Ask HN: How did you learn a foreign language? - throwaway3157
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spacetone
Total submergence into the culture of the other language 24/7\. For example,
if you were to try to learn Spanish, start watch Novellas in Spanish, and
listening to music in Spanish and watching soccer games in Spanish, and
reading articles online in Spanish... The goal is to totally emerge yourself
into the other language, while at the same time still learning the language.

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vivalibre
This. I took all the Spanish available to me in middle school through
undergrad. Moved to Honduras, and I could barely understand anything. Watching
Honduran TV with Spanish subtitles, and spending a lot of time around people
who didn't speak English, worked... although it was a good four or five years
before I could think and speak in Spanish. Still, worth it!

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WheelsAtLarge
I learned by getting into conversations that forced me to speak the language.
It's amazing how quickly you remember the basics if you don't want to look
foolish or sound like an idiot.

Reading and listening use different types of memories so that's not enough to
learn it. You have to actively recall to learn the language.

Also, keep in mind that there is no such thing as permanent fluency. You have
to continue to practice it if you want to always be fluent. Even native
speakers will lose their fluency in a language if they don't speak it. I've
seen that a lot with kids that learned their parent's language at home but
decide that the will only speak English once they start school. They
eventually lose their fluency. They might understand their original language
but will definitely have trouble speakng it.

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PaulHoule
By doing.

I three years of German in high school, and one semester in college. I never
got that "der", "die", "das" stuff figured out until I got interested in
reading German. At that point I found that you have to know how to parse
grammatical agreement in German if you want to know who did what to who.

I spent a year working in Germany later on and at one point I realized that I
could go to to the bank and take out money and do many similar tasks.

Since then I've gotten into Japanese animation which I watch with subtitles.
At this point I figure I've spent as much time listening to Japanese as a
child does in the language acquisition phase. Sometimes I forget to turn the
subtitles on and it takes me a while to remember.

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mrwnmonm
Worth mentioning:
[http://www.runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html](http://www.runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html)

