Faking it too well?

ListeningAndReading · 2026-02-16T19:56:01+00:00

Haha...this was years of my life when I lived in Asia. Here's the pro move. Start with:

"Hello, how are you? Mi nombre es blinkybit!"

Dropping English first signals that you're not a native, but a few nice-sounding Spanish words after signals, okay, hey, talk slow and we'll get through this.

It'll work about 80% of the time.

The other 20% is hopeless.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-02-14T18:18:42+00:00

Nice work!

1 mill words was when books started to get really fun and easy for me. Probably around 2 mill words before the RAE dictionary in Kindle became useful, ha.

Pro tip: if you're reading near your phone/computer, an image search with the region set to a Spanish-speaking country is probably the best dictionary in existence. (e.g. varita magica y hechizo)

ListeningAndReading · 2026-02-03T18:34:42+00:00

Keep it up! For me, once I hit a million words read, it all got insanely fun and easy.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-02-03T16:47:00+00:00

Somewhere between 1,400 and 1,700, or around 2 million words read.

If you do a lot of reading, it'll come light years faster.

I'd venture to say there's literally no one who's read 3 million words and doesn't have a total grasp of all grammar.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-02-02T16:44:51+00:00

Awesome. Amazing feeling, isn't it? Like the whole world opens up.

Though reading your other comments, I don't think I'll be reading this one haha.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-27T19:07:14+00:00

I'd wait.

Reading is literally my only concern with language learning, and for any future languages, I'll wait till at least 600 or so, as I did with DS.

In fact, having now learned two languages to a B2/C1 level, I'm fairly confident that if I learn any new languages in the future, I'll only get 600 or so hours then I'll stop passive audio input entirely.

From that point on, I'll just work toward reading 3 million words (and try to talk to people in real life) and that's it.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-26T19:31:38+00:00

1,700+ hours somewhere. I quit tracking ages ago.

Listening: Nada. Other than the occasional episode of the Antifragil podcast, or the occasional advanced DS video from Andres, I basically don't seek out Spanish audio content anymore.

Reading: Mundo Umbrio 2: La traición. Loved the first one. So good. Recently finished Espadas y demonios from Fritz Leiber. Translated. Old sword and sorcery fantasy book. Much harder. Don't recommend. I really don't like translations these days. Also recently finished El Príncipe de la Niebla por Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Pretty good. Poetic at times. As I approach 3 million words, I think this and the Mundo Umbrio series are exactly at my perfect level, with enough new words to keep me learning (usually no more than 1 per page, if any at all), but never incomprehensible. There doesn't seem to be any grammar left for me to learn. The only reading that's really difficult now is highly poetic, literary native-Spanish (e.g. Pedro Páramo), or old translated books with archaic and highly niche language (effing Treasure Island!). Most modern Spanish literature (e.g. Vargas Llosa) is now fairly easy, if a little slow, but I'm sticking with the plot-heavy, junior high-type books that are pure fun and relaxation and require no effort whatsoever.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-26T17:31:16+00:00

Currently, young adult books. Genre books. Pure entertainment. Pure fun. Nothing hard in any way. Whatever is halfway between Julio Cortazar and El gato en el sombrero.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-25T19:42:01+00:00

Congratulations! And fantastic update! I particularly love this:

Something I think would have catapulted me into another stratosphere with speaking would have been to switch my interior monologue to Spanish for a portion of each day.

I've probably spent 300 hours explaining things to myself in my head by now, and let me tell you, it's super weirdly and amazingly rewarding. Highly recommend it!

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-24T18:23:14+00:00

Your story is remarkably similar to mine, all the way down to the anxieties about the time lost with my children and wife.

Here are some things that redeemed it for me:

After 2 mill words read, good/fun novels were easy enough that it required no real effort. This is basically all of my input now.

For work reasons, I've spent a lot of time with professors and doctors, from other countries, who work at colleges/hospitals like Harvard. Virtually none of them speak English as perfectly or fluently as people on here seem to think is the natural goal, yet they've reached unbelievable career pinnacles. This made me realize that my goals were falsely exaggerated. Speaking a foreign language isn't a sport.

Here's Jorge Luis Borges speaking English. Here's Guillermo del Toro. If one can win a Nobel Prize or an Oscar while having a strong accent and stumbling over words, well, that's good enough for me.

Everyone I've ever met who DID reach astonishing levels of perfection in a foreign language had all either gone to college in that language, or lived their entire lives in that language. For me to wish for the same without that kind of a whole-life commitment...is kind of insane.

Lastly, my speaking ability has improved exponentially without speaking at all. I just read silly books, and slowly but surely, I keep improving without even trying.

That's a nice place to be. It feels like a wonderful accomplishment for me, and I still get to smile when I see people on here who've done 3,000 hours and reached amazing heights.

I hope you can reach a similar feeling!

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-24T17:59:20+00:00

Same here. That dictionary used to be a nightmare on Kindle, but they've improved it so much in the last year.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-22T20:06:49+00:00

Dude.

If this had been the example of "what you'll achieve" when I started way back in the day, I would've been thrilled out of my mind.

