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Comment by msvan | Hacker News Reader

The best way to learn a language is to need to learn it. If you come in contact with a foreign language daily, it becomes much easier to both practice and motivate yourself to continue to practice. As someone who has spent thousands of hours learning a foreign language, I've come to the conclusion that I will never do it again unless I have a proper reason for it. Might seem obvious, but it's worth pointing out.

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The best way to learn a language is spending a good size chunk of money. People are loss adverse. The need to extract value from the sunk cost is a powerful motivator. That's why in-person classes tend to be more effective than books. A book is always going to be there. Missing a class on the other hand is money down the drain.

I don't think this is true. I've spent lots of money on "necessary equipment" for my hobbies, and that hasn't made me commit more time to them. People buy expensive running shoes because they see themselves as being runners, and then they never put them on.

Running shoes don't integrate from lack of use. A membership at a health club, on the other hand, goes to waste if you don't use it.

Your language skills deteriorate without use as well. I used to know German at a passable level at school, I no longer do. I can see patterns ans know some words, but it's definitely heavily degraded.

Another, closely related, case is when you love the culture the language gives you access to. Learning a language without interesting books/movies/tv shows behind it will most probably be a chore.

> Learning a language without interesting books/movies/tv shows behind it will most probably be a chore.

What language doesn't have interesting items of culture behind it?

Anime and video games are a powerful cultural motivator for me learn Japanese because I enjoy those things almost daily.

Russia no doubt has interesting items of culture as well, but I am not exposed to them at all and therefore have no desire to learn Russian.

The first sentence is important. It's not about the abstract idea of "interesting items of culture" existing. IME they have to be already interesting to the learner to be a motivating factor.

Some people likely find any items of culture interesting. I'm not one of those people, and I suspect most around me aren't either, or we'd all know a lot more languages.

Personally, I like Spanish as a language and am learning it, and as a result I find that I have access to more Spanish movies/shows/books because I understand it better. It wasn't my goal, but it's a welcome perk, and my comment was mostly about the fact that even if you don't learn a language for it's culture, there's always a culture there for you to enjoy once you do.

That's fair. I suppose I treat learning a language as more utilitarian. I need the external motivating factor to stick with it.

Languages often have neat features, but that isn't enough for me to prioritize learning one above other things.

I plan to learn Spanish by staying in Peru for a 2 months. I would duolingo spanish before that and put everything together and accelerate when i am in Peru.

Thats the plan for now anyways :D.

How serious are you about learning Spanish?

One of the first things you will learn is the futility of “I am going to learn it in X months.” Try not to assign an unrealistic deadline (you don’t know what you don’t know), enjoy the long hike.

Think of Duolingo as, at best, riding a scooter or tricycle, if your goal is to ride a bicycle for a century (competency).

Check out iTalki. You can find hundreds of teachers for real live practice at reasonable rates. If you don’t click with a particular teacher, there are so many others to find a match with your schedule, learning style, and personality.

https://www.italki.com/

Buena suerte!

hey helps that my wife is Mexican :D but I've been lazy learning spanish all these years.

I just need a full immersion where i can enjoy the full payoff.

I know you are qualifying your efforts with the weasel word “lazy”, and I hate to break it to you but there is no magic bullet to learning a language after early childhood.

(Invested time x Motivation) ÷ Inhibition = Result

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kató_Lomb

As the Spanish saying goes: los idiomas se aprenden en la cuna o en la cama ("languages are learned either in the cradle or in bed")

One of my acquaintances who is married to an Argentinian now does one day a week (Tuesday) in which they will only speak Spanish to each other the entire day and watch TV in Spanish. She is getting better. You might consider something similar.

You definitely have an advantage there. I hope you use it.

You don’t need full immersion. You just have to start vomiting words out.

haha yea definitely. we've talked about this for a while time to do it.

Thank you for the inspiration regarding your acquaintance. I am trying this now with my wife who knows Spanish. We are doing Sabado por la mañana español. Lots of fun already!

No hay de que. Buena suerte!

The key, as you seem to already have found out, is to have fun with it.

There is a Portuguese saying along the lines of “Language is learned in public”. That is, to truly learn a language you must practice it in public spaces, with strangers and “danger” around.

You might be able to speak colloquial phrases, but you will not be able to write correctly. For example, perhaps you will be able to order food from a restaurant, or say hello to a stranger.

As a "gringo" who lived in Mexico for a few years, I completely agree.

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