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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

Going to plug Language Transfer again, an excellent free app that is a much better way to learn a language than the DuoLingo approach.

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So, it's basically somewhat of a podcast that's almost entirely in English?

Dunno, I guess you could listen to it. But you also need rote practice to calcify what you learn. That's what Duolingo is good at.

Everyone who has spent 5min learning Spanish knows what tener means. The hard part isn't knowing what it means, but rather practicing it so that you hear it, read it, and conjugate it on the fly.

Reading a grammar book end to end doesn't work either because you need the practice.

The whole question of language learning basically is: what daily practice are you willing to do? Not just what you want to do in spirit, and not just what you aesthetically prefer, but what you'll actually do.

No, it’s a series of audio activities framed as a conversation between someone who knows the new language and someone learning. You pause the audio and play the part of the student when required and it focusses on the positive language transfer aspects between languages and how they can be used to build up sentences and phrases.

Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and comprehension are all practiced and developed through the courses and, for me, it has been the most effective way to learn Spanish.

After just a handful of lessons I was able to structure many useful sentences based on the teachings that we weren’t taught directly but that I was able to create a fresh as needed in the moment.

It's not really a podcast.

It's closer to courses like pimsleur or Paul noble where a teacher and student are speaking and there is pause before the student answers in which you are supposed to answer.

The thing I love about LanguageTransfer is how he explains _why_ something works a certain way. I find it easier to remember some grammar when I know the background evolution. He also makes an effort to map between languages which is the biggest contrast to things like pimsleur, which try to be more immersive.

Language transfer is rather good. I'm not quite sure what it does differently, but there's a reason people recommend it.

I find LT great for "learning the language", but I find something like Spanish After Hours on Youtube to be far better for "learning to speak and understand the spoken language". I would recommend that everyone at least dips into something like LT every now and then, but I think something like SAH is better for daily exercises.

Spanish after hours looks great, thanks.

Do you just watch / listen to random videos or is it more structured?

I am planning a trip to Mexico soon, so I have been listening to how to Spanish, and mextalki podcasts. The latter is pretty difficult to follow, though I feel you need to listen to real native speakers speaking at a normal pace to have any chance of understanding locals.

SAH seems great because she does seem to speak normally and not too slowed down (or it just sounds quick to me :))

Yes! Language transfer is amazing imo. I found it here on hacker news and it's probably the most effective tool I have found for learning languages.

For Spanish, over the years, I have taken formal immersive classes, finished the Duolingo tree and the reverse tree, spent time in Spanish speaking countries etc. My level of Spanish was good but clunky and I made a lot of mistakes. After finishing about half of the course, I found I was making far fewer mistakes.

I love the etymology background he gives, I love linguistics so it keeps me interested, maybe not for everyone.

I completed the Paul noble learn Italian course, so that I could compare to language transfer. In my opinion language transfer was much better, I found Paul noble's a bit slow and less engaging, for me personally.

I used it for Spanish too, and it really gave me confidence. I went through the course once and was able to travel through rural Panama for two weeks. I plan to redo the entire course (total about 15 hours) soon, to freshen things up after five years.

I think it needs to be supported with other techniques (speaking to natives, watching Spanish TV or movies, etc.), but for taking in and understanding the language it can't be beat.

I learned French, German, Sesotho, Japanese, with a mixture of classroom teaching and full immersion. I decided to learn Spanish with Language Transfer. It is by far the best system I have ever used (short of immersion; the absolute best way to learn Japanese was to fall in love with a Japanese woman in Japan).

I have been supporting it with monthly donations for about 4 years now, because I believe it is such an important tool.

up vote here - Language Transfer has allowed me to be able to communicate in Spanish within just a few weeks - understanding is another challenge though. This app is absolutely genius. I wish there would have been more content though

My wife and I used it for Spanish as well and it’s a game changer for sure. I can now have a surpassingly decent (if simple) conversation with Spanish speakers based on this app and some supporting vocab learning

Thank you! Is there any advantage to using the app instead of just playing the audio files directly?

I found this in the app’s description:

> This app provides the same audio available for free on languagetransfer.org, but allows you to download tracks in advance, save your progress, and listen with your phone locked.

> We collect some anonymous usage data so we can improve the app and learn about how users are engaging with the lessons. You can learn more in the About section of the app, or turn off this data collection in the Settings

The app is really basic, in a good way. There are no ads or unnecessary permissions. It's just a basic media player that lets you download the audio files for offline playback and tracks whan you have already listened to.

I find I pretty convenient.

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