I traveled to Japan for a few weeks last year and had grand plans to learn a bunch of phrases, but got lazy and punked out. I still had a great time, everyone was super kind, but it was embarrassing how well so many folks spoke English and I couldn’t even be assed to put in a bit of work.

My wife is half Mexican and we’re in California, and she gets a lot of people initially talking to her in Spanish, which she can’t speak beyond an ordering food level, and would like to change that.

What’s the best way for us both to get to a beginning conversational level in Spanish? I tried Duolingo a while ago and it was eh, and I’ve heard it’s all AI these days. Any other recommendations?

started learning French during the pandemic, first with some app but then switched to an 1-1 online course, one hour every week, and stayed with it. right now I'm somewhere at B1 level which might but be much, but suffices for reading (technical) books, newspapers, and everyday communication. i try to listen to a lot of French music (with lyrics on, to help me get into the rhythm if the language and maybe learn some new lingo), watch movies (Love Star Trek), listen to the radio, bla blub.

the things is to find something you care about in the other language/culture. then, learning the language will give you access to something which is already important to you and keeping up with your learning becomes more easy. my2c

Comprehensible input will be useful for both of you, but particularly for your wife if she already has some Spanish. Dreaming Spanish is what I've been using, but there's also plenty of comprehensible input channels on YouTube.

I'd start by joining a language learning community. I never saw one when I was on Reddit, but the biggest one on Lemmy is over on Hexbear: !languagelearning@hexbear.net — there are others if you don't fancy Hexbear, but Hexbear's has twice as many subscribers as the next largest one. Or join multiple.

I'm not really one to give advice. I know a few words in a few different languages (including Japanese and Spanish) but I've never gone so far as to learn another language. So I'm really not the best one to ask.

As far as method goes, I never had luck with Duolingo, either. I've heard the best ways involve private tutors, and joining language exchange communities. These, I don't know about any specific ones. But the idea is, you (and your wife) want to learn Spanish, so you join and people who want to learn English but know Spanish work with you. They help you with Spanish, mostly by talking to you (or typing to you) in Spanish, and what you don't know, they help you with. Then you talk to them in English and help them where they need help. And you learn together, as a team.

I love Japanese and I listen to Japanese music. I also go to Japanese restaurants and attempt to speak Japanese. I do let them know I'm learning and apologise in advance if I get something wrong. For example, Japanese uses double vowels which can be tricky. The word yuki means snow, but the word yuuki means courage. (These can also be used as names. And no, I don't know the Japanese glyphs.) They both sound like they look, but you would pronounce the U ("oo" sound) twice. "Yoo-key" or Yoo-oo-key." But Japanese people would do it quickly, so the latter sounds more like "Yooo-key" (note the extra O). Though I think if you're pointing at snow and hold the U sound too long, they'll know you mean "yuki" and not "yuuki."

Their old URL seem to be broken, so:

• https://app.dreaming.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingSpanish

I used Language Transfer and Michel Thomas' courses when starting to learn Italian and found them really helpful in getting a foothold into the language.

The Michel Thomas course was longer and went in more depth, but I preferred the vibe of language transfer. The Michel Thomas course seemed to be aimed at people looking to cheat on their wife on a business trip, because a lot of the conversation was about inviting women to get a drink :( Despite that, it was still useful.

Unlike the language apps, these courses did a good job of getting me to think in real-time. Despite only being able to express and understand basic things, they gave me confidence to try and say things. Even without much vocab, I was able to express myself in a simple way: "I like that red thing over there", and I was able to pick up new words with "what does this part mean?" or "can you repeat?" etc. So far, it's the best method I've found to bootstrap enough of the language to start talking and picking up the rest by osmosis.

For learning language learning, I believe that this book currently is the best fact based resource available:

https://fluent-forever.com/book/

Use Michel tomas intro to get an understanding of the language grammar and flow

Use Memrise or any flash card software to memorise the top 500 most common words.

Then start watching peppa pig with subtitles

Read simple kids books

Do the above for a couple months, then go to a Spanish class or join hellotalk.

This is the fastest way without full immersion

The “forever” part is hyperbolic, but I hear that it’s otherwise quite good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29tITqtnJU4

There's a new edition of Gabriel Wyner's Fluent Forever, and it's a perfect time to revisit. Will it make you fluent? Forever? It changed my approach to language learning ten years ago, and he's updated his approach with even more language learning tips. So if you're not sure how to learn a language, we'll talk about exactly what you can learn from fluent forever to become a polyglot.If that's your thing.

Live where it is spoken.

I use dreaming spanish too! And vidioma.com for mandarin.

For anyone interested, here's a detailed explanation from the ppl at dreaming spanish on why it works.

Looks like they're having some DNS issues atm.

watch a series you like so much in another language

The communists are learning new languages, the horror!

Wow, a mod removed my comment for suggesting that hexbear be avoided? That's not even a controversial take, it's been defederated from major instances.

Spend a few weeks in Mexico if you can get away for that long. Or consider taking a class (in person, not online) if you don't mind the issues that entails.

Sesame Street in Spanish is a thing too: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sesame+street+in+spanish

It's certainly a controversial take on communist-friendly instances.

Check out Dreaming Spanish. They are using Automatic Language Growth method which imitates the way children learn their first language. Instead of learning the mechanics of the language, you naturally absorb it by immersing yourself in native content supplied with lots of context such as gestures, sounds, images etc. The end result is supposed to be developing an intuitive sense of the language and reaching a near native-like level of competence in it.

Combined-Arms:

EVERY dimension you can stack, syncopating between them, so that whichever leverage works for you, it's dismantling the unconscious-mind entrenched non-knowing you're working on displacing.

Pimsleur is the standard for making language automatic.

The problem is that it doesn't show you how your form the sounds ( may not be your problem, definitely is a problem with more-foreign-languages, for me ).

yt videos in the other languages, showing both simple-basics & social-situations, or whatever it is that you want to be watching ( maybe high-school science would be more interesting to watch than social-drama/stuff ).

Flashcards for getting the has-to-be-imprinted stuff, like verb-tenses, automatic..

intentional-socializing: asking some specific friend/group to help one learn..

Tandem, where you pair-up with someone for sake of learning: you help them learn, & they help you learn..

In short, use every angle/leverage you can, & keep applying them, until the ignorance yields, leaving language-facility in its place.

Young-people are essentially learning-sponges, so this perspective makes no sense for them, but for old people, this is how it works.

Oh, & learn songs, too: they're learned by one's non-linguistic hemisphere ( right, for 85% of the population ), so that's another angle/lever to be using in learning language, too.

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I’m surprised no one seemed to mention this yet but IMO the best way is to find a good teacher.

Books (preferably with some sort of audio media) and apps can be decent but you need a lot of self-discipline and they won’t adapt to what you are struggling with.

Of course, nothing beats full immersion in a society that only speaks the language you want to learn, but even that, a complete beginner will be much better off with an actual teacher.

I've sailed the seven seas traveled to different countries for old pimsler cd rips and just talked to people because I can't be arsed to leave my house

They're very fun chatting along with alone on my commutes