22 ms·

How I learned French in 12 months (2020)

• acheilies 5y ago
• sydthrowaway 5y ago
  Is the same possible for Spanish
• WhitneyLand 5y ago
  Maybe the best first words for a dev to learn in French? Someone walked into my office and said Ça marché! After humbly reminding I was the FNAG (freaking new Anglo guy) he said, it means the new build is working great!
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    If you pay close attention, about 60% of words in English are either the same in French or share a latin root.
• nobleach 5y ago
  This is actually a really cool article. I'm fascinated that we can learn languages this way. Immersion is definitely the avenue I'd seek but, often, that is not possible. The time table the author kept was amazing. One thing caught my eye as it brought back some fun memories: Verlan is equivalent to our Pig Latin. The biggest difference is, many places in France actually use it! Here in the States, we tend to use Pig Latin around small children when we don't want them to understand what we're saying.
• Koshkin 5y ago
  As with any learning, dedication is the key. You won’t believe how much progress one can make in just a couple of weeks of a persistent study.
• onion2k 5y ago
  Duolingo is incredibly good if you're receptive to spaced repetition learning.
  • nicbou 5y ago
    After a certain point, you need to talk with a human. I can't praise Chatterbug enough.
    • onion2k 5y ago
      Yeah, that's reasonable. It's incredibly good, but Duolingo alone isn't enough to become fluent. As a way to introduce yourself to a language it's brilliant though.
  • wimagguc 5y ago
    A huge Duolingo fan and I play every day, but I wonder whether it's actually helping me to learn anything. I've been using it to study mandarin characters for the 3rd year now, but when I actually see Chinese text there's barely anything I recognize. Admittedly, I spend maybe 5-15 minutes per day on average and most of that I do in a rush, but the expectation still sounds fair -- reading would be relatively passive knowledge too.
    • ollysb 5y ago
      I spent good year using Duolingo, I made steady progress, but only in Duolingo. It hasn't had any impact on my ability to hear/speak the language.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • wbsss4412 5y ago
        It can be very hard to perceive the progress you’ve made if you aren’t actually putting it into practice. Speaking from personal experience, if you’ve actually put in substantial time in the last year, you’ll find that a lot of that practice will demonstrate itself over the course of a few conversation classes with a teacher.
• reactspa 5y ago
  > 11/18: Complete beginner (A0) excluding basics like “hello, do you speak English?” OP: please clarify what the above means. When you say you did "A0", I'm presuming it's a level in the French proficiency measurement system. Is it just the exam that you completed, or was there accompanying course material as well? If the latter, please point me to the actual course material you used. I've been learning French for a few years now (Michel Thomas method). I'd conjecture that this was the most helpful (considering you weren't in an immersion situation to help you): iTalki
  • bigDinosaur 5y ago
    A0 isn't official but it's a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...
  • realusername 5y ago
    > OP: please clarify what the above means. When you say you did "A0", I'm presuming it's a level in the French proficiency measurement system. https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-referen...
  • diffeomorphism 5y ago
    > I'm presuming it's a level in the French proficiency measurement system. Not quite, no. The system is linked in the first paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R... it begins at A1. So "A0" is just word play for "I know nothing", no exam necessary ;-).
    • reactspa 5y ago
      Thanks!
• Chris2048 5y ago
  > No heart system What! This is revolutionary! The bullshit heart system is absent?!
• blodkorv 5y ago
  And i have been studying for 3 years by my self and no where near to be able to say i "know" french. Some people just are better at learning stuff than others.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Yeah. I had four years of high school French and was in maybe the top 25% of the class (barely). But I've never spent any appreciable time in France and, even when I was at my best, was maybe "OK" for written French and thoroughly mediocre for spoken French. So the idea that it just takes a bit of dedicated effort to get very good is not true broadly. I realized on my last trip to Paris with a friend that I know a lot more than someone who has never studied the language at all but it's still pretty bad.
• bitdivision 5y ago
  A lot of discussion on this last time it came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22341983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22341983
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rozenmd 5y ago
  I managed to get from A1.2 (started there from having a few holidays in France, having listened to a Michel Thomas audiobook once) to B2.4 in two years before moving to France. The InnerFrench podcast helped a lot - I had french courses twice a week, 2 hours each, and the podcast kept french in my mind on weekends/days off. That being said, after moving here it still took 3-4 months to get comfortable with just how bloody fast they speak French in real life.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    That's the big thing with me as well. I would comfortably say I'm at a B2 level, but the french from native speakers in casual conversation is so fast sometimes. It gave me a new appreciation for how fast I probably speak english.
    • plainnoodles 5y ago
      I took 5 years of french in high school and really loved it, so I leaned into it heavily and read novels in French, etc. I felt pretty confident in my vocab and grammar, and I even had a decent time reading some of the Old French stuff from classic novels (I disliked my English teacher and loved French, and since English class at that point is less about the language and more about literary analysis, I asked if I could read the books (where the original was in French) in their native language, and she could hardly refuse such a reasonable and intellectually curious request! So anyway I read Madame Bovary and L'Etranger and a few other older books whose titles escape me). And on the more modern side, I could read French newspapers quite well too. But at no point could I ever reliably make out more than the gist of what an actual French speaker, speaking normally, said. We have two Belgian exchange students and I struggled to understand them, and just watching French video content, similar struggles there. I don't know if it's like this for every language where native speakers just talk really fast and there's a large gulf in comprehension speed for learners to close, or if it's something specific to French, but I know your pain here.
      • sersi 5y ago
        In my experience with other languages (can't say for French since that's my native language), it's normal. I'd say that for someone at your level who has extensive vocabulary and good reading comprehension, just staying a month or two in France would be enough for you to get to the point where you wouldn't have issues understanding French speakers speaking normally. Also, once you do understand French speakers, you might not understand other accents. For example, even as a native French speaker, I struggle with Québécois.
