I'm a native English speaker in my 40s. I dont speak other languages. I thought i was too old to learn. I took a trip to Spain a few years ago and had a great time. The only downside was not being able to speak Spanish (tl). I wanted a project and also to see if I really was too old to learn a new language because I thought that was only for kids and young people.

I started off with Duolingo and then moved on to more sensible course material. I have an Preply tutor to practice speaking with.

Three years later, Ive made Spanish a part of my life. I listen into the local news for hour each way to work. Then I watch 2-3 hours of Spanish movies/TV series in the evening. I still space repeat my study notes on weekends to keep expressions and grammar rules fresh.

I'm an effective and fluid speaker. My Preply lessons are essentially philosophical debating sessions with my tutor. Ive had around 200 hours of speaking and probably around 3,000 hours of study/comprehensive input so Im very comfortable with Spanish and I was able to do it from home not in my target language.

I just wondered what motivated other late learners and how their journey is going.

I am currently learning Norwegian (TL) as my fourth language. I have a PhD in Computer Science, two kids, and I recently started working at a government organization where Norwegian is the main working language.

My biggest problem is listening. In normal workplace meetings, I sometimes barely understand anything, especially when people speak different dialects from Trondheim, Bergen, Tromsø, or Oslo.

I have almost a 1,000 day Duolingo streak and know quite a lot of vocabulary, but I have mostly spent only 10 to 15 minutes a day on it. My speaking is probably around A2/B1. I can comfortably talk to my kids in Norwegian, but when I need to explain a technical or complicated idea at work, I struggle badly even though I could explain the same thing easily in English (this sucks, keeping the ideas in your head sucks).

Recently I started using RemNote to save new vocabulary with meanings and example sentences. Would Anki be better, or do they basically serve the same purpose? More importantly, what should I actually focus on if I want to improve my listening and speaking ?

For those who went from A2/B1 to being comfortable working professionally in a new language, what actually made the biggest difference for you? And based on what I am doing now, what am I doing wrong?

I hope this post is allowed. Back when I started learning Swedish (TL), listening to songs in Swedish really helped me. However sometimes with other languages I find it hard to find artists I actually like, and the radios often play anglophonic songs, so that doesn't really help.

I thought maybe we could collect different artists singing in our TL we like, so others learning the same language can use them as resources.

Let me start by giving you my examples (edit: updating that list):

Afrikaans: Die Antwoord, Bittereinder, Van Pletzen
Dutch: S10, Noor, Yade Lauren, Typhoon, Doe Maar, Broederliefde, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, Opgezwolle, Bob uit Zuid, Ploegendienst
Faroese: Týr, Eivør
Finnish: Korpiklaani
French: Alizée (Pop), Frero Delavega (Pop), Tryo (Reggae), Stromae, Jacques Brel, Indochine, Niagara, Axelle Red, Téléphone, Yseult, Aza Nakamura, Zaho de Sagazan, Ibeyi, Louane, Louise Attaque, Renan Luce, Zaz, Édith Piaf, Indila, Joyce Jonathan, Louane
German: Kraftklub (Indie Rock), Juli (Pop Rock), Berq (Indie Pop), Apache 207, Die Ärzte, Deine Cousine, Donots, Peter Fox, Verrottet, PaulWeltz, ZWE1HÄNDER, Bushido, Christina Stürmer, Cosmó, Danger Dan, Die Fantastischen Vier, Die Toten Hosen, ENGIN, Fettes Brot, Herbert Grönemeyer, Jennifer Rostock, Peter Maffay, Nena, Saltatio Mortis, Schandmaul, Seeed, Silbermond, Soffie, Tic Tac Toe, Tokio Hotel, Versengold, Unheilig, Wir Sind Helden
Greek: Tamta, Marina Satti
Icelandic: Hjálmar, Ásgeir, Mammút, Sigur Rós, Hekla, Sjón
Italian: Andrea Cioffi (Pop), Fabrizio Moro (Soft Rock), Måneskin (Rock), Rose Villain
Japanese: LEX, Creepy Nuts, Liza, Ichiko Aoba, Awich, Atarashii Gakko!, kZm, Tohji, Number_i, JP THE WAVY, HITOMIN, Aklo, KOMOREBI, YENTOWN, Babymetal
Kazakh: Yenlik
Korean: Song Sohee, YUHNWAY, HAON, BeWHY, Wonstein, ZENE THE ZILLA, VANTA01, IceKingKong, Konsole, Idiotape, JUPITER, O5K, CORTIS, Stray Kids, KC, Sik-K, past self, Gwangil Jo, PIRI, Jeffrey White, EK, GRDL, HAAN, Coogie, Kid Milli, NO:EL, BTS
Malayalam: Parimal Shais, Dabzee
Mandarin: 唐兆星 (Asian Don?), 孤兒收容所 (G2SLS), Rapeter, 11 JIAYI, GALI
Mongolian: Enji, Egschiglen
Norwegian: Ane Brun, Mirar
Polish: CRANK ALL, Zdechly Osa, Barto Katt, chillwagon
Portuguese: Jup do Bairro
Russian: HAUK
Serbian: S.A.R.S., Željko Joksimović
Spanish: Alvaro Soler (Pop), Enrique Iglesias (Pop), Juanes (Pop Rock), Charly Garcia, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Lido Pimienta, Chancha Via Circuito, Rosalía, November Ultra, Young Miko, Ibeyi, David Biscal, Manu Chao
Swedish: Darin (Pop), Norlie & KKV (Pop Rap), Albin (Rap), Lisa Nilsson, LOK, Slagsmålsklubben, Basshunter, Danny Saucedo, Molly Sandén, Veronica Maggio, Mattias Andréasson
Thai: Milli
Turkish: Can Bonomo (Alternative Rock), Gripin (Alternative Rock), Seksendört (Alternative Rock), Duman, Mor ve Ötesi, Sefo, Ezhel, Rafet El Roman, Can Ozan, Barış Manço, ENGIN, Tarkan
Tuvan: Huun-Huur-Tu, Tuvan Ensemble
Tuareg: Les Filles Des Illighadad
Vietnamese: Tuân Cry, MONO
Yoruba: Ibeyi

