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This is correct. Many highly efficient language learners, like polyglots who learn languages as a hobby, know about this forgotten wisdom.

Along those lines, there's a small French 100+ year old language learning company called Assimil [1]. They're universally beloved by polyglots [2] [3]. They make courses out of clever dialogues with your First Language on one side and your Target Language on the other. The courses come with audio for your Target Language. They're cheap, around $50-$100, and packed with enough information to bring a total novice to respectable intermediate status.

I used their English-Spanish course to learn Spanish extremely quickly. After a few months of study, I was able to watch native Spanish TV programs with Spanish subtitles and understand 80-90% of them. I would emphatically recommend their method to anyone. I am not affiliated in any way with the company.

There's also the Listening-Reading method, which many polyglots swear by, once you've gotten your bearings in your Target Language. It's a rigorous but fun method of learning your Target Language by enjoying audiobooks of your choice.

Incidentally, it is wise, if you're serious about learning a language quickly, to seek polyglot forums and to use their accumulated knowledge to smooth the path ahead of you.

[1] https://www.assimil.com [2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=assimil [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alanguage-learners.org...




Any polyglot forums your recommend?


my 2 favorites:

https://forum.language-learners.org has excellent polyglots

https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning is good, though it has more beginners. however, it has a dramatically better UI

I often use Google's "site:" feature to search them

I eventually discovered that, while everyone has their idiosyncrasies, the best learners share 80% of their methods and mindsets in common. I also noticed things that cause failure by paying attention to what struggling students were saying and what the strongest students were politely chastising them for


FWIW I would totally read your blog post about that if you wrote one!


Thanks!


https://refold.la has a good community.




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