• _benj 5y ago
  I came across the Michel Thomas Method[0] on some comments here some time ago, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it! When I first started learning French I took a "school" approach to it, get a dedicated notebook, buy books, buy cards to make my own flash cards, schedule 1 hour a day... needless to day that I failed, not just that but I hated it all! So I decided to make it fun (the way I learn programming or other things that I enjoy) and the Michel Thomas was super fun for me :-) It my motivation to mow the lawn since mowing the lawn is my french listening time. The other day I got a random marketing email with some french in it trying to be fancy, and I was so happy when I could understand everything it said before having to read the english translation! I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just really enjoy his approach to teaching languages [0] https://www.michelthomas.com/ https://www.michelthomas.com/
  • jgmmo 5y ago
    I second this. Michel Thomas french CD's are awesome. I don't like the other languages they offer as much, but the french lessons by Michel himself are the BEST language program I've ever heard.
  • honkdaddy 5y ago
    I'm intrigued! This seems super promising. How's your conversational French after having listened to the program?
    • mierz00 5y ago
      I went through Michel’s French courses before moving to France and I think they helped me greatly. I won’t say that I could speak fluently from the start, but It gave me a very strong foundation to build on.
    • _benj 5y ago
      The slight challenge for me was seeing the words, because french words don't sound like one would think! But after getting a few rules in my mind like "oi" sounds like "wah" in english and the ending of the french words are mostly not pronounced, it was easier for me going from the sound and meaning (concept) of the word to the reading part. But the most important thing is that it is fun, and it's a lot easier to stick to fun things!
• quacked 5y ago
  Advice for people trying to learn a language: 1. Focus on learning the accent and intonation before you focus on learning vocabulary 2. Speaking to a native speaker daily will bring far more proficiency than studying will
  • j1elo 5y ago
    That reminds me of the saying: Languages are (best) learned in the cradle or in bed (no idea where I heard it first)
• criddell 5y ago
  The author criticizes the way we teach languages in schools but I’m not sure you can do much better when most of the class is only there because they have to be there. Frankly, I think it’s remarkable how well schools do.
  • plainnoodles 5y ago
    This is my experience as well. If you're just there to fulfill your credit hour obligations, you can squeak through managing to shield yourself from truly learning much of the language at all. I think much of the value, though, is in the opportunity it affords people who find a passion in it. I really loved French in high school, and the combination of the support/resources it offered (a book, a teacher) and the regimen (I think French was either 3 or 5 times per week? I can't recall) was just right to let me learn as much as I wanted to, and also enough regimen to keep me coming back to it even if I wouldn't have otherwise necessarily felt like it if left to my own devices.
• dorianmariefr 5y ago
  I would say C1 is what I consider the level to tell that you have learned a language.
  • dEnigma 5y ago
    I don't know how the tests are structured and therefore what those levels mean in practice, but simply from the description on Wikipedia[1] I'd consider B2 quite enough of an achievement when it comes to learning a language: Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R... (also linked in the article)
  • rozenmd 5y ago
    The French government considers B1/B2 sufficient to become a citizen.
    • csunbird 5y ago
      So does Germany
  • contravariant 5y ago
    That's closer to mastery of a language than merely having 'learned' it. To me something like B1 is a much more important threshold, since it's the point where you start to be able to use a language in an uncontrolled environment. Obviously becoming more practised and fluent is important but to me that's a less important difference than being able to use the language for more than some predefined scenarios. If only because it allows you to learn unsupervised.
  • dsiegel2275 5y ago
    It really depends on what your goals are with the language. If your goal is to "be able to communicate basic needs while visiting Paris for five days" then A2 is likely sufficient. If your goal is to "converse on a range of subjects with locals while living in France for a month" you're probably needing closer to a B2.
• shawabawa3 5y ago
  > 2/19: Started lessons on Italki, roughly once a week For anyone hoping to learn a language I think this step is the key. Probably worth the same as doing everything else on the list put together. 2 hours a week will probably get you from A1 to B1 in 3-6 months (Italki are 1 on 1 language classes)
  • qnsi 5y ago
    why would you say so? There are many linguists who think it's more important to get comprehensible input, then produce comprehensible output [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwjkqUBztiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwjkqUBztiM
    • wbsss4412 5y ago
      Paying someone to speak to you is going to provide comprehensible input and output.
    • tjader 5y ago
      Isn't individually targeted comprehensible input a large part of a 1-on-1 class? I would expect a good teacher to speak a lot during those 2 hours, and to properly adjust his speech so that's always pushing the boundaries of what the student can understand.
    • jodrellblank 5y ago
      That approach feels intuitively wrong to me[1]; people who watch sports don't automatically become good athletes. People who look at pictures don't automatically become good at drawing. People who read don't automatically become good authors. People who watch cooking shows on TV don't automatically become good at cooking. Students who watch programming videos notoriously don't automatically become able to code anything the compiler accepts. Reviewing study notes by re-reading them is one of the less effective study strategies, compared to flashcards which prompt you to recall and generate answers from your memories. Surely yes you need to adjust to the sound of a foreign language, but with no feedback loop of trying to speak and having another person feedback, how do you adjust? Listening to hours of completely foreign language won't make you understand what the words are or what they mean, so "comprehensible" input includes weasel words that require you to already know the language before you can learn it. It's all over a bit weird. Don't people say some of the most effective ways to learn are the immersion courses where you go to a retreat and speak only that language for weeks at a time, studying and learning 8 hrs+/day and then there are people who spend years reading or listening but aren't confident to speak anything. But are there people who spend years speaking with fluent speakers who still report they don't know the language? [1] inb4 "hurr think you know better than professional linguists"
• RajT88 5y ago
  The Peppa Pig thing is legit. When I studied Japanese, watching kid shows was really helpful for ear training with a more simplistic vocabulary. My preferred weird kid's show for that was Anpanman. Hahihuhehooooo~!
  • eschulz 5y ago
    I know someone who augmented his English study by spending more time on the bus than necessary and sitting near old ladies who were chatting amongst each other. They tend to speak slower and with more clarity. Tactics like these really helped him master his English accent. This was back in the 1980s.
  • huachimingo 5y ago
    Same with old pokemon games.
  • usrusr 5y ago
    When you happen to be around parents interacting with their toddler age children, you almost can't not learn the language. Only on toddler level, but that can't be the worst start.
  • cruano 5y ago
    I don't know what that is but according to wikipedia[1] Anpanman has a higher total revenue than MCU, Harry Potter, Transformers, Spiderman, Barbie, etc It's insane that the only one I don't recognize is so high up on the list [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...
