb and the noun.

~~~
Mikeb85
Now there are. -ing words typically started as verbs. Eating, sleeping, etc...

This is why English is a clusterfuck, and makes no sense compared to most
languages. Imagine if we called food 'eatings', that'd be weird, eh?

~~~
adrianratnapala
We can complain about English in all sorts of ways, but the fact that gerunds
are distinct from infinitives is not exactly a problem.

[http://www.englishpage.com/gerunds/part_1.htm](http://www.englishpage.com/gerunds/part_1.htm)

Perhaps you are complaining that gerunds (which are already nouns) can grow
extra meanings over time. But all languages do this kind of stuff.

German has exactly the "problem" you are talking about, only worse. Depending
on capitalisation, "Essen/essen" can be the noun "food" or the the verb "to
eat", But when used as verb, it is usally used in the sense of the English
gerund "eating".

------
ekidd
I learned to speak French starting from scratch in my 30s, while living in the
US. I speak it well enough to enroll in an easy college-level course intended
for native speakers[a] or to work professionally[b], although either
experience would be painful at first.

For me, the process occurred in three phases:

1\. _Bootstrapping to the point where I could kinda-sorta read books and
kinda-sorta carry on conversations._ I personally used Assimil for this, which
is excellent if you like learning by osmosis and you can spare 20 to 40
minutes a day for 5 months. Nine out of ten "language learning" apps just
encourage you to screw around at this level with minimal progress, but if you
just focus and get it done, it should only take a couple hundred hours
(assuming you already know a vaguely related language—for an English speaker,
French is easier than Japanese).

2\. _Using the language (as best I could)._ I read about 2.5 million words and
watched about 15 seasons of television shows. This took my comprehension from
vague and dodgy to automatic and nearly complete. I also spent many hours
speaking, and I wrote a few dozen short texts which I had corrected.

3\. _Gradual improvement._ I speak French every day of my life now, but my
rate of improvement has slowed down because I don't currently _need_ to be any
better. I mostly talk to the same handful of people. To get better, I'd
realistically need to work for a French-speaking company.

[a] I've taken an online statistics course for French speakers, and the
language was rarely a problem.

[b] I've had multi-hour technical conversations with French-speaking
programmers while debugging code.

~~~
bumblebeard
What French TV shows did you enjoy? I've been looking for some to watch to
improve my listening skills.

~~~
arvinsim
I asked the same question last year. The one that is frequently recommended is
Engrenages(also called Spiral)

~~~
jwhitlark
That show is worth watching even if you are not learning French.

------
krapht
Everyone I know who has advanced skills in a foreign language spent one or
more years in their target country where they had to speak the language daily,
combined with a structured language course or class.

Otherwise it is extremely difficult to get the necessary amount of daily
exposure to new and novel situations where the language you want to study is
used. You can try by watching a lot of foreign TV series and movies, reading
books, but those are not necessarily representative of the vocabulary useful
in real life.

If you are a US citizen I think the only language you could get fluent in
without leaving the country would be Spanish.

~~~
babayega2
Native in Kirundi, I've learnt English, and French at school and by watching
movies in those languages. No need to go in a foreign country. And now I work
for a NGO, using them in my professional life.

The key is not only to read, understand, practice but also not to fear to make
mistakes and get corrected. That's my experience. I've lived in Tanzania for 4
years, when I was young but with a fear of speaking Swahili the wrong way. Now
I can understand and read Swahili, but responding back is so painfull. I'm
waiting someone who can correct me while I speak it.

------
jjgreen
Get films in the language and watch them with subtitles (in that language).
Read novels as soon as you can. This is hard to start off with, stopping every
couple of lines to look up a word, once you get down to 2-3 words a page that
you don't know then start reading without a dictionary, skipping words you
don't know (humans are great at interpolating meaning). Just those 2 get you
half-way to fluency. For the rest, I think you really need immersion.

~~~
contravariant
To start off you might want to use subtitles in a language you can read,
otherwise you're just going to be utterly confused for a couple of hours. If
you do this, you do have to force yourself to pay attention to what they're
saying though.

------
molteanu
I'm native Romanian, fluent English and medium German. I've learned both on my
own. School was terrible for learning anything.

Read, read a lot. But not hard-copy books. Read short articles. Read something
you're interested in and already have some knowledge of. Technical stuff is
easier than literature. No metaphors, no hidden meaning. You might not
understand much in the beginning, but that's ok. If you at least get the gist
of the article, you're good to go. It keeps you interested. Install the
"Wiktionary and Google Translate" addon (if on Firefox, or similar for other
browsers). Double-click a word to pop up it's definition. Or select whole
sentences to instant-translate them. Every word definition is a click away.
The more you see, the better you become.

Watch your favourite tv show with subtitles. If the tv show is in English and
you already know English, that's all you need. Put on the subtitles in the
language you want to learn and see the magic happen. You'll pick up words and
expressions in no time. Dramas/thrillers work better than comedy. Comedy is
usually fast-paced and has complicated expressions. Recommended: Dexter,
Breaking Bad, SOA, etc. Not recommended: Friends, Big Bang Theory, etc. You
get the idea.

It takes time, but it's better than learning all the grammar before you even
have the chance to use the language. It's like learning the geometry of the
hammer without ever using it. A little grammar right at the beginning might
help, of course. But don't stay too long in that corner.

------
imron
I'm a native English speaker, who now also speaks, reads and writes Mandarin.

The number one most important thing in my opinion is regular, consistent
practice over a sustained period of time.

So long as you are using decent materials (there are plenty for whatever
language you are learning) and as long as you have incorporated some sort of
feedback mechanism to spot mistakes (recording yourself speaking, speaking
with native speakers), you'll slowly but surely make progress.

Regarding time, I'd say it took me about 5 years to get comfortable with the
language (including reading/writing) such that I could conduct myself in
Mandarin in a given situation without worrying that my language skills (or
lack of them) would trip me up.

------
supergetting
I lived in the US for 20 years — came here when I was 10. I'm still not
completely fluent in English. A lot of the learning came from interacting with
others who mainly spoke in English, but in some occasions I still have to make
an effort in order to get pronunciation and grammar correct.

In retrospect, what helped me the most in the early days were reading
children's books and copying them down on separate piece of paper, and
memorizing the most basic vocabularies that all native speakers naturally
learned during their childhood years. These alone seemed to have improved
reading comprehension and writing skills from level zero to the basic level.
At first, try to write down the words in your native language next to the
foreign words you are trying to memorize in order to make that initial
connection, and later, try to memorize the definitions in the foreign language
itself. I was using just pencil and paper throughout this process — I wasn't
even aware that I could've used computers to do this at the time.

Fast forward to teenage years and up to early 20s, listening to podcasts and
audio-based grammar courses helped with refining speech. I used to repeat
after every sentence and even respond to questions that the hosts asked their
guests in some radio shows as if the hosts were asking me the questions.

In regards to expanding my knowledge of vocabularies, I used to spend hours
every week memorizing SAT vocabularies, but nowadays I try to use the new
vocabularies that I come across as soon as possible in real conversations.

For now, I think you should focus on memorizing words for the things that you
encounter most frequently every day, in addition to learning conversational
speech rather than diving deep into the nuances of grammar and trying to cram
all the vocabularies you can get your hands on into your brain. It's a long
and arduous process — yet very rewarding, and IF you're a coder, you might
know that there's a narrative by Peter Norvig — to set a long-term goal (up to
10 years) in learning a programming language — I think the same goes for
spoken languages albeit it may take much longer to achieve an adequate level
of fluency. Good luck.

~~~
inimino
Children's books are very helpful, and give you a kind of fluency with the
low-level stuff that you will never get from SAT lists, etc. I think exposure
to children's rhymes, poems, and nursery stories is useful if you really want
to be fluent and probably necessary to get to a native-like level.

(By the way: "vocabulary" is not countable!)

------
Agentlien
I live in Sweden, which means I've had to study English since I was nine years
old. Disregarding that, I also speak fluent Dutch (with a Flemish accent).

The way I learned Dutch came from having a long-distance relationship with a
girl from Belgium. When I was visiting her on vacation her family would speak
Dutch with one another at the dinner table and I would sit and listen. In the
evening they would watch TV. Sometimes we would sit with them and I'd look at
the subtitles in Dutch and try to map that to the English audio. At this point
I didn't intend to learn the language; I simply saw it as an intellectual
challenge to see how much I could make out. At times I'd even join to watch a
programme in Dutch. I found that very helpful since they always had subtitles
turned on and this helped me with one of the more difficult parts of learning
a new language: parsing the steady stream of sounds into words.

Through this simple manner of absorbing the language I started recognising an
increasing portion of the vocabulary. Once I felt comfortable forming a few
simple sentences, I asked my girlfriend's mother to speak Dutch with me. She
was all too happy to use her own language, rather than being forced to use
English.

Once I felt able to speak in a limited manner about a few everyday topics (and
I was living in Belgium as an exchange student) I took a course called "Dutch
for foreigners". This was great for learning grammar.

Finally, after a year of living in Belgium I moved back to Sweden and my
girlfriend soon followed. Since she had to speak Swedish all day at work I
suggested that we would speak Dutch at home. That way she got to use her own
language and I got to practice my Dutch.

We have now lived together in Sweden for five years, we're married and since
Dutch has become the language I use at home I've found it difficult to
remember to use Swedish when speaking to our son.

~~~
behnamoh
> The way I learned Dutch came from having a long-distance relationship with a
> girl from Belgium. When I was visiting her on vacation her family...

> We have now lived together in Sweden for five years, we're married...

And yet they say long-term relationships don't work :/

~~~
Agentlien
You have no idea how many times we were told that over the years.

We met via an online game 13 years ago (pretty much before online dating was a
well-known thing). I was 15 at the time. A lot of people wanted to "save us
from the inevitable heartbreak". Thankfully, our parents were nothing but
supportive and happy for us.

~~~
behnamoh
Glad to hear that :)

Man, you're lucky. A girl who's into computer and games, that's just rare as
diamond.

All the more reason to play online games!

------
zhte415
Live in another country, and in an environment where English wasn't an option
80%+ of the time.

But when there (here) structured learning in the form of a few books to round-
off vocabulary/grammar and a few lessons mainly to track progress and give
feedback helped hugely in going from basic to intermediary. Pleco dictionary
and flashcards for 1-2 hours per day also very useful.

