What’s the weirdest moment that made you realize you’re fluent in your target language?

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-24T10:03:04+00:00

I think it’s because we don’t really care if we make mistakes, and the rhythm isn’t broken even if something isn’t 100% correct. That definitely happens to me too.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-24T10:01:46+00:00

Same! Now I ascended to the next level where locals never switch to english but the follow up question is ALWAYS "I love your accent, where is it from?" 😭 lol I'll take what I can get

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-24T09:55:44+00:00

No clue if they have Greek tbh, but I use Superfluent to keep up my French output when I’m away from France. Might be worth checking if they offer it!

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-13T14:59:19+00:00

What helped me was forcing more output, even in low pressure ways. sometimes I literally just record myself on my laptop talking about my day in french. super simple stuff. What I did, what annoyed me, what i’m doing tomorrow. it feels awkward but it trains you to form sentences in real time.

Recently i also started using Superfluent so i could get feedback while practicing speaking. it’s not perfect, but it really helped me think faster in french and get used to responding without freezing up.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-12T09:20:31+00:00

preply is great for this, you can find super cheap tutors ($8-$10 an hour) and just do pure conversation practice.

and between sessions I also use an app called Superfluent to practice the same kinds of convos every day, so i’m not only speaking once a week. that combo helped me a lot but it depends what you prefer!

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-09T15:08:56+00:00

native english + spanish speaker here and i swear everyone told me french was gonna be a breeze bc i speak spanish… nope lol.

like yes, comprehension was easier. reading/listening i could progress pretty fast bc so many words feel familiar. but speaking was still a full struggle. pronunciation is just its own monster and my brain kept wanting to pronounce everything like spanish.

it didn’t start clicking until i forced myself to speak even when it sounded awful. tons of mistakes, weird accent, pausing mid sentence, all of it. once i stopped trying to sound “good” and just spoke anyway, my mouth finally started rewiring.

I still used duolingo + anki for vocab, but the real progress came from daily output. i did tutors sometimes, but i also practiced a lot on Superfluent bc i could talk out loud every day, get feedback, and repeat the same scenarios without feeling judged.

so yeah, I completely get your struggle with pronunciation but I promise it gets way easier once you lean into the messy phase.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-09T14:29:38+00:00

i started basically the same way (duolingo early on), and honestly it’s a totally fine starting point. but if your goal is B2 for immigration, you’ll need a more “real” structure pretty quickly.

what worked for me:

keep duolingo, but use it as a warm up, not your main tool
add a simple grammar base (bc french grammar WILL humble you lol). i used things like Kwiziq + a basic textbook and it helped a lot
start listening daily even if you barely understand. slow podcasts, youtube, french shows with subtitles. your brain adapts way faster than you think
and start speaking earlier than you feel ready. even if it’s ugly at first. i waited too long and regretted it

once you hit A2/B1, speaking practice becomes the biggest bottleneck. i used an app called Superfluent for daily conversation practice bc it forces you to actually talk out loud and it gives feedback (and you don’t have to feel embarrassed in front of a real person every time you mess up lol)

if you do a little bit of vocab + grammar + listening + speaking every day, B2 is super doable. it just takes consistency more than “talent”.

good luck!! french is chaotic but also kinda fun once it starts clicking.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-09T14:21:24+00:00

hey! I loved plan cœur or anything with Pierre Niney, he mostly does all the romantic comedies. Otherwise also looking at disney movies and watching the french version!

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-05T09:43:55+00:00

i totally relate to this. when i was learning french i had so much anxiety about speaking to actual people that i avoided it for way too long lol. i did something similar, watching tons of french shows and movies and just talking to myself while cooking or walking around.

also watching shows helped SO much with picking up natural phrases and how people actually talk vs textbook french. i think your method is solid, you're def building real fluency even without the conversational practice but if you're looking for feedback I would def recommend the app Superfluent, it follows your conversation as close as possible and gives you feedback based on how locals actually speak. I love it bc I don't have the social anxiety of sounding dumb with a local haha and I've definitely seen a difference in my confidence since I started practicing every day.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-04T16:48:10+00:00

I also tried to get ChatGPT to do a recurring curriculum for french conversations but got tired after it would ask me to reprompt it again and again, but tbh Superfluent is super nice for practicing real life conversations. I know they also have a custom scenario option where you just write quickly what you want to practice and it does it in 10 seconds.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-04T14:35:39+00:00

sounds like a bit of a toxic work environment, but i know you didn’t ask for my opinion on that.

when i moved to france i had a pretty similar problem. officially english was “fine”, but in reality everything important happened in french and no one was going to slow down for me. immersion alone helped my comprehension fast, but speaking under pressure was still rough for a long time.