  • gramie 5y ago
    My Japanese improved significantly by reading the Crayon Shin-chan comics. The advantage of comics aimed at young people is that they have phonetic characters (hiragana) written above the Chinese characters (kanji), so you don't have to deal with the hell of written Japanese (early Christian missionaries described Japanese as being a language "from the devil", and I am sure they were referring to the written version).
• jamisteven 5y ago
  such a french thing to bring about it too.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  Maybe I missed it but this doesn't state how to find French speakers to converse with. If I, say, live in England, how do I find people who will happily help me practise my French? In my experience speakers that you meet would rather just speak English than help you understand them. Many years ago I studied French intensively and got to the stage I could read and write quite well and understood some fairly advanced grammar. But I couldn't even make the most spoken basic requests, let alone have a conversation, because I had no exposure to the spoken language. I had done a lot of what the author suggests here in terms of listening (some French films are excellent, by the way), but it's not enough. One thing I'm quite certain about is techniques that treat you like a baby are really inefficient. That includes Rosetta Stone, Duolingo etc. It's just way more convenient to learn much of the grammar using your existing language skills. Practice with people who can speak your current language and your target language, as the author suggests, is ideal as you can get them to explain what they meant in your language. There are certain fixed phrases and figures of speech which would take a long time to learn like a baby, plus the faux amis will trip you up if you're not careful.
  • Tepix 5y ago
    Try Tandem (the app)
  • christofosho 5y ago
    Check out https://discord.gg/french/ https://discord.gg/french/ It is directly related to the subreddit, with a fantastic and kind community!
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • toyg 5y ago
    > Maybe I missed it but this doesn't state how to find French speakers to converse with It's in there, Italki: https://www.italki.com/ https://www.italki.com/
• mahdi7d1 5y ago
  In the first paragraph he says "without any formal programs or immersion" and a couple of lines below says "by spending lots of time talking with fluent French speakers". Isn't this the best type of immersion someone can use? As a big believer in immersion I don't think there is any other way of learning languages other than immersing yourself in it..
  • gwbas1c 5y ago
    I suspect they spoke on Zoom. I've come across quite a few entrepreneurs basically running sites that pair international people together to converse in different languages. (As opposed to traveling to a country and living in it.) Also note that they switched their phone over to French.
  • flanbiscuit 5y ago
    I wonder if he was talking about this: 2/19: Started lessons on Italki, roughly once a week along with doing this: 1/19: Started occasionally watching Peppa Pig in French (yes, really) 2/19: Changed my phone language to French is what he could be considering "immersion" For those that don't know, iTalki is a platform where you can talk to native language speakers. You can join either as a teacher or learner. You can get actual lessons from people or just join to have discussions to improve/maintain your language
  • moeris 5y ago
    > As a big believer in immersion I don't think there is any way of learning languages other than immersing yourself in it Immersion outside of a classroom context, as an adult, is a terrible way to learn a language on its own. Your exposure to comprehensible context is lower than in traditional language learning methods. In a classroom setting it can be highly effective, but is still best paired with traditional approaches. Grammar is difficult to teach through immersion, and there's no obvious benefit in doing so. You can spend hours going through various combinations of "y" and "en" pronouns hoping to make it stick. Or you could take a quick pause and explain that, roughly, "y" replaces "à + noun", "en" replaces "de + noun", and move back to immersion for practice. People often seem to have done reasoning along the lines of "children learn languages through immersion, children learn languages faster than adults, therefore learning is faster with immersion." But that's obviously flawed logic. It's just that people rarely make their argument explicit.
• aktensoufi42 5y ago
  I'd like to point out to OP that most of his/her listed limitations are also limitations most french native speaker have. Cultural differences from one area to another influence the way french people speak a lot (I guess it's true in a lot of countries though). I sometimes don't understand half what my in-laws say, and we were born like 100km away from each other. This goes beyond colloquial speak like argot (which is mostly parisian anyway) or verlan. It's basically words from local dialects (like provençal, basque or breton) that became part of some kind of accepted local french variant which is for everyone involved just french and nothing more. The local variant aspect is not really blatant until someone from outside points out he/she doesn't understand a word that until then sounded very...basic to everyone else. The word for "mop" for example has like its own variant in every region. My point is: your limitations are a proof that you understand french almost as well as a native speaker that never really left his/her hometown. Which is impressive.
  • lupire 5y ago
    Is that like fountain vs bubbler, soda vs pop, in USA?
    • aktensoufi42 5y ago
      I guess yes, for some examples, but sometimes the new words meaning are not even "guessable". Maybe you can see it as what you could experience as an american visiting the UK.
• shaicoleman 5y ago
  I've had great success using the Pimsleur method. It involves 30 minute audio lessons using spaced repetition where you instinctively and intuitively build fluency over a restricted vocabulary. https://www.pimsleur.com/ https://www.pimsleur.com/ It worked for me, but it's expensive, and requires patience, as it advances somewhat slowly.
  • sanjayio 5y ago
    How much did it cost you, if you don’t mind me asking?
    • Jtsummers 5y ago
      Pimsleur isn't cheap, but if you have an Audible subscription you can (could? haven't checked in a while) get them at a steep discount compared to list price (through Pimsleur or any other source). When I bought the Spanish lessons a few years ago, buying the whole set via Audible this way (even considering the subscription cost, and combined with their credits) basically cut the cost in half (I actually did price it out because I nerd out with spreadsheets sometimes, but I don't recall the exact figures anymore). Also, check your local library. They may have access for you for free.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • wodenokoto 5y ago
    What language did you learn and which did you already know? I’ve tried listening to some pimsleur tapes for Japanese and Chinese and it is hopeless even if you now a little bit already
    • shaicoleman 5y ago
      I learned Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Polish, I knew English and Hebrew. Every day I would usually repeat the previous day's lesson, and do a new lesson. For languages such as Japanese and Chinese, you'd probably need to repeat it more than that. It's recommended that you know about 80% of the answers before moving on to the next lesson.
• christofosho 5y ago
  The poster completely missed an incredible resource: Discord! The Reddit r/French has a fantastic Discord community where you can engage in written and spoken communication. https://discord.gg/french/ https://discord.gg/french/
• Lamad123 5y ago
  I've been learning French since I was 9 and when I moved where French is dominant, I can barely communicate French to the locals and would usually quickly switch to English.