~~~
cageface
This is the only method that has worked for me. There is no substitute for
talking to native speakers every day.

~~~
auvrw
also, class + studying while immersed. it's helpful to do both. and watching
tv or listening to the radio ..

.. so essentially i'm saying "do everything you can think of, especially
living in an immersive environment" b/c that's what i did for a couple years
.. and i'm still not exactly fluent.

of course the experience of living in a different social mileu is awesome for
reasons connected but not equivalent to language fluency, like broadening
cultural perspectives.

------
gozmike
I speak 3 languages fluently (English, French and Italian)

My mother tongue is Italian, however it's since been superseded by the other
languages.

How do you accomplish this? Travel.

You absolutely need to immerse yourself to be fluent. Save your money. Make
hard choices. Pick up and commit to spending 2+ years in a new country,
society and culture.

It will be hard, but you will get a perspective that is lost on so many: what
is the immigrant experience really like? what does it feel like to be
victimized or discriminated against (assuming here that you're a white,
English speaking American)? what does it feel like the first time you can
successfully tell a joke? the first time you can give a presentation? the
first time you can seduce a partner?

Get out there snowdragon, immerse yourself!

~~~
dorfuss
Seducing a partner is a good one ;) But very true! I'd add: understanding a
joke...

------
vanderreeah
I'm surprised to see no mention of Kindles / ebook readers. I tried reading
novels to improve my German, but the physical effort of switching to a
dictionary (either physical or web-based) was enough to make reading a chore.
With my Kindle, I've downloaded an English-German dictionary and some novels,
and now when I don't know a word I just tap it (well, kinda hold my finger
down in a ZX81 fashion) and a translation appears. Makes the reading process
that much more fluent and therefore enjoyable. If the ease of looking up words
makes them a tad less "sticky" in my memory, the quantity of text I'm
consuming makes the language-learning experience, on balance, more efficient
(for me).

~~~
gns24
Similarly, OSX can be configured so that a triple click does a dictionary
look-up, which I find extremely useful for reading material online in German.

~~~
vanderreeah
I'd love something like that in Windows 8.1.

------
mettamage
Hmm... every comment I read actually talks about making an effort. Let me give
some mundane advice.

For English, I didn't have to make much of an effort. I was 12, loved
Dragonball Z -- we have subtitled television. I wanted to know more about it,
the US was further in the series than The Netherlands, so I started reading
English websites even though I didn't understand much of it.

Eventually I got on forums being a smartass that Goku's power level was not
xyz because at website abc.com I read it was abc. All the while I was forced
to look in the dictionary from time to time. Also, we went on vacation, then
you have to speak English or their native tongue, so I always chose English.

I got on more forums after realizing that the English web has more information
than the Dutch web. I started writing there as well. Eventually I'd watch
English instruction videos on any topic and learned a lot of things.
Eventually I'd even watch psychology courses from Harvard while still being a
high school kid.

Then I got to uni and some Dutch people had trouble with academic writing or
writing English in general. All that I understood from those people is that
they haven't been as much on the English web as I have been.

So yea like many of us who learned English as a 2nd language (in order of
importance): the web, videos/series/movies, instructional books, vacations,
games and music.

Note: if Japanese would've had a roman alphabet and a stronger web presence
I'd be better in that too, since anime is kind of 'force feeding' me Japanese
words as well.

~~~
ivm
English is a low-hanging fruit because of the amount of quality content that
is available only in English, especially tech- or science-related.

I'm now learning Spanish and the main problem is finding interesting things in
Spanish without forcing myself into something irrelevant.

So I go for dubbed movies, TV series, listen to talk-based radio channels in
background. My OS is in Spanish too, it makes many sites to switch into
Spanish locale.

But still generating phrases in Spanish is much harder for me than reading or
listening to it, because of this now I'm translating English book into Spanish
and verifying my translation with a professional one.

~~~
mettamage
Side note: my English skills are way better than my translation skills from
English to Dutch or reversed.

------
whym
A long-time English learner here.

I'd say variety is your friend. I don't know any learner who has mastered a
language by sticking to a single technique. You would do everything, maybe
with varying levels of comittment - read textbooks, take classes, do
flashcards, do speech shadowing, talk to native speakers, watch movies and TV
programs, etc.

After becoming able to say what I want (more or less), participating online
discussions in the topics I care has been useful for me. It taught me how to
structure longer chunks of text to express more complex ideas - you would be
surprised to see how often sentence-to-sentence translation fails (between
Japanese and English, at least).

If you are starting as an adult, native-level pronunciation would be difficult
to achieve, even if you invest decades into it. I have almost given up on that
front, and instead am focussing on how I can make my pronunciation less
misunderstood. Part of that is to pay attention to vowels and consonants I'm
not good at (or to use easier-to-pronounce synonyms where possible).

------
h1d
If possible, learn it young.

I learnt English at the age of 10 (which was best not to have any negative
influence on the primary language as well), when I stayed in Australia for 3
years only but it stuck with me even after 20 years when my parents got much
less confident in the language today. (Partially thanks to Internet where I
could expose myself to English daily since then.)

As for pronunciation, I can still make converstation with natives as I kept
reading English vocally when I read online materials to this day. I think it's
very important to keep your tongue and mouth remember the flow by actively
speaking if you are no longer in a position to talk with natives.

That plus the fact knowing the culture and the people in foreign country
really makes a difference as an adult because you're no longer "afraid" of
them (I especially feel this attitude in my country as a Japanese), those
experiences have been such huge additions to my life, I'll be taking my kid
abroad at certain age when I get one.

------
banashark
[http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/](http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/)

this site is incredible.

The writing is super well done by a guy from Africa who moved to the US, and
while in the US learned japanese.

He learned how to speak so well that when he took an interview for a software
development job, they asked him for his address (assuming he was japanese) and
didn't believe that he wasn't from there.

The site is not just for japanese. Most of the info is general (and uses
either japanese or chinese as examples). I recommend it to everyone.

------
afriday11
I went from no Mandarin skills, to managing teams in the language over a few
years. Here are 3 things I learned along the way about language learning: 1\.
Pick a method and stick with it - at any given time I was doing flash cards to
practice vocabulary, working through a grammar book, and listening to a
language learning podcast, Chinesepod. Every now and then, I tried new
methods, but generally, once something worked I stuck with it until I felt it
wasn't working anymore. 2\. Habit - Every morning I woke up and completed my
flashcards. Every day I reviewed my flashcards at least once during my break
at work. Most days I listened to an episode of Chinesepod on my commute to or
from work. Most nights I spent 30-60 minutes going through my book and
reviewing my notecards/podcast notes. I had a schedule and stuck to it most
days (though there was wiggle room when things got busy). 3\. Don't be afraid
to sounds stupid - Whenever I had an opportunity, I would try to converse with
someone. Even though I butchered the language for at least 2 years, I got a
lot of feedback and practice with pronunciation and tones that I would have
missed if I just stuck to reading my books and practicing speaking to myself.

To sum it all up: pick a method and practice daily. You can do this anywhere
with little investment beyond 60 minutes of uninterrupted study per day.

------
jondubois
I moved to Australia from France when I was 11. I went to school and didn't
speak a single word of English. Initially (for the first 6 months or so) I had
no idea what people were saying and it created a lot of awkward (and tense)
situations at school. Especially when teachers asked me a question and I
couldn't respond and had to resort to facial expressions and hand waving to
let them know that I was completely lost.

I think I understood most of English (and could do basic talk) after 6 months
but I really started speaking properly after 1 year. It was pretty intense.

Now I'm in Moscow (Russia) - and I feel like it's the same thing all over
again; I don't speak a word of Russian. It's harder to learn as an adult;
there aren't as many opportunities to learn passively (adults don't talk about
simple things like playgrounds, running around, going to the library, eating
lunch, etc... The conversations are a lot more advanced so it's hard to pick
up stuff).

I still speak (and write) fluent French.

I think the most interesting thing about speaking two languages really
fluently is that sometimes I don't even realize what language I'm speaking
in... Several times I told my wife a whole sentence in French without
realizing (she only speaks English, Russian and Italian).

------
avadhoot
I learned German in 1 year and landed a job at Siemens where I served German
customers in German (and not in English!) How did I do it?

There are multiple ways which can be used together to get the best way.
Totally depends on the learner. Here are some of them:

1\. Find a good mentor and you're half way through.

2\. Join a good institute e.g Goethe Institute for German, Alliance Francaise
for French. They have great sources of knowledge and know exactly how those
languages are taught.

3.If you have basic knowledge of the language, start listening to simple Radio
clips. It helps you improve your pronunciation. Or simply go to youtube and
see/listen to the videos. There are many well-known resources and also some
reading material on the net. Jump according to the needs and levels.

4.Try to find the meaning of every single word you come across. Use the
dictionary for German, French, Spanish, and more. Keep google translator as
your last option.

5.Finally, it is a language. It does take time to learn. Have some patience.
Enjoy every bit of it and go ahead.

Best of luck. :)

------
happy4crazy
I've been teaching myself French (from scratch) for the past two years. I read
nearly as well as I do in English, and I listen well (some slangy television
dialogue is still a bit tough).

Some things that have worked for me:

0\. Goes without saying, but consistent effort. I've done at least a little
French every day for the past two years.

1\. Reading a lot. I started with the Harry Potters and now read for pleasure
pretty much exclusively in French.

2\. Reading on a Kindle. Instant dictionary lookup! This is such a big
efficiency boost that I think that reading physical books is simply a mistake.

3\. Listening a lot. I listen to about an hour of French podcasts/youtube
channels a day.

4\. Studying grammar. I mainly study grammar when I run into something tricky
while reading, but I really do study.

5\. Flashcards. I've only started making them in the past month or so, but
yes, they really do work. I feel silly for not realizing that sooner. I
highlight interesting words/expressions as I read and periodically dump them
onto index cards.

------
reddytowns
I'm still learning but my recommendation is a lot of repetition. I learn
primarily by trying to read a book in the foreign language with a translation
available.

Only I repeat and repeat each sentence, each paragraph, and then each page,
until I can read it out loud quickly with good pronunciation (I have a reader
with TTS in the foreign language), where I can construct the meaning in my
head on the fly. Until I get to that point, I don't consider the sentence,
paragraph, whatever, learned.

My theory of language learning is that you need a strong root of a few
sentences before you can branch off into new words and grammar constructs.

Too many language courses try to pack in the material as fast as possible. To
me, that's a mistake. Like etching a lot of faint scratches into stone, you
have a lot of information there, but it's difficult to read any specific thing
and they wear away quickly. So, basically go for a few deep marks over a bunch
of small light ones.