What do you think? Maybe you want to add to that list? :)

For context, I'm a native English speaker who has been learning Spanish for 5+ years now. I say learning since you can always learn more but by all intents and purposes I'm fluent in the language and don't actively put time into learning it anymore but rather treat it as close to my native tongue as possible (By that I mean I read, write, speak and watch stuff in the language but not always with the intent to get better in it).

I recently realized however that I can't actually remember how I exactly learnt it, I know I spent time learning it, played with different tools and I've got archived posts and questions regarding the language however currently I can't remember what I struggled with in Spanish and how I overcame it, it's like I've always know what something is and what it isn't. Does anyone else experience this effect?

does anybody else ever do this?? usually the worst i've done is saying some words in the wrong langauge (e.g. speaking 2nd language and accidentally say one or 2 words per sentence in 3rd language) but today i switched my duolingo from french to spanish (cuz i'm gonna be studying alevel spanish and thought i should refresh my memory a bit) and the first exercise was a speaking one and i read the whole sentence as if it was in french (like with french phonics and treating the words as if they were french e.g. silent t at the end yk) and it took me a solid minute to figure out what i'd done

does this mean my french is getting better or my spanish is worsening? also sometimes i forget words in my 1st language and say them in my 3rd cuz i forgot it in my 2nd WHY IS THIS SO CONFUSING

I'm learning my 4th language and thankfully my partner speaks my TL... So learning has been a lot of fun. But I realized quickly that my expectations of how much speaking practice I would get, is well, wrong. I thought that i could practice more speaking prompts from a textbook. But we end up speaking like how we usually do, which is very: "what do you want to eat? We need more XYZ, we are running out of ABC..."

Some days we have a good conversation that's more complicated and so I learn to use more complex structures, and tread unfamiliar territories. But this happens perhaps 1-2x a week.

So I want to ask, how is the experience like for you guys who learn a TL with a partner native in that TL?

I'm sure this happens all the time but all the people I know learned a different language because they were already super interested in a particular culture. I want to hear some stories of the other way around. Has anyone here began learning a language dispassionately, perhaps for work or necessity, and ended up falling in love with a country through language learning? (TL)

EDIT - This ISN'T a post about debating if AI has a place in language learning. If you don't like AI or want to use it as a tool, please just pass on this post. Different strokes for different folks and all that. It's a bit childish to come in here and argue and downvote everyone who doesn't agree with you.

This post is for those who don't just outright hate AI, of course. And I'm also really talking about major languages, the ones that AI will have more than enough material in to be good.

