Did any of you really successfully learn a foreign language, either at school or after, without moving there or having family speaking that language, AND you still speak it fluently now? If so, how?

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Cedar_Wood_State@reddit

There’s a reason why people from other countries can learn English and speak somewhat fluently despite not having any parents speaking it, or some never even visited English speak countries. There’s just consume English media regularly. People could easily do the same for Spanish/french/ whatever they learnt at school and easily keep up with the language skill. But English media is the most wide spread out there so people don’t bother

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charlotte_e6643@reddit

i kept trying to find childrens shows in german for me to learn quicker, i have found its also not as available in the UK (or at least well known enough), peppa pig is in german, but there seems to be a big gap after that which i cant seem to fill

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Motor_Teaching_7672@reddit

Www.kika.de is the equivalent of CBeebies in Germany.

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Corona21@reddit

There were some decent e-books i think called coffee in Berlin? More grown up themes but child reading levels.

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Amata69@reddit

I am surprised there's a huge gap after Peppa pig. For some reason I thought there's a lot of stuff in German once you understand cartoons. I remember trying to think of something I'd watch if I decided to learn German and had no idea what I'd enjoy. I got hooked on Mexican telenovelas and I often wonder what the equivalent of this would be in other languages.

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charlotte_e6643@reddit

it’s more there’s no older cartoons (that i can find), eg when i was a kid i went from peppa pig to bananas in pyjamas. there’s alot more words and less pauses in the second one

i also need subtitles to make sure im translating right

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QueefInMyKisser@reddit

I read a fair amount in French but I need to look up a lot of words. Using a Kindle makes it convenient. I basically gave up on listening to it though, the content I can actually understand isn’t sufficiently appealing.

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Amata69@reddit

Isn't there a lot of interesting content in French? I've always been curious what content is produced in other languages. Nearly everything I listen to is in English and I often wonder if speakers of other languages don't do the same so you end up listening to a podcast in English about a crime in Paris. I'm learning Spanish and telenovelas became my way of learning a lot of vocabulary and sentence structures. I do wonder what I'd replace them with if I wanted to learn another language. Books are of course always an option but are there any French podcasts that are engaging, for instance?

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ArcTan_Pete@reddit

I took french at school, then - after visiting Paris in my late teens/early adulthood - decided I hated the language and the country and would never go there again (Actually I have visited different regions of France and realised it's just Paris and Parisians that are the problem) I could remember a few phrases and words, but have forgotten most of the language.

I took German as a secondary subject in Uni. I love German and the culture, and have visited many times (often driving through). I have forgotten most of the language.

I speak reasonable Polish, but that is because I married a Polish lady, and I am no where near fluent

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celtiquant@reddit

Yes, I did, with French.

Started in high school. Found the Asterix comics in French in the school library. We had the black and white English versions at home. Began translating the French editions without reference to the English. Had my Collins Robert dictionary at hand, plus an excellent and supportive French teacher, and just ploughed through, picking up colloquial and lazy French from the books. By the time I started interacting with French language assistants in 5th form, I was quite confident and had an extensive and different vocabulary than the rest of my cohort. By the time we started to go on school exchanges, I was pretty much fluent, though not perfect. Then did my year abroad in France during uni where I could get away with being French. I still use French for my job today.

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MohammadAmxn@reddit

I've actually had this exact same problem. I studied Spanish for 6 years in secondary school, and when I left, I slowly began to forget it ( reason being I never had anyone to speak to + tutoring is expensive ). So I developed and launched my own app which allows me to put my conversation skills into practice. I'm able to practice any sort of conversational scenario/language aspect I want.

I've become quite good at speaking Spanish ever since I started to use it. DM me if you're interested in using it.

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sheepandlambs@reddit

I'm a fluent German speaker. Did it all through school and uni and I now use it for work.

Practice.