------
twistybark
Not fluent yet but seeing excellent progress in my three years of strict self
study. I think the most important things I learned are:

\- Make a habit of the language. If you can't move to another country to
immerse yourself, the least you can do is expose yourself to it everyday.
Obviously the more time you can devote, the fast you will progress, but you
must devote time. Every. Single. Day. Whether it's a little bit of reading, a
conversation with a native speaker, watching a show. Just make sure to reflect
on what you learned. Do not be passive. Learning by osmosis is not good
enough.

\- Do not be afraid to make mistakes. I have been learning for three years and
only in the past few months have I jumped this hurdle. In the past, I rarely
spoke to anyone in my language, for fear of messing up. I noticed my progress
wasn't plateauing and knew something had to change. Now I just try to speak
freely. If it's wrong or unnatural sounding, someone lets me know and now I
have learned something. It's true that when you make mistakes, you learn more.

These things may seem obvious or simple, but I think you kind of have to take
a child's approach - just have fun, don't think to0 hard, and be open minded.

------
reitanqild
I speak, read and write english (my second language) fluently although not
perfectly correct.

I started thinking (when studying) and even dreaming (when I dreamt about
programming, that is :-) in English before graduating because most of my books
etc where in English.

In addition to reading lots and lots, one of the small things that helped me a
lot was 10 years back or so I used to have an FF extension that let me
doubleclick on any word on a webpage to get TFD definition of the word
highlighted.

This took the effort out of expanding my vocabulary as I could look things up
without breaking flow.

I still sometimes look up words that I haven't seen before although not as
frequently as before.

(My problem is for a lot of words, esp. those I don't use at work I can read
and write them but I might never have heard them.)

------
s_baby
A polyglot marketed his method a couple years ago that makes sense to me.

>But basically: buy a Lonely Planet phrasebook. Learn full phrases off, use
them. Get courses like Assimil, Teach yourself, Colloquial and use that for a
little bit more of a base. Use it. Practice a tonne. When you are somewhat
comfortable in the language, then (and only then) study some grammar to tidy
it up. Practice more.[1]

I imagine starting with common phrases and pronunciation cuts through the
learning curve.

1\.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y70v0/by_request_i_am...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y70v0/by_request_i_ama_polyglot_multilingual_person/)

------
jason_slack
I am a native English speaker, age 39. I am learning Mandarin right now.

1\. I am taking classes at my local college.

2\. I am paying an instructor outside of class to accelerate my reading and
writing.

3\. I have started making myself write my everyday things in Mandarin. I.e my
day planner. Notes. Grocery list.

4\. I goto places where there are other Mandarin speakers and just start
conversations.

5\. If I want to say or write something and I don't know how I look it up on
the spot.

6\. I try to read websites in Mandarin

7\. I make time to study every day

8\. I ordered books from China in Mandarin to. Read.

It would be great to go learn in China but it isn't an option for me.

Edit: I forgot. YouTube videos

------
mlenny
I've studied both Spanish and German extensively, even living in countries
that speak each target language, but have only become fluent in Spanish.

The way I became fluent in Spanish was that I went to a Spanish speaking
country and immersed myself completely. I lived with people who only spoke
Spanish, joined a local rec sports team, got a job, and took formal classes
for 3 weeks (focused strictly on the subjunctive, which is tricky in Spanish)
when I arrived. The most helpful thing by far though was having a local
girlfriend, aka the "long haired dictionary". If it's an option, having a
significant other with whom you speak the target language is a major leg up.
It took me about 18 months after being immersed to feel really fluent and
comfortable.

The reason I never became fully fluent in German was because although I lived
in the country, I spoke a lot of English there. My Canadian study abroad
roommate didn't speak any German and I found that most Germans I met spoke
better English than my German would ever be, so many times we'd speak English
instead of German. I was in Germany for almost a year.

At the end of the day I think becoming fluent in another language takes a
solid base of self study and a whole lot of practice with native level
speakers. Build your base with Duolingo, explicit grammar study, and
Vocabulary (I recommend memrise), and then find a way to practice natural
conversation with native level speakers of the target language.

------
maxxxxx
From my experience teaching German to people who know only English my main
advice would be: \- Accept that a lot of concepts can't be translated word by
word. Speaking another language often means thinking differently \- Forget
finding and memorizing rules. With enough practice your brain will figure out
what "feels right" \- Be respectful of pronunciation even if it sounds harsh
to you. English speakers tend to swallow a lot of sounds which makes them hard
to understand to Germans

------
slau
My mother tongue is Dutch, as that is the language my family spoke growing up.
My parents decided to give me a French education (we lived in Belgium then,
which made that easier).

I learned English through TV (Flemish TV channels, and some Walloon ones are
subtitled instead of dubbed), BBC radio and Linux documentation. I would say I
was proficient around age 8. Around age 14-15 I decided to switch my American
accent to a more British one.

I lived in southern France for some time, which exposed me to Spanish and
Catalan. I'm not able to have a conversation, but I can follow a movie (I
watched most of Narcos without subtitles). I took German classes in high
school. I had a fair leg up thanks to my Dutch background. I wouldn't say I
know the language in any shape or form, but I'm able to understand the rough
lines of most written German.

I moved to Denmark about a year ago, took some (paid for by the government)
classes to learn the basics. Pronunciation is horrible, but I have a fairly
firm grip on the basic grammar, sentence structure (fairly close to Dutch, in
the end) and vocab. I still do a fair amount of Duolingo and often ask my
colleagues to keep conversations in Danish instead of switching to English.
Due to the amount of English loan words in technical conversation, it's fairly
easy to follow that. It's the casual conversation that is a lot more difficult
to understand.

All of this to say: jump in. Move to another country, and don't rely on any
kind of lingua franca to help you out. Watching TV in the language you're
trying to learn, with either subtitles in a language you master, or once
you've started getting a basic grip, subtitles in the same language as the
spoken one.

Another thing you can do is watch English shows with subtitles in your target
language. Force yourself to read the subtitles (this can be hard to do if
you're not used to it). This helps with common idioms, sentence structure, and
everyday vocab.

And read. Read a lot. Every country has a wealth of youth books, that,
although not the most fascinating of reads, can be both challenging enough yet
easy enough for beginners. Books also have the added advantage that they're
asynchronous, meaning you can take time to reflect and research before hitting
the next word.

Edit: typo.

------
memracom
Did not take any holidays. You need to work on it every day, 365 days per
year. Lots of little tricks. Like reading books written for 10 year-olds, by
native authors of the language and set in a country where this is the native
language. No translations of famous English writers.

Keep track of words you don't kn ow during the day, and look them up in the
dictionary every evening. Go out of your way to meet native speakers. When I
worked in Silicon Valley, I listened to Spanish language radio stations only,
watched only SPanish language TV networks, only read Spanish language
newspapers which happened to be free, and only spoke Spanish in stores and
restaurants. It helped that 50% of population in SV is hispanic, and I was a
foreigner in the USA just like them.

Another trick, after you check the news in English, read it again on the net
in your target language. And watch TV series with subtitles in the same
language. For instance, I watched Russian TV series with subtitles in Russian.
That helped me when my ear could not make out the words. Also, not movies, but
TV series because the same characters appear again and again so you get used
to their quirks of speech and can learn faster.

Buy a kids encyclopedia in the target language. Don't be afraid to download
and read university papers and dissertations in linguistics about your target
language.

And finally, get married to someone who speaks the language and raise
bilingual kids.

------
zouzoun
Can't for the life of me remember where, but I read a study a few years ago
which really helped me understand how social interactions contribute to
language learning. Apparently, when children are learning a second language
(the study focused on children who spoke one language at home and another at
school, or who had recently immigrated), the children who advance the most are
not the brightest or most studious, but those who manage to get their entire
group of friends/peers/surrounding adults to feel implicated in their learning
of the language. The group as a whole works together to help the child learn,
group cohesion happens, the child learns better and everyone feels happy for
them and proud to have contributed. As an adult, I've definately found that
asking one person in a group a question on, for example, the meaning of a
word, can lead to a big group discussion where either everyone contributes to
explaining it to you (and you get five explanations rather than just one), or
everyone realising that they're not entirely sure and looking it up online,
discussing it amongst themselves, and then explaining it to you until you have
no choice but to have understood. Repeat this process as many times as is
socially acceptable. Worked for a while in a friendly lebanese snack bar. Some
of the (non Arabic speaking) regulars would often ask my bosses for
explanations of the meanings of words, or to explain the lyrics of the song.
He would explain, and any Arabic speaking regulars (there were a lot) that
happened to be around would inevitably offer their own explanation. Basic
Arabic was picked up, falafel eaten, and some friendships happened. Find
somewhere you can become a regular of!

------
smegel
You need to get a language partner. Rote learning is nothing if you can't
recall when you need to.

Just being able to make repetitive small-talk - but being able to do so with a
degree of confidence is the base for expanding your "working set" into more
useful and fluent conversations.

Beyond that, I found Anki to be the best flash-card system. Customizable, it's
great if you are motivated enough to design and build your own card decks.
Getting a "basic" vocab of around 1000 words should be a rapid short-term goal
over 3 months or so (that's 10 new words a day, more than that will be
challenging for most people).

And find a _good_ textbook. There are a lot of ordinary books out there. But
there are also usually a couple of highly regarded/respected series for a
given language that stand out above the rest. For the two language I have
learned they are the Integrated Korean series, and Japanese for Busy People.

But...go back to the first point. Language partner. There is not point trying
to study a language in a vacuum, you need to be recalling in realistic
conversations scenarios everyday ideally.

------
vcool07
Well, english is my second language, and I remember becoming fluent at it by
reading comics when I was a kid. It was both fun and educational at the same
time. Also, I was a 80's kid and it did help that the era/place i lived in did
not have much access to computers, video games etc, and reading comics was
still considered a fun activity (apart from playing cricket / sports ) !

------
yodsanklai
Check out some polyglots on youtube. Some of them keep learning new languages
and they have good advice.

I can share my experience learning Spanish (at 40). I practiced every single
day for 6 months using a variety of resources. Apps, grammar references,
(online) dictionaries, personal teacher, news websites... I think what is
important is not so much what resources you use, but the time you put in. You
need to find a way to stay motivated for a long period of time, that's the
hard part.

How well can I speak after 6 months? Well, I went through most of the grammar
of the language, I can communicate (with someone willing to speak slowly), I
can read the news but I have a hard time understanding people speaking at a
normal pace. Overall, starting from zero, I'm rather satisfied but I expected
to be better than that after 6 months (esp. considering French is my first
language). It's harder than what I thought.

I stopped learning a few months ago and I'm afraid I'll forget everything
pretty fast. Unlike English, I'm not exposed to the Spanish language.