• dkaleta 5y ago
  I learned Spanish, too, in about 12 months to dogfood my new app for learning vocabulary (which I just recently launched) [0] Even though I made an app that helped me along the way to learn words, I don't believe in a single app/book/approach for learning a language. You need to expose yourself to A LOT of different language materials. I was learning for about 2h a day, 6 times a week. I would read articles, books, websites in Spanish. I would watch YouTube videos [1]. I would read news, initially for beginners [2] and later regular [3]. And most importantly, I would have 4-5h a week itakly conversations. After 6 months I understood quite a lot, but couldn't speak almost at all. Then magic happens and 6 months later, I was having a normal conversation (though still with some errors) about any range of topics: politics, global warming, travel, engineering etc. I believe the key for me was to read a lot of books which were interesting to me. For example I read Bill Gate's book "How To Avoid A Climate Disaster" in Spanish, as well as about ~8 others in the first 12 months. [0] https://www.obstino.com https://www.obstino.com [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish [2] www.newsinslowspanish.com [3] https://elpais.com https://elpais.com
  • aeyes 5y ago
    Let me add another resource to your list that helped me tremendously: https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/ https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/ They have free podcasts available on iTunes for a lot of languages, the Spanish content is absolutely amazing.
  • athenot 5y ago
    > [2] www.newsinslowspanish.com Oh wow I've been after something like this for a long time. It's awesome because it's relevant content (news) but at a pace that beginners can follow. I don't know Spanish but knowing French, I could follow along the super slow mode and not feel lost. Going to look for this in German and Chinese, I wonder if there's something similar.
    • DonaldFisk 5y ago
      You can slow down Youtube videos without it distorting the audio. I've found it more helpful to use subtitles in the target language, though.
• issa 5y ago
  There is some portion of learning new languages that involves natural ability, which is no different than how people learn math at different speeds. But the overwhelmingly critical factor is motivation.
• gwbas1c 5y ago
  I got a kick out of the comments about Quebecois, and the Quebec dialect. There's some American movie (name escapes me) filmed where they go across the boarder into Quebec. I found the dialect extremely recognizable, even though I can only understand a few words of spoken French. Maybe it's because my extended family (who grew up speaking Quebec) sounded very different than my high school French teacher when they switched to French?
  • mabub24 5y ago
    You might be thinking of Bon Cop Bad Cop which is all about the differences between Franco-Ontarian and Quebecois French, or Standard French versus Quebecois. Where I live I hear a ton of Quebecois but even with knowing B2 level French I find the accent very hard to parse out. Here's a funny scene from the movie on Quebecois swearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUGW0jszPzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUGW0jszPzo
    • gwbas1c 5y ago
      No, it was an American movie, not a Canadian movie. The french speech wasn't subtitled, because the audience supposed to be confused.
• myfavoritedog 5y ago
• thesaint 5y ago
• rel2thr 5y ago
  i tried for 3 years of self study plus some weekly in person lessons. Heavily grinded anki , did pimsleur, michel thomas , duolingo. Overall i would say it was a failure, got to where I could read almost anything , but completely failed at being able to have real-time conversations. I think for me I would need immersion to really get to the next level. Like I would need a french person to live with me for a few months.
  • Tepix 5y ago
    The Tandem app is very good for finding people to talk to.
  • gramie 5y ago
    I grew up in Ontario, with French at school from grade 4-13. What really made the difference was going to two six-week French immersion courses (https://englishfrench.ca/explore/ https://englishfrench.ca/explore/) in Quebec at the end of grades 12 and 13. It's a shame that more people don't know about these courses, which are still operating more than 40 years later. The only expense is getting to the location in Quebec; all tuition, housing, meals, books, etc. are paid for by the government. The only requirement is that you have been a Canadian student in the past year.
• sinuhe69 5y ago
  When my son was learning English, I observed that reading on the appropriate level was tremendously important for his learning. But in his school French, they mostly do conversation and a bit of writing but not much reading. I tried to find some good reading sources in French like the Reading A-Z in English (not only has leveled reading but also audio) but so far not much. Can anyone recommend some good sources (he is 15)? Thanks!
  • Tepix 5y ago
    My advice is go to your local library. Here they have a ton of books written for language learners (at different levels, A1-C1). Some old classics like Jules Verne are perfect.
• Tepix 5y ago
  I also started learning French last February (as a hobby), and i'm now near B1 level. I used mostly the Tandem app (finding good ambitious people to learn with is the key), a grammar book and the DuoLingo app (free tier). When using DuoLingo, you will find very useful tips for every exercise on their website (but not in the app!). Without these tips, learning things other than vocabulary only on DuoLingo can be quite inefficient. I've very recently discovered that I downloaded the MosaLingua French app when it was free a while ago and am now using that as well (spaced repetition) but i find DuoLingo provides better motivation. Buying the french grammar book has been the only money I've spent so far and it's been a very enjoyable experience! Being able to understand texts and videos in a new language is a huge motivator. Being able to have a conversation is awesome, too. Some other resources that have been useful: - ThoughtCo language learning resources has some very good texts https://www.thoughtco.com/languages-4133094 https://www.thoughtco.com/languages-4133094 - https://deepl.com https://deepl.com - the best for translating entire sentences - https://defr.dict.cc/ https://defr.dict.cc/ - for looking up words and idioms at the PC - Reverso Konjugator - verb conjugation
  • maxFlow 5y ago
    I tried Tandem for a couple of months without success. It's basically a dating site. I find it much more efficient to learn by myself. My go-to resources for language learning are: LingQ[0], Youtube, and Wikipedia (in the target language, evidently). You have to find what works for you, and what type of content you like, you don't want to be fighting the language, the content, and the platform. Saludos. [0] https://www.lingq.com/en/ https://www.lingq.com/en/
  • bayesian_horse 5y ago
    It seems Duolingo goes quite far in terms of French. Not sure if there needs to be anything else to be honest. Anything else might be a waste of time, including conjugation apps. The exception may be actual grammar references which can sometimes be helpful.