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Slight_Credit810@reddit

I took A level French and got an A, I can read and understand at least 80% when it comes to fiction, and I can follow dialogue in films and listen to the news easily, but my speaking and writing skills are quite rusty in comparison. I don’t actively engage with French media but I had a lady from Ivory Coast tell me I’m basically fluent which was nice

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Conscious_Ad2446@reddit

Yes. French in school and then lived in France and spoke fluently. The secret is good teachers and good programs in school. I am sorry to say but foreign languages teaching in both England and France leave a lot to be desired. Primary schools can't even afford French teachers in England. My son was better at french than his English (French) teacher.

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theworldvideos@reddit

It’s usually the polyglots or someone who love learning new languages are the ones who will be fluent. They will keep practising it either by themselves or with someone who can speak th language or languages.

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tricks_23@reddit

4 years ago I decided I wanted to learn another language. Spanish it was. I don't have any Spanish speaking family. I don't live in Spain (family circumstances mean that's very unlikely to be the case) and I live in a small town, so nobody to practice with.

Duolingo gave me the basics but overall, it's a shit platform. Zero context on mistakes to help you understand, and they've only just introduced the AI assistant to help with this. All mistake based understanding has been because of my own research.

Later, I joined other language learning apps, Babbel, Mondly, Memrise. All have their flaws and don't particularly bring you on. I joined another app called Tandem and this was the one that brought me on the most. You get to chat with people learning your language and they learn yours. I got chatting to quite a few people but ended up making a genuine friend on there from Spain and we chat regularly. I text in Spanish, she texts in English. We exchange stories of when we've had to use each others' language and it's fun. You learn little patterns and genuine word usage when speaking with natives. So IMO there's nothing that comes close to regular exposure and practices. You have to do it Every. Single. Day. No dropping in and out.

After 4 years, every day, I'm not fluent. I struggle to "hear" spoken Spanish because I haven't been exposed to it, but can read and write well (Level B2). I recently went to Valencia and got a tattoo and held a full 30-45 minute conversation with the artist in Spanish. For the first time, my Spanish was better than his English and it felt like a really big achievement for me. I can hold my own now in Spain, not just the standard Hola, dos cervezas por favor - they appreciate it too.

So yeah, if you're going to do it; commit! Exposure, every day, seek out opportunities to be immersed. Seek out friends who speak it - those in big cities are at an advantage.

Si hay personas que hablan español en Inglaterra, me envías un mensaje, siempre quiero más oportunidades para practicar!

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IHateTheLetter-C-@reddit

My problem is I'm fine throwing random words together that sort of fit enough to get the message through, but my grammar is awful! I'd love to get better at it though

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BG3restart@reddit

I learned French at school, then did a bilingual secretarial course, secured a job at a French company in the UK and eventually became a technical translator. I haven't used it since I retired eight years ago, but can still speak it. I still watch French films and read French books for fun.

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GraphicsandGames@reddit

Yeah I studied Japanese at University.
Now I moved to Poland and am studying Polish.

Learning a language is a lot more difficult than people want to believe, especially one is isn't closely related to your native language. Even an "easy" language will take several hundred hours of studying before you start to grasp it properly.

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deadeyes1990@reddit

Yeah, I think you can, but only if you’re willing to be a bit rubbish at it for ages.

School gives you the basics, but you don’t really learn a language until it starts showing up in normal life — songs, films, podcasts, random conversations, reading stuff you only half understand.

The hard bit isn’t intelligence, it’s not getting embarrassed and giving up.

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JamsHammockFyoom@reddit

I did French and German at school; didn't really like French and literally none of it stuck.

I actually chose to do German at GCSE until my teacher left and my school closed; never sat the exams but had a reasonable understanding from school. I kept up with it, listen to German music regularly, try and read German stuff when I can and so on.

I can speak German and do if I go to Germany - I speak very "transactional" German, but I can get around and ask for things, order things in restaurants, have a general conversation as long as it's not too complicated.

My reading is better than my writing, and my speaking isn't great just through lack of practice but I can get by. Nobody I know speaks German, I don't have a German "buddy" to learn with but I really try to keep the skills going as I would hate to lose them.