------
blindpixel
As a consequence of growing up in a diverse and multicultural society like
India, I am fluent in 4 languages (English, Hindi, Marathi and Konkani). I am
currently learning French from Duolingo and Kannada from a language book that
I purchased sometime back.

Coming to your question, there seems to be no right way to learn a language
except for selecting a learning resource and diving straight into it. Some
languages are easy and some are quite hard but the trick seems to be in
getting familiar with the initial phrases and then learning the grammatical
rules. Grammatical and syntactical rules are like the glue that hold the words
in place and I would advise you to focus on them. Talking to people who speak
the language (can be quite awkward for the beginner) and reading passages
aloud will end up helping you as well.

There is no timeline to this and getting fluent in a language is a function of
your efforts and the difficulty of the language you have chosen. If the
language that you want to learn is on Duolingo, that's the best place to
start.

------
crypt1d
I became fluent in English by watching TV shows, movies, etc without
subtitles. I even picked up an American accent and people often ask me if I'm
from the states :)

I spent some time in Western Europe and I noticed that ,by default, they dub
their movies instead of adding subtitles. I think this really affects the
adoption of a foreign language as you are a lot less exposed to any other
language than your own (outside of school, of course). On the other hand,
movies are almost always subtitled in my home country, so a lot of people pick
up basic English/Spanish/Turkish just from watching the TV.

Anyways, I think you could benefit a lot from direct exposure to the language
itself, without the 'safe zone' that a teaching environment offers. Getting
out of your comfort zone and accepting that you don't understand every word
being said in a conversation is an excellent catalyst that will force you to
learn a language by association and body language analysis, not by just
memorising words.

------
EliRivers
Start learning the second language and don't stop.

Any and all of the following, in any order, skipping between them when you get
bored or want to try something different. This is just a list of options
you've already worked out for yourself.

Books (do them properly, cover to cover, answers all the questions and
listening to all the conversations on the CD or whatever), specific books on
grammr, making your own notes of topics of interest, websites, apps, making up
conversation on your own, (paid) skype conversations with native speakers,
evening classes, take a holiday there (and maybe take lessons while there on
holiday).

The only common link amongst all people who learned a second language is that
they started learning and didn't stop. That's the common link. That's how to
learn a second language.

Stop spending time trying to pick out the "best" option and just start. Pretty
soon you'll have worked out what you enjoy most. Just start learning and don't
stop. Start now, don't stop.

------
_0ffh
For pure language understanding, learn enough so you can start reading in that
language. Then read. It's a great way for knowledge deepening and upkeep.

For pronunciation and accent there's probably nothing better than spending
time with native speakers. In that scenario, don't stunt yourself by being
afraid of making mistakes. People will understand.

------
pencilcode
I'm not fluent yet but after using duolingo for a few years (with varying
degrees of commitment) I've had a tremendous improvement on my german after
switching to lingq in the last few months. It allows you to import texts and
you can _very quickly_ look up the meaning of the word. While you do this it
creates a database of words you've seen/ learned in context. It also
automatically creates flashcards of those you've been exposed to and
progressively moves them to a known state. What's cool is that you get a real
sense of progress and where you're at. You can attach audio to texts as well
and it also keeps tracks of words you've listened to. Anyway that's kept me
much more motivated!. But still the gist of it is, read stuff you like in
target language, children's books, newstories and hear the same content read
out loud. Tv shows with subtitles in the target language are also great.

------
nichochar
My story was back in school, and I had never spoken Spanish (but I'm french so
they both have Latin origins). I started going out with this girl that was
from the Canary Islands, she was fluent in english se we could have just
talked in that, but I decided to ask her: "Let's only ever speak in Spanish,
and if I don't understand something, first try and explain in Spanish, and if
I still don't get it, switch to English".

It worked miraculously, within 1 month I could speak good enough spanish, and
by the second month I could go to Madrid and speak with anyone on the street.

It's surprising how effective it is, I even use to catch myself thinking in
Spanish.

I think the best strategy is total immersion, however you can achieve that. It
takes effort and dedication, but not longer than a few months for a similar
language to yours, probably 6months to a year for something harder like
chinese or arabic.

------
tchaffee
A lot of folks are saying there is no substitute for complete immersion in a
country that speaks the language. While it's true that immersion is a huge
help, it's not so difficult to simulate. I learned Italian in Italy, but now
I'm learning Spanish outside of a Spanish speaking country. Here's what I'm
doing to learn quickly:

1\. Conversation exchange sites. You can find native speakers of the language
you want to learn who want to learn your native language. Try to get enough
language partners so you can do it a few times a week. People will cancel, so
book more meetings than you'd like to achieve.

2\. Films, TV, Radio, Youtube, etc. Don't use your native language for sub-
titles. But do use sub-titles in your target language. Doing this will require
a lot of faith at first because you'll understand almost nothing. Stick with
it. It's no different than living in a foreign country where you'll also
understand almost nothing at first.

3\. Change your computer or phone or tablet so the OS uses your target
language.

4\. Play online games with people who speak that language.

5\. Read some of your daily news in the the target language.

6\. If you can't find local classes, you can find a teacher who will use
Skype.

7\. Think about things immersion would give you, and seek them out on the web:
menus, street signs, store receipts, bills, product descriptions, adverts.

8\. The other methods for learning a language have been mentioned elsewhere
but I'll repeat them for completeness here. Duolingo (grammar), Memrise
(vocab), Anki (vocab, ability to create your own flashcards) all of which are
free. I like to supplement with a listening method like Pimsleur or Michel
Thomas which are not free.

If you follow all of the above, put in the hours, and continue to think
creatively and seek out opportunities for simulating immersion, you can come
pretty close.

------
niieani
I speak 2 foreign languages fluently, one of them is English, in which I got
fluent by watching shows over the years (mainly Star Trek series and The
Simpsons) with and without subtitles (first translated, then original
English), and by reading a lot. Hard to say how many years it took, since I
was a kid back then, but I got fluent enough to move to and study at the
University level in the UK.

The other story is I got a girlfriend speaking the other foreign language
(Slovak). We speak English and her language (foreign for me) interchangeably.
We also lived in her country for some time. Time we spent speaking, listening
and reading her language made me fluent. No special tricks, courses, apps...

Just practice, asking questions and learning. I got fluent in about a year,
but bare in mind, Slovak and Polish (my native) share a common root, so it
wouldn't have been as easy with something like Chinese or even French.