    • bscphil 5y ago
      The difficulty with Duolingo (free tier) is that it's so limited in how much you can learn per day. I have a streak of about 600 days and I'm only about a third of the way through the total program. I average about one lesson a day (5-10 min); in the beginning I was able to do a lot more, but now I will not-infrequently fail my first lesson of the day due to difficulty, and have to do a "practice" lesson (which are too-easy review lessons that don't require "hearts") just to keep the streak alive. I also didn't even realize until relatively recently that you could move on from one lesson after completing the first level, so I have apparently been inefficiently learning each lesson to level five this whole time. My recall of stuff from the beginning of the program is already faded... Maybe it's better if you pay for it just to be able to do more lessons, or alternatively maybe the desktop application described in the article is still active and doesn't require payment?
• hnjst 5y ago
  > I Learned French in 12 Months That's not so difficult I guess, here even babies do so.
• CSSer 5y ago
  I took four semesters of French in undergrad (U.S.) from zero knowledge. I went to a small, rural high school that only had the budget for a Spanish teacher. I decided I would've preferred French had I been given the choice so I switched when I made it to college. I met and in some ways exceeded the level of proficiency the author noted. In a lot of ways, this was out of necessity because I would've otherwise been quickly left behind. Based on what the author shared about his own proficiency, I suspect the primary difference for me is grammatical. Ironically, this whole endeavor improved my English grammar too. I had teachers that consistently emphasized "correct French", graded everything I wrote, and then gave me thorough feedback. It seems like this made a big difference. I also peppered my instructors with questions about native slang and speech patterns I noticed in my personal practice/exploration. In response, they did a combination of humoring me with answers and guiding me towards what I needed to know first for those concepts to make sense later. I think this helped a lot because the native 'shortcuts' I learned later made much more sense in context than when I had first heard them. All that being said, if I wrote up my own list of resources or recapped what I did to practice in my free time it would eerily match this. We consumed most of the same media, used the same practice tools, and even used the same references right down to the method of lookup (setting up the search engines), so there's no question in my mind it's possible to find and utilize resources that get you very far in your own time. I wonder if he has considered that someone learning a language in school should take advantage of all of these tools too. > I firmly believe that learning languages in school, especially in the United States, is generally extremely inefficient. If you struggled learning a language in school, don’t let that affect your confidence with learning a new language now. If you practice intelligently, you can learn much more effectively on your own. You get to avoid doing redundant work that isn’t helping you, and you can spend much more time getting 1-on-1 speaking time with teachers who put all their focus lessons on you. It's obvious to me he succeeded due to dedication (and his own account supports this), yet he moves so quickly to condemn the system with only anecdotal evidence. There's no doubt it's not perfect, but couldn't it possibly be that some students simply take French in school to meet a separate requirement and don't really care about learning a language? This was certainly my experience in Undergrad. It was no loss to me as it just freed up more of the teacher's time for my benefit. It also seems like I managed to avoid some of his frustrations in the process based on the experiences I noted above e.g. with finding adequate instructors. Overall, I applaud him for his achievements. I'm just not sure I'm ready to so quickly support this kind of conclusion. Institutions and learning are certainly changing, but it remains to be seen what shape that will take.
• huachimingo 5y ago
  If you feel confident about your Latin/Romance general vocabulary (you already know how they work), I would recommend you to read old teaching/natural method books. Like these ones, the first has every page written in french and english (1647,but its like Assimil series), and the second is from basic school: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=yWf4czen8jIC https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=yWf4czen8jIC https://archive.org/details/enseignementprim01brunuoft https://archive.org/details/enseignementprim01brunuoft Old books are free :)
  • toto444 5y ago
    What is it you call natural method ? Have you heard of 'Le Francais par le methode Nature' ? https://archive.org/details/jensen-arthur-le-francais-par-la-methode-nature/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/jensen-arthur-le-francais-par-la... It is a book that teaches French in French from the ground up.
    • huachimingo 5y ago
      Books that teach a language using only that language, yes. Best example that comes to mind is "Lingua Latina per se Ilustrata" in Latin.
• eatplayrove 5y ago
  I did the same, measuring my progress by taking the exams from A1 to B2 every three months, and most of the text I can agree with. But I must say this must be one of the easiest language pairs in the world (speaker of English learning French), so do not take this as an example in general and do not be discouraged for other language pairs if you're taking longer.
• Felger 5y ago
  "Prouve le moi" ;)
• deutschewelle 5y ago
  Fornetify chrome extension remains the fastest way to learn French with minimal effort to.
• stakkur 5y ago
  Highly recommend Duolingo app, especially for first exposure to a language. I used the app as a refresher this past year (for Latin) and it was excellent for that, too.
• devmunchies 5y ago
  Nothing beats living in a native speaking country and not having English speakers. I learned Spanish in 6 months in the Caribbean. Almost fluent at 12 month. It the difference between reading a C# book and building an app in C#. It’s best to do both.
  • hk__2 5y ago
    Of course, but it’s also the hardest solution.
• DarkContinent 5y ago
  Does anyone have advice for learning a rare language, like Icelandic? A lot of the advice in this and other articles assumes you're learning one of the popular languages that everyone wants to learn. While that's certainly a good thing, I think there's a lot of value in picking up these less common languages that give you more of a niche--but obviously that's something that's very hard to get started on.
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    If icelandic wasn't just an arbitrary example, if you speak English you can already communicate with 98% of Icelanders.
    • popularonion 5y ago
      I think the only way to have a “niche” these days is to triangulate between two uncommon languages, but it will be one hell of a small niche. Like maybe knowing Icelandic and Farsi or something. And as you said, Iceland is not the best example, since for all intents and purposes it’s an English speaking country.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    I think with something like Icelandic, your best bet is to find a teacher, be it online or in person. Because Icelandic has a small population of speakers, and less of a global reach compared to languages like French, Mandarin, or English, there will be less easily available resources. It will also be very distinct. I don't believe Icelandic is a part of common language families, like a romance language, or a germanic language.