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PaleozoicQueen@reddit

Yes, German. It was not taught in my school, I had to teach myself and make the most of the learning I could do on trips to Germany and when I encountered German speakers elsewhere.

I always made an effort to use it, when I was back in the UK all my favorite bands sing in German so I was still hearing it everyday and then I have spent a lot of time in Germany, lived in Berlin and go back often.

I am able to live and work in German, I am still developing my more complex vocabulary but then an English speaker wouldn't know every word in a dictionary either.

Find music you love in the language and use the songs as a thing to learn the language with, practise speaking and listening with.

Go to countries that speak it and use what you know as much as you can. Get any reading resources you can while there to take back. Watch films in it too.

I test my German casually now by doing things like translating a TV show to myself out loud, reading books.

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Linguistin229@reddit

Yes, several.

You need to know it’s a long game. Even for an “easy” language like French, Spanish or Swedish it’s going to take a long time to get to a decent place. You also need to realise you can’t rely on apps.

Instead, you commit to learning across various media for several years. You buy a textbook with audio and go through that. You buy a verb book and study conjugations. You buy a simple grammar and a complex grammar to understand how the language works differently. You watch YouTube or TV or listen to radio/podcasts in that language. You get copies of books you know in that language and/or graded readers. You go to online newspapers and read articles. You listen to music from the country. You look at frequency dictionaries and do vocab drill. You’ll peruse the dictionary every now and then for fun. Maybe you’ll make flashcards to help you remember set expressions, idioms, complex grammar points, prepositions, case endings etc. You write your own texts and check accuracy. You go on subreddits for that language. You speak aloud when alone at home to get your mouth accustomed to making the sounds of that language. You see if you can attend any classes, including conversation classes, to practise with others. Maybe get a penpal? Or you find a great teacher online to help you with all of the above.

But you need to accept it takes a lot of time and a lot of work.

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urtcheese@reddit

Learnt Spanish in my 20s, having never studied it at school. Did 8 months backpacking South America and got to an ok day to day level but tbh you repeat the same things generally e.g. greetings, ordering stuff, asking directions etc so never really developed into full blown conversations.

During lockdown I studied it pretty hard, lots of good free resources out there. Then I did conversational classes with online tutors, thankfully you can do these remote with people in Mexico, Colombia etc so the cost in MUCH lower than here. Not too hard to find people offering lessons for $5-10 an hour, would recommend.

Now married to a native Spanish speaker and go to latin America every year, my in-laws don't really speak English so I communicate pretty much solely in Spanish when I am there. Definitely NOT fluent though. I'd probably give myself a 6/10 with 1 being can't say a word and 10 being 100% fluent.

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docju@reddit

I studied up to first year of university- I only really go there for holidays every so often (and even then, I go to Belgium more than France).

I can read whole books in French (I read Harry Potter and Hunger Games in French and still haven't read them in English), websites etc. because I've been doing that since I started learning. It takes me a while but I listen to radio as well sometimes, and I watch Simpsons episodes with French dubbing.

Other pro tips are to read pages in wikipedia in the target language about topics you're already familiar with so you can pick up vocabulary (eg I read about countries) or follow french language accounts on threads or x.

That all gets you used to the reading/ listening aspects, but the key to speaking is just to practise. There exist French language meet-up groups and discord servers where you can speak in a low pressure environment.

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JasonStonier@reddit

Did French up to GCSE and got a B but then no further study. I listen to a lot of French music and watch French films, and I started reading French kids books (as an adult) and slowly built up.

I’m not quite fluent but I’m good enough for business meetings in French and all other practical purposes.

One of the great joys of my life is that French people will normally stare quizzically at me for a bit then ask if I’m Swiss because my accent is apparently fairly good but not French-french. It’s rare that I’m immediately outed as a Brit, which I like very much.

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SnooLobsters8265@reddit

When I used to live in Spain people would think I was Portuguese because I was quite good but never learnt to roll my r’s properly. I found it very complimentary!