------
ozzmotik
Rinse lather repeat. It took about 2 years before I was confident enough in my
German skills to consider myself conversationally fluent at a beginner level.
I spent four years of devoted study (yes high school) to get the concepts
down, and now I've basically tried to maintain it in the 8 years since. For me
it was important to focus on syntax and semantics more than vocabulary. It's
super easy to find a translation for concrete concepts like "dog",
"cartographer", and so forth, but it's rather difficult to find an elegant
translation of advanced concepts like expressing conditional circumstances,
and all those fun different tenses and voices. Repetition of vocabulary and
all that helps to build up conversational awareness, but I find that it's
important to focus on how the pieces are supposed together more than the
individual pieces themselves. But hey, ymmv

~~~
ozzmotik
I'm just overly fond of the procedural and qualitative approach of grammar and
syntax first, but I know that runs contrary to how other individuals tend to
acquire language. You do have to find some individual pieces beforehand so you
can have pieces to put together, so obviously vocabulary itself functions as
an important part, but I find that you are more likely to become fluent in a
language when you've trained yourself to think with the logical approach that
the language you're learning utilizes.

------
PetoU
Anecdotally, one girl loved Harry Potter books. After acquiring basic level of
foreign language, she would re-read those books in that language. As she knew
the story back and forth, new words came to her in very familiar context, and
learning was much more effective. I'd be interesting to research more this
method !

------
wmeddie
I know English, Spanish and Japanese. I started studying Japanese in college
and I live and work in Japan now. Structured lessons were fundamental in
becoming fluent but when I was here I sang a ton of Karaoke whenever I could.
It really helped my pronunciation and vocabulary. Definitely recommend signing
to learn language.

------
lordnacho
The key is to get feedback. And normally, that means trying to make the sounds
while you're young, because people tend not to correct adults when they make a
slightly wrong sound.

Hang around kids and you'll notice people correcting their sounds repeatedly.
Teachers will show them how to move their tongues, describing just what to do
to make a th-sound or g-sound and so on. Go to an adult class and you rarely
get that, apart from fixing really coarse issues.

If you're lucky, the easiest way to learn is just to grow up in a dual
language zone. I grew up with four languages around me, so I know those
sounds. To make it useful, though, you need instruction. You're unlikely to
grow up in a place where specialist terms like "magnetism" or "accrual" are
used in multiple languages. Also having some classes will clear up the minor
niggles with any given language.

------
manuelisimo
Moving to a country where they speak the language you are trying to learn
kinda helps. I've lived in the US for 15 years. At first I wouldn't even be
able to even tell words apart, so listening to a lot of people and trying to
make the sounds they were making was my first challenge. Then I knew like 200
words so my conversations were a bit limited so memorizing words was the next
goal. And then I would get into more interesting conversations and people
would use rare words which everybody seem to know what they meant. And for
that you can only read a lot ^_^ Then you can get fancy and try to reduce your
foreign accent for extra points. But being exposed to the language is a must,
hence living in a country where it is spoken helps. My french is kinda awful
(I've never lived in france) but I can order food at restaurants which is
nice.

------
maus42
Depends on your definition of 'fluent'. To speak like a native, you probably
need to spend several years in a community where your target language is
spoken as primary language. However, you don't need to be fully fluent to
passably talk, read and write even on advanced level (like politics or
academic subjects).

Find the part of the internet that communicates in your target language. Read
and participate. Structured language classes with a professional teacher are
helpful, but not sufficient.

Duolingo is nice for very basic introduction and first "stepping stone", but
not enough if you want to progress farther than the basic tourist level (at
least, not in the languages I have tried it).

After ~15 years studying (both in school and other activities), I wouldn't
consider myself fully fluent in English but capable enough to get by in
professional context.

------
paloaltokid
An old-fashioned method, but it works: start dating someone who speaks the
language you'd like to learn.

Outside of that, watch children's television shows in the language you want to
learn, with english subtitles. The language is simple and will help get it in
your ears.

------
bradonomics
I'm probably the only guy who is going to tell you that practice is the
problem. The more you try, the more "ceiling" you'll create for yourself.

If this sounds interesting do some research on Dr J. Marvin Brown. His
autobiography is available online. You might also be interested in looking up
Dr Stephen Krashen.

------
poltak
A lot of software to attempt to make the boring repitition-based stuff more
fun, for things like grammatical patterns and vocab. Anki (free) is my all-
time favourite. Usually use a popular pre-made deck to learn what's
recommended, and then have my own one going which I add a new flash-card to
whenever I encounter a new word in my daily life. Review them in the evening.
Something new I found out recently is that Anki has plugins [0]. AnkiStrategy
[1] is currently making sure I get my daily review in.

Duolingo [2] (free) also helps with getting a grasp on basic grammar and
vocab, but doesn't support many Asian languages (Vietnamese just got released
and Indonesian is in progress).

Memrise [3] (free) is similar to Anki but has more of a modern, community-
based app feel. A lot of great user-generated content.

Skritter [4] (subscription, phone app) helped me a lot when I was learning to
write and recognise Chinese characters. They also have Japanese Kanji version.

Software-wise, I am currently learning Vietnamese, and for that using my own
Anki deck (30-40 cards a day) and 5 duolingo lessons (adding new vocab to
Anki). Feel like I'm making fast enough progress, but I think integrating
anymore software to my daily revision routine would be too much.

Then you need a lot of interaction with people, using what you have leant in
that language to attempt to communicate. I think this is the most important
part and where you'll learn the most. You'll be forced to practise your
listening, speaking, drawing on vocab and grammar that you know and have to
put mould them into an understandable sentence. You'll make mistakes and look
like a fool, but that's just part of the learning process. Try to treat it
like a bit of fun, and hopefully the people you're talking to will also.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-useful-Anki-
plugins](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-useful-Anki-plugins)

[1]
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1494320602](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1494320602)

[2] [https://www.duolingo.com/](https://www.duolingo.com/)

[3] [https://www.memrise.com/](https://www.memrise.com/)

[4] [https://skritter.com/](https://skritter.com/)

------
rhlala
-Listen a lot, you should aim listen and understand almost perfectly standard day to day conversations, before worry about being fluent, You cant be fluent(and correct phonetically) if you didnt ear the word many times, (and by diferent people). And you need to understand perfectlly, it means fast, if your brain is slowly thinking about how to speak, your mouth will be too, So listen and understand well first.

-School might be good for the first basis, forget it soon (at least for easier languages).

-Find something interesting in this language, about your work, about your hobby, looking local series helps a lot, language+cultural.

-Be around people who dont speak your first language.

------
hmsln
Be passionate about the cultures of the countries that speak this language,
and read the products of these cultures - articles and books about their
peoples, histories, traditions, world views, current events - in that
language. This is how I learned English - from the age of 17 onwards I've been
passionate about Anglo-Saxon cultures, histories and societies (in particular
about the United States) and have widely read about them, in english.

I'll grant you that this is easier if the language you want to learn is spoken
in a large, complex country or countries - such as the English, Mandarin, or
Spanish.

------
wushupork
At different points of my life I spoke Thai, Malay, Italian, French and a
teeny bit of Mandarin. I would say the ones I became extremely fluent with
were the result of total immersion (living in that country - being fully
immersed in it for years).

I've known expats who go to Thailand, live in western communities, associate
with other westerners mostly speaking English and deal with locals mostly on a
limited level don't get very far. I've also met foreigners who come to live
among locals in local neighborhoods and interact with the locals on a daily
basis get very good at the language.

I don't think there's any way around it.

------
dotancohen
The other comments about speaking the language daily (i.e. living in a country
that speaks the language) are dead on. If that is not practical for you, then
you can help retain and increase your _vocabulary_ with Anki [1], but it is no
substitute for actually speaking.

For Android phones, you can sync Anki with Ankidroid [2].

[1] [http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)

[2]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki&hl=en)

------
redtrucker
I'm that red haired guy with a trucker hat who knows 9 languages. You may know
me from the Internet. The key to learning a lot of languages is total
immersion and not being embarrassed for fear of sounding wrong.

------
Jugurtha
I mostly use English. Never been to the U.S. and not in a country where it's
spoken. I've never "studied" English except in school. I just wanted to learn
about Neuro-Linguistic Programing and all the good stuff was in English. I
have a few replies on Reddit about how I acquired languages. I'm on mobile
right now and I'm not accustomed to it (xorg isn't talking to me). hjugurtha
on reddit.

Check out Stephen Krashen, he basically describes how I and a lot of people
have acquired languages.

Gist of it:

\- A _lot_ of reading about a _lot_ of topics.

\- Exposure to the language (audio video).

------
AlexCoventry
What's your goal in learning a language?

In most cases, I would say it's pointless at this stage. Machine translation
is already much better than most people can achieve with 6 months of study,
and it's improving rapidly. I used to love learning languages, but I try to
avoid learning things automation will soon be able to do better than I can
hope to. On the other hand, if you need to be functional in a foreign language
for the sake of some broader short-term goal, it might still be a sensible
investment.

------
Briel
I listened to a lot of Youtube videos and songs in the language. The biggest
impediment to language learning is that it can be extremely boring. If you're
learning it through entertaining content, it gets easier.

On [http://lyricstranslate.com/](http://lyricstranslate.com/), you can find
songs translated from and to a lot of different languages. It's a lot easier
to remember words when it comes with contextual markers: music, it's place in
a line of lyric.

------
Artemix
I'm french, and I speak fluently english thanks to video games and community
forums. But I also started learning norwegian and I'm doing pretty well,
talking woth norwegian friends

------
0x54MUR41
I have been looking forward for this since I asked how to improve the
language, especially English [1]. Thanks to the OP for asking this. I am also
glad there a lot of people share theirs story or method when learning a second
language.

I know it's not only book as the main resource to improve the language. By the
way, any recommendation of book or other resource to improve English language?

Thank you.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690479)

~~~
uberstuber
Check out [http://www.antimoon.com](http://www.antimoon.com)

------
pythonbull
When you're totally immersed in a language, even if you're lost, you'll learn
far faster than everyone else.

Scott H. Young's 9 Tactics for Rapid Learning

[https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2009/12/23/9-tactics-for-
ra...](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2009/12/23/9-tactics-for-rapid-
learning-that-most-people-have-never-heard-of/)

------
DrNuke
Spent five years in the UK after 15 years practising from home, neither native
nor perfectly fluent but understood the place and have found my own voice. I
can even produce non-trivial poems ehehe. If you need business level only, you
don't need to be fluent, just proficient within your field of expertise so
grammar, pronunciation, daily vocabulary and deep into your industry slang.
Good luck!

------
SimeVidas
I moved from Croatia to Germany when I was 6 (and stayed for another ~6
years). It took me maybe 6 months to learn the language (I moved to a regular
school after 3–4 months).

I know this is not the answer you were expecting, but I just wanted to
highlight how quickly small children can learn a completely new language. If
you have kids, consider temporarily moving to a different country :)

------
natch
Let's say (for sake of example) that you only speak English, and you are
learning some other language.

Several things. The more the better; in combination is best: Physically move
to the place. Befriend locals who don't use English. Shun people who do use
English. Take classes. Get a job where your coworkers do not use English in
the workplace. Use Quizlet or flashcards or some similar tool.

------
geff82
Inread lots of english software documentation and listened to podcasts and
thus got fluent at English. I spend the childhood in France and thus became
fluent in French. I married my teacher for the Persian language and by
spending lots of time with her family and by visiting Iran often, I became
close to fluent at Persian (supported by a textbook). Greetings from Tehran :)

------
ofcapl_
I'm Polish and I've learned English by taking a 1-1 class for 1 year and..
Playing games in English, watching movies with eng. subtitles, writing a blog
in English - now I've started to learn Chinese in the same way - but it's a
bit harder due to learning the alphabet (but it's easier that You've might
think about it)

------
justaaron
I moved to another country. Actually, along the way, I traveled to a lot of
countries and spent a fair amount of time in some of them, and I credit
immersion and a desire to communicate in the everyday language of the locale
with my ability to learn over 6 languages after my 30th birthday being
previously mono-lingual with English...

~~~
justaaron
technique-wise: most Indo European languages will have some patterns to verbal
conjugation. Learn how to conjugate 10-20 verbs for various actors (I,
you(formal, informal) he, she, they, etc) in the present tense. Learn a couple
easy "cheater" ways to do past and future tense. Learn 10-20 adjectives, which
are possibly forms of similar words you already know from other languages.
Start conversing, even poorly, but make a point to avoid fellow speakers of
the language you are trying to avoid being stuck in. (in my case, it was about
avoiding people who speak and like to speak english, and trying to speak the
local language wherever possible instead.) I would go and plop myself in the
middle of social situations where it was necessary to converse and where it
flowed easily (often aided by coffee or alcohol lol...)

------
polotics
Get a good dictionary of the language in the language and read it a lot. Get
some basic grammar and asap use it on unsuspecting natives. For the phonemes
that you did not get the chance to assimilate as a child, you're going to have
to learn the mouth/throat movements and feelings like a gymnast learns jumps.
Hope this helps.

------
mectors
I speak 5 languages. In 4 I gave conference speeches, had job interviews and
participated in work discussions. The last one I never managed to master to
the same level for as much books I read or lessons I would follow. The
difference, I never was for a prolonged time in a place where I had no choice
but to learn the language.

------
funkyy
Most of the people will struggle if they do not think in a given language. I
often spoke with people saying they are "fluent". But they weren't and they
could not think in English besides small problems. Once you learn to think in
a given language - most likely you have became bilingual.

------
the_arun
I am assuming you are talking about spoken languages. Necessity and/or
Motivation is usually the force behind it

~~~
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
IME I needed both. I moved to an English-speaking country in my early teens,
knowing virtually no English at all. Naturally I needed remedial classes, but
IIRC I wasn't progressing very quickly, for I wasn't sufficiently motivated,
and would have likely needed to take them throughout secondary school. That is
until I got interested in computers. I devoured all magazines, books, etc. on
computing I could get my hands on, and within that school year I "graduated"
from the remedial classes. So I needed both to become fluent in English.

I've got another example where I had motivation but not necessity. A few years
later I became interested in manga / anime, back when translations of either
were scarce. So I signed up for Japanese classes, and eventually even went to
Japan as an exchange student for a summer. I continued to take lessons in
college, until I'd essentially run out of classes to take. Having done all
that, I would say my Japanese proficiency was merely functional. I probably
could have passed JLPT N1 had I tried, but I didn't bother since I wasn't
planning on working or studying in Japan. In this case, IMO I was reasonably
motivated, but since the necessity component was missing, I never made it over
the hump and became fluent.

Finally, the kpop craze got me somewhat interested in learning Korean, but I
barely know how to say hello / goodbye. I'll blame that on my brain plasticity
though. :-P

------
jetcata
Netflix is a great tool for getting started - choose an interesting series in
the language you're trying to learn, e.g French, and turn on subtitles in that
language (in this case French) - it helps you decipher accents more clearly
and gives you an ear for the language.