  • yosito 5y ago
    I recently learned Hungarian in 24 months. It's a relatively rare language with very little in common with other languages. It takes most English speakers 5 years to learn. My advice: start using the language as soon as possible, use it in every context you can, get comfortable sounding like an idiot. You only need 5-10 words to start using a language, and each time you use it, you build your ability a bit more. Immerse yourself if possible, and if not, you can substitute immersion with apps like DuoLingo and connecting with social media accounts in your target language. A lot of the language I've learned, I've learned via Facebook chats. Use machine translation, and start chatting with people 24/7. Over time your reliance on machine translation will become less and less and you'll find yourself understanding things without it. I also like listening to rock in my target language, but if I'm honest, I don't think that taught me much, it just kept me motivated.
• cyberpunk 5y ago
  What helped me was picking a book in some random subject you're interested in, and translating it into your mother tongue. I'm translating some books by a Zen priest who only writes in German into English. I start by just copying (I mean, manually typing out into Logseq or vim) a sentence in German, then I make a stab at a translation. Then I fire it into deepl, and then I combine my first attempt with the machine translated one. After the first 50 pages of this (I did a page a day) I stopped needing deepl so much and just now use a dictionary for words. My spoken German was always better than my English, and now the problems I have are pronunciation instead of missing words or poor sentence structure. YMMV, but this worked for me :}
• claydiffrient 5y ago
  I picked up French to a fairly fluent level back when I was a Mormon missionary in about 6 months time. Being completely immersed (living in France, speaking/reading it daily) in the language was definitely a boon to learning it. Nothing I did in high school or college even approached that level.
  • deutschewelle 5y ago
    On ne peut pas lire un livre pour jouer du piano.
    • claydiffrient 5y ago
      Oui, c'est vrai!
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Learning french coming from another romance language is easier than learning it coming from a completely different language, like chinese or swahili.
• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  I use Duolingo a lot, about 6 languages in parallel. I think the mobile app is great, I'm a lot faster doing that. People underestimate the effectiveness of multiple-choice type exercises, and I would count the word-bank among those. It is harder to type in the answers from scratch, but especially in the beginning the speed of the MC formats more than compensates for the "laziness" compromise. Double that for translations to English. Just reading and hearing the foreign sentences is enough to have some repetition benefit. For latin scripts I use the corresponding phone keyboard to put in the words. It's still quite fast. Overall I'm faster with the phone than with the website.
• slibhb 5y ago
  > You absolutely NEED to spend a lot of time talking with people, particularly advanced or native speakers of your language, in order to make significant progress understanding native speakers and speaking yourself. Right on the money. Almost everyone I know who speaks lots of languages is very sociable. They have no problem talking to anyone about anything.
• speakspokespok 5y ago
  A few hopefully helpful comments from a single white male 38 year old American that's been living in Mexico for the last 8 months. These aren't meant to be all encompassing and are from the perspective of a guy in a supermarket holding up the line while 8 or 10 people behind him want to get on with their day. Spanish learning material is heavily biased towards the language as spoken in Spain. Don't worry about it. Use what you can and the delighted local will help you with the rest. Sometimes it's awkward. Smile, laugh, and accept the blessing of the experience and carry on. Don't try to change or fix it. Mexico is this place where your mood is reflected right back at you. This matters when you don't want to deal w/ the language barrier in the moment. If you're working a day job in English you've got to spend the rest of the day immersed in Spanish. That means don't date expats. Stick to Spanish music and culture as much as you can. Subtitles and what not. Books with English and Spanish are really helpful. Schedule your day based on your priorities. Get a qualified teacher, a high school English teacher is a good bet or ask around. I was doing 3 days/week with an instructor + plus daily homework, and that was a lot, but now 2 days/week feels slow. Learning Spanish can be done while learning Salsa, making Spanish friends that scuba dive or sail, hiking groups, or golfing. Facebook groups is a good place. Digital nomads have their own agendas. Often they're not really there to have their belief system tested or to learn Spanish, and view world as if they're at a cultural theme park or at a petting zoo. This is not always true of course but I standby it. People that actively go out and see the world for themselves are a very high grade of human and worth getting to know. Like Hemingway said about Italy: don't look at the women; share your cigarettes. Like walking into the wind, you must lean into and accept the resistance of learning in order to move forward. Reframe the process as a blessing and an opportunity. You'll be shocked how foreign your homeland will become to you. It's the greatest thing I've ever done.
• wes1350 5y ago
  Author here, didn’t expect to see this here again after two years! I guess I’ll give a quick update on how things have been since this article was written. I haven’t used or studied French much since then, and have gotten quite rusty, though I’ve had a few conversations fully in French in the last few months and can still maintain a conversation. I have been thinking of picking up French again soon, as traveling to a French speaking country becomes more of an option. I also did roughly the same thing with my Spanish in the following year, with similar results, though I’d say I probably reached a solid B1.5 or weak B2 after a year (due to COVID I was unable to take the proficiency test and lost some motivation to continue studying to a high level as a result.) My recommendations are still largely the same, though I haven’t used these resources (e.g. Duolingo) since I stopped studying a while back. And as others have noted, for other languages, particularly those that are less closely related to English (e.g. Japanese), you’ll have to follow a different path to achieve the same proficiency. However, language learning resources are getting better constantly, so you can certainly still learn quite a lot without total, in-person immersion, as I did!
  • gpspake 5y ago
    Thanks for the update. I think it's healthy and encouraging to hear stories about people who deep-learn something for a while, get most of what they need out of it and move on to the next thing. All learning is good and nobody should feel guilty about putting things down - you can always pick them up later if you need to :)
  • DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    I like to think learning it is "easy", not getting rusty is the hard part :) Since I left France the only way to maintain motivation is continue reading French books (OMG there is so much to chose from). But bittersweet having to make a choice as I now want to dive into Italian. And so with every hour I spend on Italian I see my previous skill and speed with which I could form a French sentence wane ... The best thing about language is the vast ocean of superb material to chose from as you dive in. It's like a honeymoon phase with the country and its people. Spending a whole year learning and then let yourself get rusty is almost like spending 12 months on crafting a magic key then throwing it away before entering the castle. Not that there is anything wrong with "learning for learning sake" but I know the feeling when you can literally see it slipping from your grasp and still can't stop it. French Spanish English maybe not so much because it's everywhere so practicing it is easy. But many languages you have to actually be there if you want any chance at all of being good at it. I liked being able to brag about what rare, exotic languages (for a European) I was able to converse fluently in. After leaving these countries, breaking up with girlfriends, change of social circles, etc I felt like a fraud every time somebody introduced me with "and he is fluent in <xyz> can you believe it" ... the conversation had to quickly be corrected by "oh I'm totally rusty" which got the response of "oh don't be modest I am sure bla bla" which made me regret that the whole thing ever came up. Putting much effort into languages is quite a humbling experience.
