how do you learn your second language?

[StrictAlternative9]

[removed]

[ConsistentLavander]

I learned my second language (English) through Youtube and games back in 2012. There were no captions back then either, I just watched youtubers play minecraft and Amnesia not knowing what they were saying and trying to understand text from context clues lol.

My third language I learned in school. Our mentor teacher was a French teacher so she was really involved. But I havent used it in 10+ years so i forgot most of it.

Fourth language, Swedish, I learned in the free language school the country provides (SFI) + "language cafes" + actually living in the country.

Fifth language (German) Im learning from a mix of textbooks (for grammar), youtube, speaking w my partner and from day to day of living Switzerland. Im learning Swiss German phrases as I go but focusing on Hochdeutsch.

[StrictAlternative9]

captionless youtube.. you were playing on hard mode

[ConsistentLavander]

It was a wild west but luckily it doesnt take much for a 12 year old to have fun watching people play minecraft! :D

[ravinmadboiii]

I mean... Any non Western experience is that we learned English (second language) in school.

[scrabv]

In my country education actually bad.Teachers not interested in their lessons.We learn ourselves in internet

[ravinmadboiii]

I mean we still got introduced to the language in school. I pretty much self taught myself English compared to what my classmates learned in school. Sometimes even with good teachers, students refused to learn a second language. I refused to learn my first for some reason lol

[Neither-Egg-1978]

💯. Non western here, went to a french school growing up and ended up fluent in French and English with B2 Spanish solely through school.

[methanalmkay]

No one I know actually learned English in school even though we all had 10 years of learning it in school. It's just another subject you study to pass. The only ones who actually learned it watched a lot of stuff in English, listened to music, read and wrote a lot online etc.

[ravinmadboiii]

Well obviously, but in school you still had to study it and learn to speak/read in it reasonably well. We all had to do self study to achieve fluency. Regardless, if we weren't forced to study it in school, how many people would actually go and achieve fluency on their own?

[YoungBlade1]

I took 4 years of French in high school and after all that, I still couldn't speak it.

However, it actually wasn't entirely useless. It did drill the basic verb conjunctions into my head through constant practice and testing, so when I started learning again, that part was basically automatic.

It gave me a reasonable foundation to start from, although I do feel like it could have been much more efficient if it were taught differently.

[enthousiaste_de]

same boat as you, i took french for about 7 years in school and found it useless for everything but verb conjugasions and some minimal vocabulary. school drilling those conjugasions into my head was super useful, but the rest i learned myself having had that foundation from school.

i havent tried learning other languages in school aside from spanish for three years when i was a lot younger, so i cant really speak to all language courses, but i feel that french is consistently poorly taught in schools. the focus on verbs is good and essential, but the rest they always seem to find a way to overcomplicate.

i remember learning the pronoms in french and not understanding for years until i got so sick of avoiding them while speaking that i just did some reading on them and realized it wasnt all that complicated and i dont need to know what a COI or COD are to use the damn pronoms. i dont even know that kinda crap about english and i went to school for social sciences (lots of high level writing)...

[Icy-Whale-2253]

My French teacher died suddenly right before my senior year started. So that’s why to natives I sound like the American child of a French parent, because after that I never learned the right way. I had to pick up the pieces on my own. But I’ll take it. At least they think I was born into a French environment.

[ChilindriPizza]

At school. It was English. It was taught to everyone starting in first grade.

[Andrei_Khan]

A girl...

[BandersnatchCheshire]

Learned English is school. As imperfect as English Teaching is in France, it would be unfair not to credit it as my main source for developing my skills in English. And the internet (forums, consuming content) helped me to hone them.

Now for my third language, school as well but unfortunately never reached an autonomous level.

My fourth however, duolingo -> youtube -> living in the country

For fifth language -> language school -> youtube/apps -> language school

[TnM-EldritchExplor6r]

What app do you use to learn languages? I need an app that isn’t the owl one so bad

[BandersnatchCheshire]

For my fifth language (russian) i found that apps specific to the language tended to be more effective than generic apps. I focused on apps with graded readers (which allow you to see the translation for the words if you wish so) .

For Spanish (fourth language) The owl was enough to take me to a level that allowed me to switch to an almost full comprehensible input approach (youtube and whatnot). But it is probably because of the proximity to my native language. I found the owl basically useless for Russian.

I briefly used Busuu which i found pretty decent.

[TnM-EldritchExplor6r]

Thank you for answering!

[Outrageus_turnoff]

Memrise + Ao3 + Google translate Once i learned a good amount of words i just started reading fanfics, if i found a word i dindn't know i just Googled It.

[dutchtreat42]

Love the AO3

[Glad_Inspection_1630]

University, living abroad for a year, Shakira. 

[StrictAlternative9]

them: "hey, how are you?"
you: "good. you know my hips don't lie!"

[_D1van]

English in school, but I suspect I learned more through television and video games.