As AI has gotten increasingly better in the past weeks, months, years, I am wondering what are the best AI tools for language learning right now. I am NOT saying that some AI tool can completely replace all traditional forms of language learning. I do believe that it can speed it up though.

With that said:

Where I am most interested in the value of AI is for conversation practice and for at-need instant correction of syntax. My (native Spanish) partner and I talk to chatGPT already in both English and Spanish for just random stuff (like fixing some mechanical problem) and we'd both rate it as pretty near flawless, even if the accent isn't so casual. And sometimes I checked some really weird or particular syntax with chatGPT in Spanish in text and I wasn't sure it's answer was right, but every time my partner said it was.

So, is it worth it to get a particular tool or app, or does it make more sense to just spin up GPT convos to chat with in target languages? What are we trying nowadays, what are we thinking? I want to re-enter the world of language learning after a big hiatus with both refreshing my Brazilian Portuguese (I was probably C1 a few years back) and starting to learn French (TL) from zero, so two very different goals. For PT, I think I'll just dive into chatting and watching stuff again, reading and writing a bit. For FR, I clearly need some structured way to learn, so it'll be more complex than that. I wonder if AI-driven courses are really of higher value yet, or not really.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

1. Audio, captions/text and interface all in the target language

2. Audio in target language and captions/text in native language

3. Audio in native language and captions/text in target language

Im trying to learn Spanish (TL). I know a lot of random words just from being around it my whole life, but when I actually hear someone speaking Spanish I lose a lot of it. Could be my ADHD brain just zoning it out lol.

So I wanna use video games to help learn, but Im trying to figure out the right setup.

If I change everything to Spanish, I can pick up some stuff, but eventually I have no idea whats going on.

If I do Spanish audio with English subtitles, I find myself zoning out the Spanish because Im so focused on reading the English.

So idk, is it better to just power through and rip the bandaid off and put everything in Spanish? Or is there an easier way to ease into it?

For anyone who has actually learned another language through games, what worked for you?

My wife knows way more Spanish than I do, so I do ask her what something means when I get lost lol.

Hi, I want to improve my pronunciation, accent, fluency a rhythm. Is Shadowing the best method? I am confused because it's very hard for me, My listening and reading is C1 (I watch movies and TV shows without any subtitles) also I read novels and articles with complex language (from Aeon and New York times) without problems.

Chat gpt tells me my writing is B2 but I'm not confident about my writing, my speaking however is b1 or even less, I can answer questions and talk about different topics but I stop alot while speaking and my pronunciation is atrocious, I started shadowing yesterday for A2 to B1 videos and it's very hard, 5 minutes video takes me 30 minutes, I repeat alot and make sure to say the words correctly, I repeat the video again two times then I record myself.

When I listen to the record, I feel very frustrated, my pronunciation is still wrong and accent is very heavy even though I spend alot of time making sure to say the words correctly, will this problem be solved with time or I am I doing shadowing wrong.

Can I have some advices and free shadowing resources?

Will it take a long time to fix my pronunciation and reduce my accent, I want to apply for a job that requires fluency in English next year (Call centre agent).

I'm 27 years old, Is it even possible to fix pronunciation and accent at this age ? I have been speaking incorrectly for 20 years.

I don't want to seem native just fluent, natural and confident while speaking. The most important thing I want to fix is pronunciation and heavy accent.

Any advice?(TL)

And how does it compare to your knowledge of these words in your first language?

Hey! I’m learning Polish (TL) and built SpeakingMonkey because I wanted more specific feedback when practicing aloud.

You listen to a reference sentence, read it aloud, and every word gets a score from 0-100. You can compare your recording with the reference, click individual words for more detail, and try again. The sentence library covers 33 language varieties from A1 to C2, is free, and works without an account.

I’ve found it useful in my own practice, but I’d like to hear what other learners think. If you try it, let me know which language you practiced and how it went. Was anything confusing, or did any of the scores seem wrong? I’m happy to answer any sort of questions.

The moderators gave me permission to share this.

If there isn't a way to show the words learnt daily, I'm cool with it just showing the words learnt generally (without being confided to a certain time period). I guess I can find a way to mark the last word learnt on a day if it's sorted by when it was learnt and not alphabetically.

I want to use this to learn French (TL).

Just curious, has this happened to any of you? The closest I got was someone refusing to believe I didn't have a French parent. So basically, I guess I sounded like someone who heard French growing up at home, but wasn't completely fluent.