• katspaugh 5y ago
  I’ve been studying German on Lingoda and Chatterbug a lot during the pandemic. Like the author, I took advantage of their marathon plans. On Chatterbug, it was 400€ for unlimited (!) 1-on-1 lessons with native teachers. Can’t praise them enough. It was a singular thing that just propelled my speaking to the next level (from B1 to B2-C1). Lingoda is less fun and more traditional classroom-like. Chatterbug is fun and startuppy. Both offer structured lessons with natives. Edit: Chatterbug is no longer unlimited for 400€, it’s only 30 lessons a month. Still cheap. Here’s a referral link for a further 25% discount: https://app.chatterbug.com/r/DerIvan-66 https://app.chatterbug.com/r/DerIvan-66
• benbristow 5y ago
  Tres bon!
• Kelamir 5y ago
  It took me 200 hours of reading and doing some Anki to be fine with reading just about any German text last year, there are words I didn't know yes, but I by the time it felt I have climbed the steeply hill of getting a hang of the language. What's 200 hours? Not much. You can do it. I started with a few mins daily. Increased. Point is, see for yourself.
• shughes 5y ago
  The approach that has seemed most effective for me (for Dutch and Spanish), and I can also rationalize it from my logical side, is "comprehensible input" method. The idea is that you're learning like a kid, but in a more focused and efficient way. E.g., someone tells you a story, and while doing so, they'll motion or point to the things they're talking about, but they do so entirely in the foreign language. However, since they're doing so in a comprehensible way, you can easily figure out what they're saying. It's meant to trigger the connection in your mind between the objects/actions and the corresponding words in the foreign language, and it's meant to bypass the translation phase which language learners often start with. This is the YouTube channel that really opened my eyes to the model: https://youtu.be/t4CAdmquJsY https://youtu.be/t4CAdmquJsY
  • blakesley 5y ago
    Whoa, this channel looks great! Thanks so much for the rec!
  • anhner 5y ago
    That spanish channel is so awesome! Do you have any resources for something similar in Dutch?
    • shughes 5y ago
      Unfortunately, I haven't come across much. However, a good option, which is similar in principle, is Lingq (https://www.lingq.com/en/ https://www.lingq.com/en/). The designer of it has recently become interested in comprehensible input and I've noticed he's adding more and more similar concepts into the app. He also knows 20+ languages, and much of the app was designed based on the approaches he's applied over the years. Anyway, the app has stories written and spoken in Dutch (as well as other languages), and you can stop and click individual words if you're not able to figure out their meaning. Also, a YouTube series that I find useful for Spanish (EasySpanish) has recently added a Dutch channel: https://youtube.com/c/EasyDutch https://youtube.com/c/EasyDutch. Lastly, a free chrome extension that I find quite useful for all languages is Language Reactor, which adds easy playback handling and quick translations when needed. It works for YouTube and Netflix: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-reactor/hoombieeljmmljlkjmnheibnpciblicm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-reactor/h... I wish there were more options for Dutch, but once you pick up on the comprehensible input methodology, you'll see how you can adapt apps like Lingq and Language Reactor into a similar method.
• blakesley 5y ago
  If you're using Duolingo, make sure to do all the stories! They are much more conversational than the lessons.
• LightG 5y ago
  I have a bad memory, I think! If I spend a year learning French, I fear I'll forget it within 6 months. Any other forgetful people out there with solutions? lol!
  • Graffur 5y ago
    No solution but I am similar. I don't retain anything when trying to learn languages.
• jchook 5y ago
  For learning German I have enjoyed these audiobooks @ 30 min per day: - Paul Noble parts 1 & 2 - Pimsleur course starting at Lesson 11
• werber 5y ago
  Thank you op I needed this today
• amatecha 5y ago
  Nice, I've been learning French on Duolingo for the past couple months and feel I have learned quite a lot. Nice to see some recommendations on this article for stuff I can help bolster my learning/progress.
• DonaldFisk 5y ago
  For building up vocabulary, I've found parallel text very helpful. For French, I've used: Penguin Parallel Text French Short Stories 1 and 2. New Penguin Parallel Text Short Stories in French. Dover Dual Language Great French Short Stories of the 20th Century. Candide, ou L'optimisme. These give you enough vocabulary to transition to French-only text or speech without constantly having to refer to a dictionary. The Penguin series also covers other European languages: Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian. (It also covers Chinese and Japanese, but for them you'd still need to refer to a dictionary for the pronunciation of Hanzi/Kanji, except where furigana are used.) For spoken French, I've found the Inner French, Hugo Lisoir, and Mamytwink Youtube channels not too difficult to follow.
• tomcam 5y ago
  I know this sounds flip, but it is a piece of anecdata worth considering. In my thirties I had a very good-looking girlfriend from Poland who spoke no English. I literally ended up speaking Polish conversationally within six weeks using ad hoc methods (mostly carrying around a Polish/English dictionary and a phrasebook at all times). Certain, ah, motivations can impel us more than others…
  • mabub24 5y ago
    It is well known that having an SO that speaks your learning language is a huge help. Every older french lady has always told me to "get a french gf if I really want to learn." The same is true for programming. Very common to hear of people learning programming later in life with the help of an SO. The quicker and more personalized the feedback you can get when learning anything is always the better.
  • gramie 5y ago
    Soon after I arrived in Japan, I dated a Japanese co-worker who spoke very little English. You can bet that we carried our dictionaries around with us! We later got married (another, less cheerful story). One drawback was that I mainly learned household Japanese and not business/politics Japanese. Also I apparently spoke like a woman because almost all the people around me were women! (Japanese has very distinct versions for men and women.)