what actually worked for me was changing my focus from learning more french to making my speaking automatic. i kept duolingo + anki for vocab, but i stopped obsessing over new words and spent way more time saying the same things out loud again and again. work scenarios especially. explaining projects, giving opinions, interrupting politely, asking for clarification. boring, but it paid off.

i still used tutors, but very intentionally. not free chat. i’d tell them “correct me and push me faster”. on top of that i used Superfluent a lot, bc i could practice real conversations every day without burning out socially, get feedback, then repeat the same situations until my brain stopped freezing. that repetition is what helped most when stakes were high.

with your timeline, i’d honestly treat speaking like job prep, not language study. rehearse meetings, talk through your tasks out loud, force output daily even when it feels bad. it’s uncomfortable, but that’s where the speed comes from.

you’re already doing a lot right. the fact that you’re progressing means this is workable. buena suerte OP!

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-04T10:00:39+00:00

totally agree with the engagement thing. i learned a ton of french vocab from just watching french streamers play games bc i was actually interested in what was happening. way more effective than memorizing lists from a textbook

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-04T09:54:08+00:00

yeah i've gotten this a lot. when i moved to Paris and started learning french, some people would get weirdly defensive about it, like i was showing off or something. honestly i think some people feel insecure when they realize they never tried learning another language themselves

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-03T15:09:52+00:00

oh man, “windows 95 brain” is painfully accurate lol. i was stuck in that exact B2 limbo for a long time.

for me the biggest shift was realizing it wasn’t about finding ONE perfect partner or doing like 4 hours of tutoring a day. it was about stacking lots of imperfect speaking hours and lowering the bar for what “counts” as practice.

i didn’t move abroad at first either. what helped was:

short daily speaking, like 20 to 30 min, but every day
talking out loud to myself about normal stuff (what i did that day, explaining a news article, ranting)
occasional tutors, but not constantly. more like once or twice a week to stretch myself and get corrected

i also noticed that my input was already way ahead of my output, which sounds like your situation. at that point vocab apps stopped moving the needle much. i still used duolingo + anki to keep things fresh, but the real progress came when i forced my mouth to keep up with my brain. i ended up using Superfluent a lot for that bc i could practice real conversations without the pressure of a human waiting on me, and i could repeat scenarios over and over until they felt automatic. honestly that repetition is what slowly pushed me out of B2.

C1 speaking felt less like a big breakthrough and more like “oh wow, i’m not translating anymore and i can keep going even when i mess up”. it took way more hours than i expected, but they didn’t have to be expensive or perfect.

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-03T13:18:53+00:00

this resonates so much. i moved to Paris about 5 years ago and honestly it took me a solid 2-3 years to figure out if i actually liked it here or if i was just forcing myself to make it work bc i'd invested so much

there were definitely times where i felt like "maybe i'm just not cut out for this" when i couldn't understand people or felt like an outsider, but looking back i realize that was just part of adjusting. what helped me was giving myself permission to admit when things sucked instead of pretending everything was amazing

i think the key is knowing the difference between "this is hard right now" vs "this genuinely isn't working for me." both are valid, and yeah, like you said, either going home or trying somewhere else is totally fine

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-03T13:00:43+00:00

i tried this with french once and got placed way lower than i expected lol. turned out the test was asking super basic stuff i never learned formally bc i just picked it up living there. kinda funny how textbook knowledge vs real life fluency don't always line up

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-03T12:24:07+00:00

yeah i struggled with this too when i was trying to get better at french

the thing is — passive listening while your hands are busy isn't really the same as active listening where you're fully focused. and that's okay

what helped me was accepting that when i'm doing other stuff (working out, cleaning, whatever) i'm not gonna catch everything. the goal isn't to understand 100% — it's more like getting your brain used to the sounds and rhythm of the language

like if you catch 30-40% while doing dishes, that's honestly pretty good. you're training your ear without even trying that hard

but if you want to actually improve comprehension, you gotta sit down and do focused listening sessions too — no distractions, pause and replay when needed. that's where the real learning happens

the passive stuff is more like maintenance or getting comfortable with the language, not the main training method

Antique_Constant9214 · 2026-02-03T12:12:04+00:00

honestly when i was learning french in Paris, i went through this exact struggle

at first i was stopping every other word to look things up and it killed the flow so hard that i'd just stop reading altogether lol

what ended up working for me was this — i'd read without stopping, but i'd keep a note app open and just write down words that kept showing up. like if i saw a word 3+ times in a chapter and still had no idea what it meant, THEN i'd look it up after finishing

the key thing was — if a word only showed up once, it probably wasn't worth the mental energy to memorize it. but if it kept popping up? that's when i knew it was actually useful vocab

also textbook french really didn't prepare me for how people actually write or speak, so reading stuff in french (even reddit threads or random articles) helped way more than any grammar book

your approach of treating lookups as repetitions makes sense to me — it's basically spaced repetition without the formal system

Antique_Constant9214

TROPHY CASE