Edit: I'm only referring to speaking, I don't think it's that hard to be taken for a native speaker in writing, but your accent is much harder to get rid of

Looking for resources to learn Wymysorys (preferably in English, or would I need to learn Polish first?)

I’ve been learning my language for about 7 years. And have always had a bit if trouble with parsing even though I have an extremely large vocabulary and grammar. I think part of it was speaking styles and part was the radically different structure to English. By the time I constructed a meaning the conversation is long gone. Lately I’ve been noticing that loads of things are suddenly easier even though I’ve changed nothing about study or immersion. So is this really an improvement or something else?

In a debate about this right now & needed to post for some outside perspectives!!

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Hello everyone, first time poster!

I am trying to learn (TL) Japanese, I have been since I was 12-13.

I am a 28 year old. Born and raised in canada,

but my family is from spanish descents.

Because of how I grew up, my parents would speak in Spanish and I would reply in English.

I already have difficulty with spelling, grammer, and reading in spanish

But being able to speak it just fine. Fine as in child level speaking but enough, where no matter what language, English or Spanish, I could understand them.

So I'm trying to get back into learning Japanese and I'm trying to write it and I just feel like I cant grasp it as well.

BUT

Speaking Japanese and listening to Japanese I do okay in, when I was in japan I was able to ask things and ask locals for help (with a little bit of Google translate to help with the big words)

I was able to listen and understand what was being said and my partner would read out loud what the sign would say and I would be "Oh thats what that says"

Any tips on how to help with writing and reading?

Is anyone else like this?

Or am I just a weird nut over here?

Any advice is welcomed!

Thank you in advance ✨️

I feel like this can be taken as a troll post, but I am serious. I would say I speak my TL (Spanish) pretty well. I've even had native speakers say I sound native several times, but for some reason I have the weirdest accent when I have to talk to a non-native speaker? It's like I speak in this hybrid, multi-country accent (my "real" accent is from a specific region). My brain refuses to speak normally with them. I have no problem talking to native speakers; it's just other non-natives.

Any theories as to why this happens? I've only seen people talk about the inverse.

I'm a heritage speaker of Mandarin Chinese (B2) (TL). Phonologically I may sound native because it's what I speak at home (and half of my elementary through middle school education was in Mandarin), but an actual conversation immediately reveals how little vocabulary and pragmatics I understand. I can't hold a proper conversation with a native speker without feeling culturally different in communication. Worst of all, they will throw slang, idioms, and more professional/sophisticated words at me and I suddenly become a silent brick wall. I also fail to express myself now that my adult thoughts have surpassed my child-like vocabulary. It makes me totally shut down when I'm overseas visiting relatives!

I want to be myself in front of family. I think something that guilts me deeply is how I struggle to talk about my day to my parents now that I'm in higher academia. I simply don't have the words to describe events and how I have been. It saddens me that my lack of native fluency makes our relationship much more surface level.

Do you have any advice on the proper/natural way to improve on a heritage language that one has plateaued in for years? Is constant input and output with native speakers, videos, and texts the way to go?

I fear that I am too used to thinking in Mandarin within the limited framework I've stuck with my whole life. I think the thought of having habitually trapped myself makes me scared to dive in sometimes. It's mostly complacency, really.

A family member recently moved to Mexico and now my father (age 78) is interested in learning Spanish (TL). He is starting from scratch and would like to be able to have basic conversations as quickly as possible. He is not the most tech-savvy guy and multilayered apps with too many options overwhelm him. He can probably follow the Duolingo model, but I don’t think that app is good for conversation. I also know he won’t do well with book-based approaches to learning and that an app that he can have on his phone is probably the best approach for him. What are your recommendations for the best apps with a fairly simple user interface with a focus on learning conversation skills in the TL?

it goes like this.

her: 밥은 먹었어? (did you eat?)

me: yeah, i ate at work.

her: 뭐 먹었는데? (what did you eat?)

me: just a sandwich.

she understands my english. i understand her korean. neither of us

ever switches. it has never been a problem, not once, and i think

that's why it took me this long to notice.

i can understand her fine. i just can't speak korean myself.

she never really pushed me to learn it. lately i've decided i actually

want to, so i've started teaching myself korean (TL).

anyway, i'm guessing a lot of you grew up with some version of this.

is there a name for it? a friend of mine watched us do it and asked if

i had a translator installed in my ear.