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I've had the best success with Pimsleur, which is almost completely audio-based, and just rotates through vocabulary and situations at increasingly lengthy inte

I've had the best success with Pimsleur, which is almost completely audio-based, and just rotates through vocabulary and situations at increasingly lengthy intervals. Somehow the constant back and forth talking to the tape just works better for me than looking at something in writing. As a result, I can't write anything in French and have no clue how most things are spelled, but I've been told my pronunciation is pretty good, and definitely not American-sounding. To me, being able to get by speaking while traveling is my main purpose in learning a language so I'm not taking it as seriously or studying as long as someone who wants full fluency. But for a really rapid 2- or 3-week launch point into a language you don't speak at all, Pimsleur is really impressive.

arminiusreturns 4y ago
Pimsleur has been my goto for over 20 years now also. It's good enough to spur my memory on stuff I know, and get me base functional in something new if I'm travelling. I had a real cool moment when due to Pimsleur I picked up on Egyptian Arabic being spoken in a place that was mostly Levantine. Next on my todo is Hindi. (I also tend to do sticker books all over common items as an assist)
kaitai 4y ago
Agree, in that when I needed to learn some Egyptian Arabic in a hurry, Pimsleur worked very well for me. In languages where I do have the alphabet/writing down, other methods are very useful & complementary, but when I just need to be able to hold a conversation/catch a trolley, Pimsleur really comes through!
samuell 4y ago
I can second the recommendation for Pimsleur. I managed to take seven 30 minute lessons before a trip to a conference in Israel, and got people starting to talk to me in Hebrew based on the few sentences I knew, apparently due to a pretty good pronunciation. The importance of getting to sound right from the start is something that is stressed a lot in the Pimsleur description, and I think it makes sense. Having a good pronunciation will give you so much better confidence, and chances to actually interact with native speakers, while they also claim it is much harder for the brain to relearn something that got wrongly learned, than learning it correctly from the start.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
Oh man good luck learning to write french! I had lots of success with pimsleur for Spanish (but I'm already a basic competency french speaker so most of the concepts and grammar are familiar to me). Duolingo did not really do it for me. Luckily, Spanish orthography is pretty regular as long as you stay within the same regional pronunciation group.
chrchr 4y ago
Yep. I’ve been learning Spanish off-and-on since high school. The biggest step I took toward some amount of mastery and ability to speak rudimentary Spanish in conversation was with doing Pimsluer tapes. Repeating “un vaso de leche. Un gran vaso” and things like that over and over again just made it sink in. I’m doing Duolingo Spanish now, every day for over a year and a half. It’s a reasonably entertaining way to practice and pick up vocab, but I don’t know how much proficiency I’m achieving.

arminiusreturns 4y ago

Pimsleur has been my goto for over 20 years now also. It's good enough to spur my memory on stuff I know, and get me base functional in something new if I'm travelling. I had a real cool moment when due to Pimsleur I picked up on Egyptian Arabic being spoken in a place that was mostly Levantine. Next on my todo is Hindi. (I also tend to do sticker books all over common items as an assist)

kaitai 4y ago

Agree, in that when I needed to learn some Egyptian Arabic in a hurry, Pimsleur worked very well for me. In languages where I do have the alphabet/writing down, other methods are very useful & complementary, but when I just need to be able to hold a conversation/catch a trolley, Pimsleur really comes through!

samuell 4y ago

I can second the recommendation for Pimsleur. I managed to take seven 30 minute lessons before a trip to a conference in Israel, and got people starting to talk to me in Hebrew based on the few sentences I knew, apparently due to a pretty good pronunciation. The importance of getting to sound right from the start is something that is stressed a lot in the Pimsleur description, and I think it makes sense. Having a good pronunciation will give you so much better confidence, and chances to actually interact with native speakers, while they also claim it is much harder for the brain to relearn something that got wrongly learned, than learning it correctly from the start.

throwawaymaths 4y ago

Oh man good luck learning to write french! I had lots of success with pimsleur for Spanish (but I'm already a basic competency french speaker so most of the concepts and grammar are familiar to me). Duolingo did not really do it for me. Luckily, Spanish orthography is pretty regular as long as you stay within the same regional pronunciation group.

chrchr 4y ago

Yep. I’ve been learning Spanish off-and-on since high school. The biggest step I took toward some amount of mastery and ability to speak rudimentary Spanish in conversation was with doing Pimsluer tapes. Repeating “un vaso de leche. Un gran vaso” and things like that over and over again just made it sink in. I’m doing Duolingo Spanish now, every day for over a year and a half. It’s a reasonably entertaining way to practice and pick up vocab, but I don’t know how much proficiency I’m achieving.