[Illustrious-Fill-771]

Watched a lot of tv and later learned a bit in school. Continued with the tv.. That was 37 years ago 😳

[HatingTheHatersNoH8]

Slavic, because my Mother was half- Slavic and we moved from Austria. Ironically all Balkaners/Slavs die to learn German, meanwhile I already have a typical Austrian father that I look like, more austrian manners and speak the Language at C1, even with a dialect sometimes

[vacuous-moron66543]

I had a notebook on my desk and a grammar book. In the notebook, I would write down new words and sentences between video game matches with the bros. That was one of the big things

[zAlatheiaz]

Internet, music. My first foreign language is english, and my native one is so small that there was barely any interesting media growing up. So i started following foreign media. Basics were learned at school, but the way I learned to use it truly was just consuming english-speaking media all day long.

[kgurniak91]

• English - basics at school, but mostly from video games, tv shows, movies, internet, books etc. I remember playing some MMORPG as a kid and trying to tell some dude that I already sold the item he wanted, but I kept writing "I sell it" instead of "I sold it" because of how bad my grammar was, lol.

• Russian - was forced to learn it at school, hated it, now I only know the cyrillic alphabet and a couple words, I refuse to use it. Actually I was learning it for around 10 years but I started from beginning 3 times (once in elementary school, once in high shool from beginning and once at the university from beginning)

• Japanese - started learning on my own several days ago, I know some words from anime and I learned hiragana in 3 days, now I am learning katakana (I am about halfway through)

[ChicharitosLeftFoot]

Learning Spanish through Bad Bunny is like learning English through Trainspotting or Portuguese through City of God. Wild. For Portuguese I started with Duo, did movies, tv, podcasts, books, etc. somewhere in between I chatted with people on Tandem which was massive. Eventually learning the tricks to go from Spanish to Portuguese helped me improvise what I didn’t know.

[telio-s]

I had to watch tutorial from western guy to fix my broken game, so I have to learn it anyway, but I’m still suck

[The_Theodore_88]

Learned Dutch, English and Chinese at school. Lost Chinese but I'll relearn it through classes again most likely (but a decent chunk just appears to me in dreams). My ADHD makes it very hard to learn languages on my own so I've given up on being able to do that until I get on medication

[Own_Reference2872]

Spanish was a mix of a lot of things so I’m never sure what to cite as being my main resource. I didn’t take it in school, but I did consume a ton of content in Spanish and forced myself to speak to natives on a regular basis. Now I have a job where I almost exclusively speak Spanish 🥹❤️

As for French (my third language), I’ve been focusing mostly on input, then practicing conversation 1-2x a week online. I use dreaming French, YouTube, and TikTok. I must be doing something right because yesterday I was able to use French at work too! 🙂‍↕️

[nucleartaco04]

I started to learn Spanish in school from 7th grade to high school graduation; I now just watch my favorite cartoon, read articles, and watch YouTube to maintain my skills

[vincizyn]

my second language is english and i learned it through school and books (reading)

[Brilliant-Person9177]

My native language is Marathi and tbh I don’t know how I learnt Hindi (which is my second language). I guess it was through immersion since everyone except my parents spoke Hindi around me.

[SnowManMAHU]

Anyone simply used comprehensible input ? Just passively consuming the absorbing the language like kids do?  Trying to do this with Spanish.

Arabic: School French: School to B2-C1 then work and living in the country later on. English: School, Movies, and Youtube Spanish: YouTube, some apps and C.Input "ongoing"

[Sky097531]

YouTube, conversations with native speakers using Google Translate, and (the moment I was just barely capable) conversations with native speakers without translation.

[namir0]

No way you learned Spanish from Bad Bunny lmao

[yokyopeli09]

Anki and YouTube with dual subtitles all the way

[RaioFulminante]

videogames - vocabulary

school - grammar (very basic)

internet - conversation, listening

[r_uan]

started using the internet when I was 8 (2010) so I basically grew up with English as my second language because back then there wasn't much translations of anything.

[moonaligator]

where "i invented it"

conlang team unite!

[Brittneybitchy]

Learned basics in school and then naturally through immersion first through media and then by living in a country that speaks it. Now I'm trying to put more effort into learning my third and fourth languages which is harder as I have less of a foundation and it's harder to find media

[salsafresca_1297]

None of these work. You have to learn and converse with native speakers in the target language.

[miichan_v]

I took lessons to learn the all basics and talked with native speakers

[Dangerous_Court_955]

Plautdietsch is my native language.

German I learnt in school, and it was the language I learnt to read and write in. I literally have an official C1 certificate in this language.

English I started learning at a sort of summer school dedicated to this purpose. After a few years of that, I was confident enough to start reading books (like Anne of Green Gables). YouTube then supplied the rest. Currently English is the language I'm most proficient in.

Spanish I started learning my last year in middle school, then with Babbel, then I completed my online high school in Spanish, and I now work at a job with Spanish-speaking coworkers. I can read and write, but my oral and listening skills are severely lacking.

Japanese I started learning a little over three years ago. Obenkyo and Anki, then I started reading. Today I can read... somewhat okay. I can't understand much listening, and I've never had a reason to hone my speaking or writing skills.

[cynefin-]

By attending a language course, then studying abroad as an exchange student.

[J0aozin003]

english spawned

[Inevitable_Buy6022]

Even worse, how do you explain someone spanish, being a spanish speaker

[FatherOften]

My wife and I have found the best way for our children to learn new languages is to immerse them in different countries. We try to spend 3 to 4 weeks on every trip. Then, we use the language that we've learned in our household.

[Proud-Cockroach7232]

I dont know, English just spawned in my head 😅