------
curiousgal
I am fluent in English, French, Arabic and Spanish, the first is my native
tongue and what helped with the following two was the fact I started learning
them as a child. As for Spanish, it was mostly motivation to keep using it.
Learn to think in that language.

------
bigkm
Haven't become fluent but the trick is to trick your brain into thinking in
the other language

------
digitalengineer
A quick, easy and fun way is to view tv series and films in the other
language. You could add subtitles in your own language at first. If it's a
difficult language watch something you already saw. The context will help, you
already know what it's about.

------
webmaven
Moved to another country at the age of six. Was fluent (about 3rd grade level)
and able to think in the 2nd language in about a year. Took quite a bit longer
for the accent to start fading, and it never has gone away entirely.

------
vilhelm_s
I studied Japanese for a bit in college, so I met a lot of people trying to
learn Japanese. But the only ones who were actually able to speak it fluently
were the ones who had gone an a highschool exchange. Try doing that! :)

------
lumberjack
>How long did it take you?

Depends on the language and were you're coming from but to get C2 proficiency
it takes anywhere from 900 to 4400 hours of immersion according to various
sources.

In my experience that's quite accurate.

------
aprdm
For me it was mostly playing games on-line. Having a clan / team where you
talk with your peers every day is pretty cool.

I also took English classes for several years when I was young.

------
rsmsky1
Also it depends on what language you want to learn. If you want to learn
Spanish you can speak with native speakers who don't speak say English in the
US.

------
barrystaes
What did i do? Watch cartoons as a kid. Back then its nearly always original
English voiceovers but with subtitles.

Nowadays most stuff on TV is dubbed in Dutch :(

------
dustinmr
I moved to Puerto Rico at 32. I didn't really speak any Spanish, though I had
a few years of it in high school. So I had some familiarity with the grammar.
Nearly a decade later, I consider myself fluent, though I know at times I
sound funny to native speakers.

PR turned out to be an exceptionally difficult place to learn Spanish (for
why, see: [http://www.speakinglatino.com/study-spanish-in-puerto-
rico/](http://www.speakinglatino.com/study-spanish-in-puerto-rico/)
particularly #2). It took me longer than it would have taken had I gone
somewhere that English was not an option, and my biggest jumps forward were on
business trips to those places.

When I arrived, I started taking lessons twice a week, and continued that for
about 18 months. I spoke Spanish almost exclusively for work, usually over the
phone, which is much harder and likely helped. A few years in, I moved to
Miami, where I actually speak more Spanish at times (here, social situations
are in Spanish, in PR all social interactions were in English) Later, I
married an Argentine, and found out that I had to learn a whole other
language!

Other things I did that helped:

1- I decided I was going to say dumb things, and that I had to be okay with
that. When someone would point something out, I'd laugh. An example, I
remember mixing up the words for 'butterfly' and slang roughly equivilent to
'faggot' in American English. I didn't know that's what it meant. I had heard
the word somewhere and associated it with butterfly because they sound
somewhat similar. Be ready to laugh at yourself, that makes it much easier to
just throw it out there and try. And let's be honest, pointing at a butterfly
and saying, "Hey look at the faggot" with no other context or offensive intent
is pretty funny. 2- Find people to speak with regularly. Daily if you can. The
really valuable people are those who will correct you without switching to
your language unless absolutely necessary. 3- Focus on communicating, not
grammar. You need enough grammar to be understood, and you should keep
correcting it when you make mistakes, but if you work on communicating
effectively with people, the grammar falls into place. 4- Have fun with it!
Its interesting. Enjoy. 5- Learn the bad words too. I used an offensive word
above. But its important to learn those words, because that's how people
actually converse. You'll learn whole other levels of both language and
culture by doing so. Sometimes, its important to realize when someone is being
offensive, or even that you're being offensive and don't know it.

But mostly, have fun with it.

------
Vibrelli
I worked (illegally) as a restaurant dishwasher at a ski resort in Spain.
You'll learn fast if you are totally immersed and need to communicate to work.
;)

------
mheat
I came to Canada as a German when I was 8. It took about 3 months to learn
English fluently at that age. No tricks, just watching TV and going to school.

------
Vibrelli
I started working (illegally) as a dishwasher in a ski resort in Spain. You'll
learn fast if you need to get a job. Necessity. ;)

------
rsmsky1
I took classes, then studied in another countries, watched tv in that language
and spoke and wrote to people in that language.

------
nightcracker
I learned english by playing videogames on the internet. The joys of being
young and having a plastic brain.

------
enry_straker
Read wodehouse and watched Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister to learn
english in the 80's

------
Gwindarr
Short Answer: I tried to talk to people everyday and took lots of notes. It
took 3 years before I was reasonably fluent and started teaching the language
to other foreigners.

Long Answer: Here's how I learned to speak Thai as my 2nd language.

I moved to Thailand in 2003. I had very little experience with any type of
successful language learning. I had 2 years of high school Spanish which means
I could ask where the bathroom is and knew the difference between "dog" and
"but." I didn't know any Thai when I got on the plane to fly there. I bought a
phrasebook the day I left and tried to learn the numbers and a few basic
phrases on the flight.

I improved a tiny bit each day. Every day people told me how great my Thai
was. It's a nice motivator for a while. I made some half-hearted attempts to
learn the script, but I never really understood how the tone system worked nor
did I have any clue that there were multiple ways to say a P sound and that
this was actually crucial to being able to speak well. After 1 month, I did a
visa run to Laos where I used my "awesome" Thai to help some other travellers
haggle prices and kept us from getting ripped off and also just helped connect
with regular people who couldn't speak English.

The next major event was a couple of months later when I got a job and ended
up moving to another city halfway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I left
Chiang Mai thinking I was pretty fluent in Thai, but I quickly discovered I
was very wrong. In the new city, I struggled to understand what anybody was
saying and I was having to repeat myself all the time wondering what was wrong
with everybody. I eventually accepted the fact that it was me rather than
everyone else which was the problem. I also had no idea how to fix it. The
people I worked with tried to be helpful, but they couldn’t really explain
what I was doing wrong.

At the end of the year, I moved back to Chiang Mai and started studying at an
university there in order to get a visa and take some Japanese classes. While
studying at a Thai friend’s house for final exams, I noticed a large black
book about Thai language that I had never seen or heard of before. I believe
it was written in the 50s for ambassadors and other foreigners who were in
Thailand and included things like how to talk to their servants as well as
sample writings from both educated and uneducated people. I photocopied the
book and went through it over the coming weeks. The book broke down the entire
sound script, sound system and tone rules. It wasn’t well laid out and I could
write a mile long list of things I didn’t like about it, but it was the first
comprehensive explanation I had come across.

I spent about 6 weeks studying and drilling all the exercises and eventually
remapped them so they were more useful. I have almost no attention span so I
would do very short study sessions a few times a day. A session wouldn’t
usually last more than 5 minutes and might be as short as 1-2 minutes. I
remember the day when everything clicked. Words that I used to mix up because
I thought they sounded similar were suddenly so clearly different that I
couldn’t believe I had ever mixed them up in the first place. I knew the tone
system so well that when I pronounced something with the wrong tone, alarm
bells would go off in my head “That can’t be a low tone because it’s spelled
with a low class consonant!” and I would instantly self-correct.

This all happened very fast and my fluency level just skyrocketed at this
point because once I learned how to say things correctly, it became easy to
hear them when others spoke. I still wasn’t fluent, I still made mistakes, but
I gradually fixed any pronunciation mistakes I had been making. Every single
effort I made to learn Thai up until that point was always severely hindered
by the fact that I did not have a solid grasp of the sound system.

Once I was comfortable with the script, if I encountered a new word, I could
just jot it down in a little notepad I always carried and I could look it up
later. Even if I didn’t know exactly how to spell something, I could at least
write it out phonetically and then ask people what the correct spelling was.
If I tried to say something and I got a weird reaction, I’d write down what I
said and ask 4-5 of Thai speakers (never ask just 1!) how I should have said
it. That meant that next time it came up, even if I had forgotten the new
sentence, I could look it up because it was in my pocket. I’d fill up one of
those notebooks every month or 2 and I believe I retained about half of
whatever went inside them.

I believe that there are a few key steps that you can follow to make
significant progress in the first 1-3 months of learning a language: Getting
Started with a New Language:

Step 1) Learn the sound system

Actually spend a few days learning how to say the sounds properly. How much
time will depend on the language This can go a lot faster if you find someone
who can explain things like where exactly your tongue is supposed to be to say
a particular sound. Non-native speakers who speak a language really well tend
to be more helpful than native speakers for this.

Step 2)Learn short, high-frequency sentences and/or dialogues

Make or find a list of sentences/dialoges and learn to say them correctly and
as you get more comfortable. Start slow and practice saying them faster until
you can call them up automatically. When you have 20 or 25 of the right
sentences, you will then have enough ammunition to start faking a
conversation.

Step 3) Talk to people as often as possible Even if you have just 2 or 3
sentences, you can already go out there and blast them off at people and see
where it leads. It’s fun and the stuff you learn putting these into practice
is far more likely to stick because it happened in a real life with another
human. You may need to hear some things 10 or 20 times before you really get
it and that’s perfectly normal. If you are paying attention and keep hearing
something over and over, you’ll remember it eventually. Some stuff will slip
in even when you aren’t paying attention. If you aren’t in the country,
practice on your pets or your friends, but since it's 2016 and you can fly
across the world for under $1000, there's really no excuse to not go there. If
you really can't go, then use sites like italki.com and hire private tutors.
If you don't have money, do language exchanges.

Avoid word lists in the beginning. Knowing how to say “Are you going?” quickly
and with good rhythm and pronunciation has far more value to a beginner than
“purple, aunt, cloudy, bird” or “ shoes.” Once you have structure and sounds,
taking on new words is much easier. I focus on drilling sentence patterns
rather than memorizing grammar rules.

Ideal sentences/dialogues will look like this: The shorter and more
colloquial, the better. E.g., A: What'd you do yesterday? B: I saw a movie. A:
How was it? B: Not bad.

It’s generally ok to take some of those initial sentences from courses like
Teach Yourself and Assimil if that’s all you have available, but I’d
definitely put off learning anything you can’t imagine yourself saying today
or tomorrow. I created a list of sentences for my students a number of years
ago which you may find useful. Feel free to copy and modify.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19OQdDLq9MBoGpPy9I7rB...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19OQdDLq9MBoGpPy9I7rB..).