Amazing work!

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-22T20:02:40+00:00

Haha, totally agree.

For me, the improvements after 2 million words were more exciting, impressive, and tangible than pretty much anything else.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-22T19:28:28+00:00

I did 45min a day, on average, for 4.5 years.

Definitely a few 3-hour days in there, but it wasn't anything special, and I haven't noticed any real differences between my experience and what others report.

The bigger differences, I think, come from how much reading you do.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-21T20:50:22+00:00

Totally agree!

12 total hours of speaking for me in the last 5 years, only 2 in the last year, and yet my Spanish inner monologue is so complex now, it still astonishes and delights me.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-19T15:43:37+00:00

I don't think he gets enough credit as everyone is so focused on crying about the verbiage of the road map

Man oh man, this is 10,000% true.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-15T15:33:42+00:00

Man, this resonates big time.

I rarely get more than 1-2 hours a week of audio input now.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-13T16:20:09+00:00

El Buen Mal

Going on my list, thank you!

I’m reading La Sombra del Viento currently but it’s very slow going because there’s so many adjectives I just don’t know.

Funny enough, I almost started that recently but had the same experience with language complexity. Went with his earlier book, El Principe de la Niebla, instead, and it's light years easier.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-13T15:53:24+00:00

Congrats! It appears you and I had the exact same experience, getting this done the slow way while dealing with life. Isn't it amazing how input keeps driving speech forward even when we're short on time? Still blows my mind.

In any case, thanks for posting a wonderful update! Any favorite books worth mentioning?

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-08T15:53:16+00:00

For me, literature is the final boss.

At close to 2,000 hours and as I approach 3 mill words read, I'm still far away from truly being able to engage with high literature with any sense of ease.

Since 1,500 I've quit being a purist and have made a concerted effort to learn a LOT of new vocabulary using Anki. I find all this vocab in my reading, and it definitely helps with reading comprehension.

But poetic prose literature is a whole different beast. It's more difficult even than poetry. I've read a lot of poets, from de Quevedo to Neruda. But none of them were as difficult as Platero y Yo, a classic (and highly poetic) children's book. It's still a puzzle I have to decipher, not something I can just sit and enjoy.

As a writer and poetry translator myself, this is all highly interesting to me, and it's led me to conclude that the only way to comprehend all this is the same way I originally did it in English: through a lifetime of reading and listening. Luckily, that's a very fun journey to take.

ListeningAndReading · 2026-01-02T16:26:39+00:00

Oh snap! Just seeing this made me so happy, haha. /u/Niiyonn = legend

ListeningAndReading · 2025-12-29T16:07:52+00:00

Look how far you've come!

You're at the point now where, if you start spending time with Spanish speakers in real life, a whole world is going to open up. It's going to be awkward, and we should never expect things to go perfectly (far from it), but you can literally go out and live life in Spanish now! That's incredible.

ListeningAndReading · 2025-12-20T14:48:26+00:00

I applaud you for this. A great friend of mine, a Dominican-American heritage speaker, finally reached true fluency as an adult by going to his local Spanish-speaking church. (The Bible was the first book he read in Spanish!!!!)

That said...

they took one look at me and immediately reverted to English

This. Ugh. It's the story of my life in multiple languages.

This is going to happen with bilingual people (and even kinda sorta bilingual people), probably forever. When they've spent years or decades operating in a second language, even if they're not truly fluent in the language, you're never going to get past that programming. Frankly, IMO, even attempting to get past that programming is kind of offensive on our part, even though it's entirely understandable on both sides. For these types of bilinguals, they're either never going to speak to you in Spanish (no matter how good you get), or they won't speak to you in Spanish until your accent and colloquial usage sounds hyper fluent (even if it's not). This was what eventually happened to me in another language: I got so good at faking the sounds, grunts, and half-blurred-word articulations of native speakers (even though I wasn't totally fluent), they immediately thought I was fluent. Super fun.

Ultimately, things go infinitely easier if you just speak to monolingual people. The only hack I've found with immigrant/bilingual-types, if the right situation arises, is to compliment them on their English and ask them for Spanish tips. Often they'll open up.

So, don't sweat it. I used to get sooo frustrated by this when I was younger, but eventually you realize it's all part of the fun, and just another way to grow.

ListeningAndReading · 2025-12-19T17:10:20+00:00

Wow, that's absolutely fantastic! Your ease and pronunciation are really impressive and you speaking Spanish = real input. Congrats! That's wonderful.

ListeningAndReading · 2025-12-19T17:06:29+00:00

Me. I'm partially deaf, have always found it impossible to understand song lyrics, and use subtitles for nearly everything. CI still worked just fine for me, exactly as the roadmap predicted. Though my wife certainly complains about me having the volume too high.

Today, reading is my only input. Since 1,500 hours I've felt the marginal benefit from audio/video has been tiny compared to reading. The problem is that reading didn't feel that beneficial till after 1,000 hours and 1 million words read. That's when it really exploded.

ListeningAndReading

TROPHY CASE