• lambda_dn 5y ago
• goldcd 5y ago
  I'm 2 months into French on Duolingo. I did a small bit of French at school (maybe 30 years ago) and have never used it, aside from translating the odd menu. Now I'd always meant to pick it back up again, but until Duolingo I'm pretty sure I'd have left it to rot. The near-zero commitment you have to make to onboard yourself is great - and so is the hellishly perfect gamification that nudges you to do more. No way I'd have signed up for an evening class, but I reckon if I can keep up Dulingo for another few months, I'll have easily exceeded what I learnt at school. Maybe that's a little unfair, fair amount of vocab was still lodged somewhere my mind, but I'd lost the ability to stitch it together into something meaningful. I don't for one moment thing interacting with my phone will give me another language, but doing wonders for my confidence. Can just throw yourself into it at great velocity, and if you fuck up, it doesn't judge and just throws up those same hurdles until you clear them. Time has also cleared another hurdle - I've now got loads of access to French in a format I want. I can watch netflix in english with french subs, and then switch to french with english subs. Previous time I tried this, was watching La Haine on VHS from my local library. A great film - but didn't overlap too much with the french I was taught at school (Somewhere out there, I like to imagine there's the friendlier "Le n'aime pas" version) What I would be interested in, is the best place for the next step - being forced to talk to a real French speaker. Maybe my favourite bit of Duolingo, is the mini-forum attached to each question. It's a little bit hidden (as maybe doesn't align to their smooth-app-experience), but found it invaluable when I'd screwed up to be told why. So many times I've clicked full of rage at being told I was wrong, and not only learnt why I was wrong, but got a proper explanation that's stuck with me. Maybe that's my main Duolingo quibble, the never-ending-pop-quiz is great, but it maybe over-simplifies. I'd like a tables showing all declensions, or a paragraph covering why nobody uses Vous any more.
• yosito 5y ago
  I recently achieved B2 Hungarian in 24 months. It usually takes English speakers 5+ years to learn. This article is pretty good advice and mostly what I do when learning a language. The main thing I'd emphasize is to use, use, use the language, as soon as possible, and as much as possible. People spend years in a classroom studying languages and making no progress. But if you use a language, your brain will start to soak it up like a sponge. Common barriers to using a new language are that people don't feel they know enough to start using it, and that people are afraid to sound like an idiot. You only need 5-10 words to start using a language. Pick a scenario you do every day (for me, ordering coffee), learn the words for it in your target language, and then start doing that every day. Each time you do it, your language abilities will strengthen. As far as sounding like an idiot, I struggle with that more. First, I'd say, get comfortable with the fact that you're going to make mistakes, and stop giving a fuck. Then, surround yourself with people who are friendly and will encourage you when you make mistakes instead of judging you. If you're using a language daily, I think you can cut time estimates for learning it in school in half.
• gerbilly 5y ago
  Je trouve ça comique qu'une discussion qui traite de l'apprentissage du Français ne contienne pas un seul commentaire écrit en Français. J'avoue que je ne les ai pas _tous_ lus, mais....
• WalterBright 5y ago
  Some statistics I read long ago: 1. English has about a million words 2. College educated people have about a 30,000 word vocabulary 3. High school graduates about 10,000 words 4. TV uses about 2,000 words Learning 2,000 words doesn't seem so daunting. I was surprised that the article also brought up the 2,000 word vocabulary.
• daredevil_kohai 5y ago
  Is there a Japanese and German language learning guide like this?
• arbitrary_name 5y ago
  Secret language learning hack: if you have a Kindle, download books in your target language, and also load a dictionary of that language in. You will be able to read and get translations for unknown words just by hovering over the word. I pushed through Cien Años and game of thrones in this manner.
• jwmoz 5y ago
  How I failed to learn Mandarin Chinese in 3 months.
• galaxyLogic 5y ago
  Study the lyrics of songs in the language you want to learn. Songs stick to your head so you get repetition automatically. I learned English by studying Beatles songs. Excellent material for studying
• wesleywt 5y ago
  Having spent some time in Germany I realised a key aspect of learning the language is to get your brain adapted to hearing people speak it. After a few weeks in Germany, I started to hear the individual words rather than a stream of noise coming from speakers. Since I have a Germanic second language, Afrikaans, I could even recognise the context of some of what they were saying. Hearing first language speakers is so important for language learning.
• haspok 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but the title of the post is completely misleading. Passing a B2 (=basic) level exam is definitely not equal to "I learned French". It is a realistic goal to get to the B2 level in a year, if you devote sufficient time to it. But a B2 exam is just that - an exam, with certain types of questions that you can prep and pass, without that actually meaning much in terms of your language skill. How do I know? I am currently attending a C1 course in German. Yes, we do learn new words, phrases and expressions, but actually, the major parts of a C1 exam are: * understanding and summarizing texts (either written or spoken) * doing a 5 minute presentation on a given topic, with very strict rules (the outline structure is given, the expected speech parts are given etc). * knowing grammar rules, which even the native speakers don't really know or care about. As a matter of fact, C1 is more like a university preparation course, and not so much like a language course. Also, it is so much more dense than the previous levels, that it might take one person the same time to go from A1 to B2 as another person to go from B2 to C1. In the meantime, the following are not really checked or prepped: * understanding real native speakers (not on radio or giving a speech, but the real everyday speech) * making sure the basics are there, eg. how do you organise your life? How do you make a phone call, talk to the postman, your colleagues during lunch, how do you ask your mechanic what is that creaky noise while you are driving your car...? * speaking and writing without (many) errors. Yes, you can speak, but judging the face of the person who is listening to you.... not very well. Actually, in my case I almost always immediately recognize when I say something stupid, but I still say it... One can pass the C1 exam, and be almost completely unable to fit in everyday life. This is even more so if the area you live in doesn't speak the "mainstream" of the language, but some weirdo variation of it. For example, if you think you speak German B2, I challenge you to try to speak to a random person on the backstreets of Munich or Vienna... if you are lucky, they speak some English :) To end on a more positive note, achieving B2 is ABSOLUTELY a worthy goal in any language, and your life will be better for it. Just set your expectations accordingly.
• ostenning 5y ago
  I highly recommend Chatterbug, https://chatterbug.com/ https://chatterbug.com/ for learning French, German, Spanish and English. Same founders at GitHub and they've made a pretty great product which I've been using for many years