It’s worth noting that while in Thailand I took years of classes each in
Chinese, Japanese and Korean. While I eventually learned to speak all 3 of
them as well, I have never reached a level of fluency anywhere close to what I
did with Thai. I even 2 spent solid years totally immersed myself in Japanese
(using AJATT mentioned below). I had headphones in my ears blasting Japanese
whenever I wasn’t talking to someone. I watched The Matrix, Shawshank
Redemption and more dubbed in Japanese hundreds of times. I'd rip the audio,
shuffle the scenes and listen to them when I slept, walked or exercised. I
read piles of manga and novels translated from English. It turned out that
none of that was a substitute for actually talking to people everyday like
what I did with Thai. You need to be trying to talk to as many people as
possible for an extended period of time in order to achieve any real semblance
of fluency.

3 years after arriving in Thailand I started to teach Thai to a couple of
friends. It worked great, and over the course of teaching a couple hundred
people, I developed and tweaked a new more efficient approach to learning
Thai. This is only important here because this is how I ended up teaching Thai
and it worked so well that it changed the way I learned as well. Less steps,
more sentences, no memorizing word lists. And for the sake of credibility,
here’s a video of me speaking Thai in 2009, nearly 6 years after I got to
Thailand. I was pretty camera shy, but it’s a general idea of what I was
capable of at the time.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzXuHmO_HY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzXuHmO_HY)

------
lormayna
Do you have some resources to learn a not so common language like Danish?

~~~
arby123
I had a Danish girlfriend for a couple of years who spoke perfect English, so
we didn't practice very much unless we wanted to talk about something without
other people knowing (that's to expensive, let's go, etc). I got pretty far in
Danish with the "Teach Yourself" course. The problem is that some of the
lectures are quite dated, but the phrases will be in your head forever after
listening to the courses on repeat. Hope that helps.

~~~
lormayna
I'm in your situation: my Danish girlfriend speaks correctly English and
Italian (I'm from Italy).

------
rsmsky1
Also pretending not to speak English helps.

------
wepple
duolingo, weekly classes, then spent 3 months in the destination countries
[spanish]

------
a_rahmanshah
I know 5 languages. Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, English and Arabic. Fluent in 4/5\.
Most Indians know 3+ languages.

~~~
steele
"...what did you do?"

:/

