Multilingual people of Lemmy who learned a language (or multiple) as adults, how did you do it? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 19 hours ago by user224@lemmy.sdf.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that's more of a content for my daydreaming.

I often encounter issues due to language barriers.
Mainly with 2 languages.

Since the start of war, I've been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can't really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.
Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.
Probably like someone who doesn't speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that's fairly common over there).

And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.
Which I also encountered as "would've been useful now" a few times.

Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn't my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.

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[-] bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 4 points 18 hours ago

teaching english in china got me nandarin.

for the other languages it was duolingo mostly, and talking to real people helps a lot. i live abroad, so immersion is right there.

I find learning all the food first really helps me,. I learn a lot about the phonemes nad rhythms of the language and after I'm comfortable with those, it's just a repetition game for the words and grammar.

My 100% speed trick if you can stand it is watching the same episode of TV or movie once per day for a couple of weeks in that language and paying absolute attention to the show for that span of time each day.

It boosts, speech, listening, and comprehension so crazy much over 2-3 weeks, but of course is boring after a few days.

this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026

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