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docju@reddit

I went to Germany once and they told me I sounded like I could be Swiss. Having since learned that Swiss German is pretty hard for standard German speakers to understand, I realise now that this was not a compliment.

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thebrainitaches@reddit

I'm a bit of an outlier but yes. No language background, but I did German and Italian GCSE + my teacher didn't want me to give up French so tutored me in her free time to do French GCSE as well. I carried on french and German to a-Level, got basically fluent in both (A-Level. Languages, at least when I was in school in the 2010s is no joke, it's suddenly serious and hard). Then I decided to drop German and do French and Italian at university. PSA don't do a languages degree guys, the job opportunities are not so great. But regardless, by the time I left Uni I was fluent in both and my German was still OK. Then I moved to France, lived there for 10 years, and then in 2020 moved to Germany and picked up my German again and it came back super fast, within a year I was back to mostly fluent speaking and listening without doing any specific work just listening to podcasts and watching German TV shows. Now it's been 5 years and I can work in German (recently went through a divorce with a German lawyer, never did the language pose an issue).

I do think it's possible but the UK system letting you give up aged 16 is bad.

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JennyW93@reddit

My mum speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. All fluently. She did languages and linguistics at uni.

It’s a slight bone of contention that, despite living in Wales my entire life (30+ years), she still hasn’t learnt Welsh.

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SpeedConstant109@reddit

I learned Spanish in my 30s and would say that I'm conversational still. I have a regime to maintain my level though. I do 10 minutes of vocab/grammar drills every morning, I read in Spanish for at least 10 minutes every day, I watch at least 10 minutes of video in Spanish and listen to podcasts regularly. I also have 3 interchanges with Spanish speakers each week. It doesn't need to take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of time to learn and maintain.

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cbawiththismalarky@reddit

Spanish, French and a little German. My french and Spanish are more than at the getting by level, in Germany and Switzerland I worked in very international offices where English was the default so I can get by but I never felt immersed

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Lolabird2112@reddit

I grew up in Canada and went to a French immersion school. So everything was taught in French- gym, sciences, history & geography- except English. And weirdly math was taught in both. We were given detention if we got caught talking in English, shit like that.

So I was very fluent in my teens (worked a charm getting served underaged) but it only took a few years to forget EVERYTHING.

I discovered I had while travelling and meeting a French couple. I opened my mouth and realised all my words were gone, even simple ones. I was devastated.

Then months later I was working in a hostel in Bruges (the Flemish side) and had a dream. In the dream I was at a uni lecture, one of those huge ones, and the lecturer was talking in French. I can remember what she looks like, but no idea what was being said. In my dream I noticed it, and realised I could understand everything she was saying.

When I woke up, my French was back. Shaky, not fully fluent but definitely able to hold a convo and my accent was a wreck, but it was back.

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SnooLobsters8265@reddit

The way we teach languages in this country is backwards IMO and it doesn’t facilitate communication. We leave it WAY too late to learn the past tenses, particularly as the verbs used most often are usually irregular. When I hang out with my friends, we tell each other past-tense stories about work stuff, our weekends, films we’ve seen etc. We don’t painstakingly talk through our morning routines Patrick Bateman-style or say ‘I’ve got one sister. She has brown hair and blue eyes. How many sisters do you have?’ or give each other directions to the local bank.

If we just taught the past tenses earlier, kids would participate much more regularly in practice because it wouldn’t be stilted and unnatural.

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MarieCry@reddit

I did night classes for Japanese at my local uni for like 4 years about 10 years ago. I used to consume Japanese media and it was cool to understand words and short sentences. Now, I only know how to write in hiragana/katakana, extremely basic kanji, and I would not be able to hold more than a very basic conversation. I could read signs if they had furigani (letters above the kanji to tell you what it says) if I ever went there on holiday. My lecturer was amazing and we had parties at her house, shoutout Kazuko, and I met my best friend through these classes. 💜

I did one term of Chinese at college and I can say approximately 3 sentences. I can ask about someone's name, tell them my name, hello goodbye, please and thank you, lol. My Chinese teacher did not let us ask questions in English so I have no idea how we were supposed to learn. Don't understand something? Too bad! Fuck you Zhang laoshi.