~~~
dottedmag
"Grew up in India".

~~~
steele
Haha, I haven't tried that. Hope I roll high for an upper caste!

Still more helpful than cultural brag.

------
csa
WHAT IS FLUENT

First, you have to define what you mean by "fluent". There are several
proficiency scales that may provide some useful insight:

\- Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
([http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre1_en.asp](http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre1_en.asp))

\- ACTFL proficiency guidelines
([https://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-
manuals/ac...](https://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-
manuals/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012))

\- Interagency Language Roundtable scale
([http://www.govtilr.org/](http://www.govtilr.org/))

Here is a quick-and-dirty self evaluation that can give you an idea of the
range of what "fluent" can mean
([http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/readingassessment.pdf](http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/readingassessment.pdf)).

WHAT LEVEL OF PROFICIENCY DO YOU WANT

The next question you have to answer is what proficiency level are you aiming
for.

Most of the resources you listed are fairly good at getting a learner to a low
level of proficiency (CEFRL A2, ACTFL Novice High, or ILR 1). Just try one or
two and find the one you like doing (I am a fan of Duolingo, but ymmv). This
level is roughly "survival mode" language (e.g., basic introductions, basic
getting around and doing things, short and simple small talk). If your goals
are higher than that, then then the process is less transparent, but it mostly
involves working with authentic native materials (texts, videos, audios, etc.)
and learning through interaction with those materials. Note that it is almost
impossible to get beyond a very low level of proficiency with books alone --
the scope of language that would need to be covered gets too large too
quickly. As your proficiency level increases, language learning texts become
reference sources rather than primary sources of learning.

The steps of fluency roughly look something like this (using ILR scale for
simplicity):

\- Memorized words and phrases (ILR 0+).

\- Short, simple sentences (ILR 1). Many/most Americans I know consider this
to be "fluent".

\- Basic paragraphs (ILR 2).

\- Extended prose (ILR 3).

Most of the suggestions I see in this thread focus on ILR 0+ and ILR 1. There
is an entire world of language and language learning beyond that. Note that I
stopped at ILR 3 -- that's the level at which a person can fully function at a
professional level in most contexts. Day-to-day life is largely conducted at
the ILR 1+/2 level.

WHAT SKILL

How do you want to use the language? The four skills are reading, listening,
speaking, and writing. The first two are receptive skills that develop faster
than their productive skill counterpart. Note that materials that are really
good for developing one skill (e.g., reading) might be much less effective or
even slightly counterproductive for learning another skill (e.g., speaking).
That said, it is usually good to develop all skills at least somewhat while
focusing on the skills you are most interested in (i.e., if you want to read,
don't _just_ read -- learning some speaking and listening will help the
development of your reading).

HOW MUCH TIME

Another question is how much time do you have to dedicate to learning the
language. Some languages are more linguistically distant from your native
language than others, and the more distant languages take longer to learn.
Here is a scale used by FSI with languages and hours of instruction needed to
get to ILR 3 in one skill (usu. in speaking):

[http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/lang...](http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-
guide/language-difficulty)

Note that the range of time required is large -- 600 hours in 6 months for
Spanish or French, but 2200 hours in ~20 months for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese,
or Korean. To put that in perspective, when a talented learner of Spanish is
functioning at a full professional level, an Arabic learner who started at the
same time will typically be functioning at a touristy sentence level.

BASICS OF PROCESS

Maybe this is a tl;dr. I am not sure that it makes sense without the above
context. Note that at any time, traveling to or living in a place where the
language is spoken will help tremendously. Also note that having a native
informant can be very useful -- italki is a great resource for native
informants.

1\. Assuming you want to learn a relatively commonly taught language (e.g.,
something like Spanish or Korean rather than something like Xhosa or Igbo),
pick any learning source that you like and stick with that. You will learn the
sounds and script of the language as well as memorize basic words and phrases.
You will eventually be able to create short, simple sentences that may or may
not sound native-like. This is about ACTFL Novice or ILR 0+ or 1 level.

2\. Start looking at level-appropriate native texts, and use learning texts as
references rather than primary sources. Lower-level texts might be things like
ads, announcements, or parts/clips from videos that cover casual conversation.
Higher-level texts might be newspapers, non-fiction books, most general
interest TV shows (i.e., not ones on opinionated and/or abstract topics like
politics or religion). Flashcards can be useful (esp. for specialized
vocabulary in a field you are interested in), but you will want to move away
from flashcards and memorization gradually. You will need to immerse yourself
in the language as much as possible to approach full functionality. This does
not require you to be in a place where the language is spoken, but that
usually helps a lot. This will get you to the ACTFL Intermediate or ILR 2
level.

3\. To go beyond step 2, you will largely need to start functioning like a
native. Your day-to-day socializing and media consumption will be almost
entirely in the target language. The reference texts you typically use will be
the ones that are written for native speakers of the language you are learning
(e.g., a Japanese-Japanese dictionary). This is ACTFL Advanced or ILR 3 level.

------
dorfuss
Do you remember the 10 000 hours principle, popularised in Malcolm Gladwel's
_Outliers_? Well, it comes from research by Swedish-American scientist, Anders
Ericsson. I talked with him. He says that there is no precise, scientific
definition of "fluency", so you actually cannot construct an experiment that
could determine which method works best.

In short: to reach moderate fluency at B2/C1 level, learning any language,
would require a couple of hours every day for about 3 years. But there is -NO-
optimal method!

I have put a considerable amount of effort to research this question as a
semi-professional (currently studying applied linguistics) and for my own
private use.

I've reached fluency in English (and to a lesser extent in Hebrew) as a second
language. I've also learned and sometimes use Spanish (learned at a
university), German (high school, I live in Germany now), Danish (university),
French (high school), Ukrainian (university), Italian, Latin (high school),
Classical Greek and Aramaic.

People studying full time Chinese, Arabic or any other language get their BA
in 3 years and are quite fluent. It often requires about 10 hours a day of
work (classes, reading, drills). It's hard. No short cuts.

On the other hand, however, I'd say that you need about 50 verbs and about 200
other words with almost no grammar to communicate. Where I work I speak
Portuguese (a language I don't know!) German and Spanish with a girl from
Portugal who speaks only Portuguese. The notion of "learning" a language is a
construct of our education system. Grammar is almost useless is day to day
communication. You only need both sides to wish to communicate, and there has
to be no superiority and inferiority in the relationship. Somehow a natural
"pidgin" grammar emerges spontaneously - you may not know past tense, but then
you say simply "yesterday" \+ infinitive and it works perfectly well. The more
I talk with Amalia the more Portuguese I get. And then I use it with two other
friends from Brazil. It simply works - with no formal training, courses,
textbooks. In class you are focused on correctness, not on getting your
message across, and you are graded for correctness. This creates stress,
confusion, doubt in your abilities.

My Portuguese, however, would not be good enough to get a job in Portugal. And
my English, by the way, which I use with ease, would most probably be not
enough to work as a journalist or in a radio station, although I read and
listen to English between 5 to 10 hours every day.

What the research about language learning teach us? Almost NOTHING! It only
confirms common truths about what helps: immersion, having no stress, living
in the country, being self-reflective about your methods, good resources,
practice, reading, radio, tv, vocab drills etc.

I talked with prof. Anders Ericsson about why is it that 40 years of serious
systematic research has not produced ANY conclusions. You might have heard
about Stephen Krashen and his "silent period" and "natural acquisition
method", in short: adults learn just like children. This method is very
popular among polyglot YouTubers such as the popular Steve Kaufman[1]. The
most important principle of this method is that you don't learn grammar at
all. The research on second language acquisition is NOT CONCLUSIVE! I believe
in science (the same science that builds transistors smaller than visible
light waves) and apparently Krashen's theory has not been confirmed or
rejected which means that we still have no clue what works and what doesn't.
I've spent tens or maybe even hundreds of hours reading about Krashen and I am
only frustrated. Language research is tricky, there are dragons, don't go
there.

I spent over a year on scholarship studying Hebrew, I was very methodical
about it, I made beautiful statistics, graphs, precisely measuring everything
for 12 months and my conclusion is that: leaning a language is freakingly
difficult, requires inhumane tons of hours, and that brute force works (Anki
drills). I had excellent conditions, money for free, a room, teachers, no
family, no concerns. I can now (slowly) read academic papers and watch movies,
but I just cannot imagine anyone (not super smart) learning any language
having a (intellectually demanding) day job and kids, and reaching fluency on
a graduate level.

I am about to start leaning Arabic and I feel I will die trying (I'm 30). With
just about 3-4 hours a week I expect to be able to read Judeo-Arabic in 15
years.

Resources (in fairly random order):

* Julia Herschensohn, Martha Young-Scholten (ed.), _Second Language Acquisition (The Cambridge Handbook)_ , Cambridge University Press, 2013.

* Carol Griffiths (ed.) _Lessons from Good Language Learners_ , Cambridge University Press, 2008.

* Christine Pearson Casanave, _Controversies in Second Language Writing, Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction_ , University of Michigan, 2004.

* John W. Schwieter (ed.) _Innovative Research and Practices in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism_ , John Benjamins Publishing, 2013.

* Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool, _Peak, secrets from the new science of Expertise_ , 2016. (interesting but not strictly scholarly)

* Stephen D. Krashen, _Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition_ , University of Southern California, 1982.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve](https://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve)

------
jbchoo
Singapore education system: bilingual mindset. How long? Since birth, 20 over
years.

------
mrtannerjones
OVERVIEW: \- The "One(ish) Metric That Matters" \- Daily routines \- How long
it takes

\- OMTM:

The ONE statistic that correlates the most with moving the needle from
complete beginner to high level proficiency with the language is 'Hours of
Conversation w/ a native speaker'. Everything you do, and every tool you use
should help increase that particular stat.

You learn vocab at the beginning to help yourself extend a conversation from a
1 second 'Hello' to a 10 second 'Hello, what do you do for fun?' \+ response.
You work on listening so that when the person responds you can extend the
conversation a few seconds further because you understood what they said.

The One(ISH) part of this metric is that you will notice that as your overall
'Total Hours of Conversation' increases, the average 'length' of each of your
conversation does as well. The only way you'll be able to realistically
increase your hours of conversation is to move from 10 seconds exchanges to
longer conversations.

At the beginning, all efforts can be judged by their merit on how much they
add to your time talking. Because of this, I strongly suggest picking ONE
topic and ONE specific type of person to speak with, because learning to speak
at length and in depth about soccer or programming or food with a friend adds
to your 'Hours of Conversation' metric much faster than dabbling in all three.

This is why the Mormon church is able to consistently churn out fluent
speakers of second languages in only a few months, because they have one kind
of conversation (religious) with one type of person (prospective convert) over
and over and over. Their 'hours of conversation' metric is through the roof.

As a side note, this is what people actually mean when they say 'immersion'.
They mean 'hours of conversation'. It's why you can learn a second language
fluently equally as well from living in the country as staying in your home
country. Living in a different country just makes it easier to find people to
talk with.

\- Daily Routines: Every day, attempt to speak to a native speaker or speakers
for a combined total of 1 hour. Every day, write, memorize, and include in
conversation...

* 5 new vocab words * 3 new phrases * 1 new story

It helps to keep these related to each other. Here would be a good set of
those if you were a beginning English speaker

5 Words: house, clean, messy, friends, party 3 Phrases: I need to clean the
house. I am going to the party. I want to invite my friends. 1 Story: Last
year, my friends said they wanted to have a party. I said that we could have
the party at my house. So I cleaned the house for the whole day to get ready.
Lots of people came, and we had fun. At the end of the party, my house was
really messy.

Stories aren't typically very long, but as you get better, you can add more
detail.

\- How long does it take:

Every day you need to do the 5-3-1 practice, and aim to have 1 hour of talk
time with a native speaker.

At first, your talk time will be excruciating: How do you fill an hour of
conversation with only a handful of vocab words? The short answer is "you
can't", but early on you can do something like learn the phrase 'what do you
like to do?', combined with the day's vocab can take you to 'what does your
brother like to do?', 'what does your mom like to do', 'what does your best
friend like to do'. You can repeat those questions to several different people
to try to get your 'Conversation Hours' as high as reasonable. Don't be bummed
out if at the beginning you are struggling to put in only more than a few
minutes. You'll get it. Try to make the next days conversations a little bit
longer.

But, if you make it to the 90 day mark, and you have been diligent about your
study efforts, it means that you have AT LEAST 90 stories, 270 phrases and at
least 450 vocab words, and you will have dozens of hours of practice speaking.

Once you've arrived at that point, you will experience something magical: On
day 91, go speak with a new native speaker you haven't spoken with yet, and
they will (almost without fail) ask you 'how long have you been learning
<language>?' and when you respond '3 months', you will get your very first
'HOLY ____, that 's incredible! You sound like you've been speaking for at
least a year! Maybe 2!' and you will fill with pride and think to yourself
'Yeah! I am doing really wel... HOLY ____I understood when that guy
complimented me and I didn 't even realize it wasn't in English!'

That burst of pride and excitement will be enough to carry you from working
proficiency to fluent. The hardest part is convincing yourself that you are a
'language learner', and once you experience the above and realize that you
are, the rest of the journey is easy.

Best of luck!

Source: My brothers and I are all former Mormon missionaries who learned
second languages and were put in charge of helping along other new
missionaries learn the language. My brothers learned while they were in
Uruguay and Spain, I learned in suburbia, USA.

------
crispytx
Java for Dummies ;)

------
peelle
There are already some great answers, but here is my two cents.

> What did you do to become fluent in another language?

For me the short answer was I took classes for the beginner levels, and
actively looked for opportunities to use the language. After the beginner
stages I self studied, with the help of iTalki teachers, tutors, and friends
that spoke my L2.

The long answer is: 1) I took courses that taught me the fundamentals. By that
I mean all the sounds a language can produce, and the basics of it's writing
system. 2) The course covered reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Each
one reinforced the others, along with frequent testing. 3) I spent a minimum
of 2 hours a day 5 days a week practicing, reviewing, and learning, my first
year learning the language. 4) Once I was at an A2/B1 level, I took a 4 week
intensive summer course in my L2's country. During that time I transitioned
from learning about my L2 with English to talking about it and learning it
using only the L2. 5) I would constantly put my self into real world
situations that forced me to use my L2. For example, as a beginner one thing I
did was go to a local L2 restaurant. I tried to order in my L2, and tried to
understand what some of the patrons were saying. I also went to conversation
exchanges, and culture meetups. There are many things you can do. 6) I didn't
limit myself to what the course taught, and actively searched for things that
interested me, like dubbed versions of movies I liked, or vocabulary related
to my hobbies. 7) Do things that keep you motivated. For me this was reading
positive blogs from people like Benny Lewis, or scheduling milestones.

I could go on and on, about specifics, like memorization techniques, or the
importance of speaking as early and as often as possible, but there are tons
of articles on the web about that stuff, and any language learner that looks
outside their course will find them.

> How long did it take you?

There is no one size fits all answer for this. Depending on how different your
target language is from your native language, and what you have defined fluent
as this number can be all over the place.

Also, I find that with each language I learn, the next one becomes easier to
learn. For example after learning 50 Mandarin works a week as a beginner,
learning 50 Spanish works a week seemed like a cake walk, especially with all
the cognates. Another example is I am learning Japanese now, and learning
Kanji is a cake walk for me. First because I already learned to write
characters in Mandarin, and second because most kanji that I have seen have
the same or similar meaning as their Chinese counter part.

For me personally learning Mandarin. I was conversational at a very basic
level after a little over a year. After two years I was comfortable with day
to day conversations. Where I am at now after three years is that I can keep
up with group conversations and even participate, but not yet at the same
level as English.

Also, the learning is never done. There comes a point where learning becomes
more passive, you pick up words naturally from a conversation or you just
review a bit every once in a while, but that usually only applies to people
who end up speaking their L2 all the time. Like someone who has moved to their
target languages country. The rest of us still need to set aside time for
practice and study, or the skill will rust.

> It seemed like you were implying a question with your first statement of
> being overwhelmed with choice.

Pick one and stick to it. I would suggest you find a book, software, or
course, that covers reading, writing(not typing), listening and speaking. If
it doesn't cover one of these and you are willing to supplement it, that's
fine. Otherwise find another option. When you are deciding skim it and make
sure you won't get too bored with it.

------
joe563323
Born in a country ruled by british in the past century.

------
bitL
Sink or swim.

------
shin_lao
I'm fluent in several languages (> 3).

When I learned my first foreign language (as a kid, in the 80's), there were
only paper dictionaries and books. Software is a great improvement over paper
dictionaries, however I’m unsure about apps. I tried a couple of applications
and have been unconvinced.

That being said, the Internet makes it very easy to access content in the
language you study and even find people with whom to speak. Youtube for
example is full of videos on topics you like.

Let’s ignore software and tools, as it’s really secondary (yes, really).

The first step is the why? If it’s just for the pleasure, that may not be
enough. There must be a reason, otherwise you are likely to give up. For
example: work, living in the country, strong interest in the culture,
relatives, origins, etc.

The difficulty of learning a foreign language depends on the distance between
your native tongue and the foreign language. It’s very hard for an English
speaker to learn Mandarin (and vice-versa), however French is a lower hanging
fruit (you already share thousands of words of vocabulary).

It’s also very dependent on you. Some people are just better than others at
learning languages. Just accept it and go at your rhythm.

The best advice I can give is that you should find a _native_ teacher. I can’t
stress the importance of learning with a native enough. It’s paramount for
pronunciation and idiomatic phrasing. I would almost say that you are wasting
your time with a non-native teacher, however competent she may be.

Why a teacher and not _self-teaching_?

I would refrain from self-teaching, as this will give you horrible
pronunciation and probably give you bad habits. There is a point where an
accent ceases to be cute and makes listening to you uncomfortable, don’t
underestimate pronunciation. Remember: unlearning is one order of magnitude
harder than learning.

In addition, learning a language is a serious commitment and without someone
to give you homework every week (and checking that homework) you will very
likely give up, even if you have excellent self-discipline.

Depending on your personality you can either have one to one sessions (for
example with Skype) or work in group. I personally prefer one to one greatly.

Having a teacher and looking for that teacher will also test your resolve. :-)
Every time someone mentions “I’m learning X”, I ask, “Why don’t you take
courses?”. If the answer “I don’t have time”, I know the person isn’t serious
about learning.

The temptation to give up will be at every corner as studying languages is
very hard and the duration is measured in months, if not years. You will
struggle, a lot. There are times where you will make no progress and seem
unable to remember anything: that’s normal.

Speaking a foreign language is one of the greatest things in life. It expands
your horizons and will overall make you a better, more understanding, humbler,
human being. The pleasure of conversing with foreigners in their native tongue
will belittle all the efforts you endured.

