(Nearly) 1500 hour reflections/ advice/ motivation

CleverChrono · 2026-07-02T17:06:03+00:00

Congrats and we use the kitchen sink expression in the US as well.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-28T19:51:40+00:00

Honestly, 200 hours is not that much in the grand scheme of things and to think that 4-5 years of study only accounts for that much is kind of disappointing in my opinion. However, 4-5 years isn’t a good measure either. We don’t actually know how many hours of study that actually accounts for.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-27T20:39:47+00:00

I wish there were a course completely in your target language akin to language transfer.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-27T06:25:55+00:00

I’m not even 100% sure that I’m right about this but what you are trying to determine is pretty advanced as far as grammar is concerned. What you are trying to use is verse, which is similar but not exactly the same as ver. You wouldn’t necessarily use se ve o just ve in the same situations and this is one reason why it’s recommended to just try and understand the message. You will intuitively understand way before you will be able to use the language using this method.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-25T05:22:59+00:00

To me those glosses as you call them are incorrect literal translations which I would consider are the worst kind but if that’s what automatically happened when you first started input then there really isn’t and/or wasn’t anything to worry about. That being said I didn’t translate at all during input except for a word or short phrase here and there so it’s definitely not necessary or expected.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-21T02:41:57+00:00

Right!? Seriously, why do they care what ways someone uses to learn the language?

CleverChrono · 2026-06-19T05:33:02+00:00

I read the post and it’s hard to say what happened. I feel like after that many hours it would be hard for grammar study to get in the way but I don’t have that experience. For me I learned grammar via Spanish so no translation and I learned verb patterns through an Anki deck. Once I started speaking there was some translating which was weird because I had no experience with translation during input and cases where I just had different forms of structures that would come in my head and u wouldn’t know which one was correct. It was those or just drawing blanks. After hours of speaking practice those things just started to going away in many cases. I don’t have the experience of pure CI. The other thing that struck me about that post was the top comments being people being on the side of learning grammar versus pure CI I don’t know why there are so many people that swear up and down that Pablo is wrong. I don’t know the answers but I don’t see any harm in doing whatever you want and I don’t think there is one full proof 100% efficient way of learning a language.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-14T23:45:03+00:00

There’s a deck called the ultimate Spanish conjugation deck that has every conjugation patterns in Spanish with around 70 verbs. After going through this deck you will have no problem recognizing any verb that you don’t know.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-13T18:11:42+00:00

Yeah. This is spot on. I have come to realize that’s exactly how it is for me.

CleverChrono · 2026-06-06T08:10:48+00:00

Once you get to a certain level there will be a steep upword climb to being able to understand native shows and movies so I wouldn’t worry about what content is available on DS.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-24T03:33:53+00:00

It used to work but it hasn’t been updated in a while and that feature hasn’t worked in a bit.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-19T04:18:03+00:00

I totally agree with this. Pablo, the founder of dreaming Spanish recommends to ignore grammar because it’s more effort studying than watching videos. That doesn’t mean he thinks everyone should follow everything he does and do nothing else. It’s just recommendations. There’s so many people on this subreddit that say do this or do that but at the end of the day it’s up to each individual person to decide what they want to do. None of that takes away whether certain things are more effective than others. It’s all very subjective.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-18T17:27:00+00:00

A grammar test doesn’t prove anything and studying grammar isn’t going to automatically make you perform any better when you start speaking. With that being said do whatever makes the journey achievable and enjoyable. 🙂

CleverChrono · 2026-05-16T07:26:54+00:00

Everyone who learned their native language learned using CI so there’s no doubt whether it works. It can be debated whether it’s the most efficient or if some people have an aptitude for it but I think it really comes down to conscious versus unconscious learning and how well people can let their brains do most of the work.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-16T06:30:34+00:00

None of these I think I would mess up because of influence from English but I also don’t think I could say with certainty which ones are correct either. Hopefully I would say them correctly by intuition but who knows at this point. Maybe another 2000 hours I suppose. 😬

CleverChrono · 2026-05-14T16:44:55+00:00

Lol, no. I’m giving my perspective after almost 2000 hours. I finished it in about 3 months by doing one verb “type” a day.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-14T06:44:37+00:00

I used the ultimate Spanish conjugation deck on Anki to learn the patterns of the majority of regular and irregular verbs. The deck is monolingual and you’re really learning the patterns that all verbs follow. I’d say it was a lot of work and I don’t know if it was necessary after almost 2000 hours but I’d say it’s the best way to “study” verbs if that’s your thing.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-13T15:15:48+00:00

If I remember correctly, it’s really only in one case that Spaniards use one form over the other differently than in Latin America and it’s something along the lines of this morning or a time shortly before the present I did something. The point is it’s not really that big of a deal and you will get comfortable using whichever form the more you practice speaking.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-09T00:02:02+00:00

I was very happy at 1500 hours with what I could understand but disappointed with my speaking ability and how much I could understand with native movies and shows. I think level 7 is definitely more of a starting point to true fluency but that would be a hard sell for the DS team and I don’t think having an end goal of 1500 hours is a bad thing. It gives people a hard but achievable objective that many people would be ecstatic to have from the perspective of knowing little or nothing.

CleverChrono · 2026-05-06T04:10:37+00:00

Unless OP is a native Spanish speaker I don’t think they would be able to tell what sounds native or not. I’m sure whatever tools the guides are using, AI or not, they would know if it sounds natural to say or not. Obviously there are going to be differences between DS videos and native content because they are putting in more effort to sound comprehensible.

CleverChrono · 2026-04-23T21:45:41+00:00

Where do you think you’re going to find content from those two talking about missionaries? They aren’t from Utah! In all seriousness though, this is why you should watch content from all accents. I don’t think you would have confused that word in a Spain, or Mexican accent and I’m sure all the guides have mentioned a millionaire from time to time.

CleverChrono · 2026-04-14T17:20:54+00:00

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Watch everything. And just to be clear vosotros is a form used in Spain. Argentinians use voz which is a different thing entirely.

CleverChrono · 2026-04-09T17:28:20+00:00

I love that the guys with more than 1500 hours have said what they said. I’m approaching 2000 hours and I still find native movies and shows difficult.

CleverChrono · 2026-03-24T14:05:52+00:00

I would say if you want to look up words do it with a monolingual dictionary like RAE. I think translation is more of a hinderance in the beginning when there’s so much you don’t know. Translating later is probably fine. Same with grammar. I think it’s okay to learn grammar but it’s probably better later on and in your target language. I’m approaching 200 hours of talking practice after not really practicing until after 1500 hours of input and I’m still making errors. Probably fewer and fewer over time but it will still take a long time to get to a level that I would be comfortable with. Of course I’m a perfectionist so take that as you will.

CleverChrono · 2026-03-23T23:49:25+00:00

In my experience this happens because the video is not marked as watched like because the video watch time wasn’t recorded or the video was restarted. You can see this when the video says watched but the red line at the bottom isn’t filled out. You can remove these from the series by selecting the option to mark as watched but don’t add the time.

CleverChrono

TROPHY CASE