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SmartSweetnSassy@reddit

I actually grew up in New Zealand so learning languages was very difficult let alone practising them. However I learned the language all through school (one of only two people to study French) then I did a student exchange for 6 months living in France so that I could practise and be immersed. When I left school I joined a group who meet to speak in french on a Saturday I can't remember the name and also did a French class as University ( it was my minor). I then worked for two years, still going to the group on a Saturday and then did a gap year travelling around Europe 6 months in the rest of Europe, 6 months in France backpacking around the country. During that time I got a job as an au pair, went back to NZ to get things in order then back to France. I worked for 2 years as au pair and then moved to England. I now visit France regularly and have French friends I will speak to in their language but I am based in England. I figured there was no point learning a language if I didn't intend to make it part of my life.

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kcon123@reddit

I've been learning French because I go to France and Belgium regularly.

It's been two years and I'm no where near fluent but I can understand everything that is said when I go there and respond in such a way that they understand me. I also have a friend who over there who doesn't speak any English.

I have a one hour lesson once a week and I have a job that allows me to study while working. Without that I wouldn't have made this amount of progress.

To be honest I do not think it's worth the time, effort and money unless you are planning to go and live abroad. I can't imagine trying to do this if I had a proper job, less spare time and didn't go to the country regularly.

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Glittering_Vast938@reddit

I can still understand quite a lot of written French (did it to GCSE) level and speak it to a very basic level.

Can’t understand the spoken language though!

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Hairy_Ad5141@reddit

I have O Levels in French, German, Latin & Russian, and A Level French (shows my age!)

Can still understand French conversation and reading 45 years later, but not a great speaker. Others, can read but only with a good dictionary.

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mirys98@reddit

This always seems so silly to me. First, i do believe some people have an easier time picking up languages than others. Just how some are more inclined towards maths and others towards history. That’s fine. But i also believe the UK school system is absolutely terrible at teaching people languages.

I’m from Romania, i won’t use English as an example, as I obviously live here so that would go against the points in your post. But I can use French. I started learning French in 3rd grade, primary school, stuck with it all the way until i finished high school. My high school profile was actually language intensive, so i had 4 classes of French a week and was expected to get to C1 level by the time I graduated. We did research projects in French, and also had French history and French geography, all taught in the language. I also was part of a drama club that was played exclusively in French and we also travelled to international theatre festivals. I was B1 fluent before high school and probably a C1 at my peak.

I haven’t been around French in 10 years since I left Romania (i also worked in a French language role for a tear there), but i can easily jump back into it now if someone stops me on the street to ask for directions and i can understand perfectly if i hear someone speak around me or if i read something in French. It’s rusty, sure, and i forgot some words/confuse them with Spanish now, but it’s definitely not all gone. I’m sure if i had a week of intensive immersion it would all come back.

But i also heard how you guys learn languages here and it always makes me confused. I probably wouldn’t learn a language here either.

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DameKumquat@reddit

Depends how we're defining fluent.

I did German for GCSE and A-level, hoped to live in Germany for a gap year or after uni, but it never panned out. No family etc there.

I did managed to get weekly tutoring from work for about 4 years, which was great and honestly more like therapy once I got back into it. Since then I read the odd book and article, have had a few holidays. I did the Duolingo course for revision and learning the vocab they've invented since the early 90s, like smartphones and WiFi and email.

I'm not native level (and my accent lurches all over) but I can watch a film or TV show if it isn't too slangy and fast and doesn't have too much dialect, I can understand the news, and chat to anyone I need to about anything, including a long negotiation about ticket machine failure resulting in a worker for the local metro buying me a ticket with his own money.

Learning other languages (badly) also helps, because more important than vocab is figuring out how to communicate when you don't know all the words you need. Now I can look up any key words I've forgotten, and then start talking!

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Exact-Put-6961@reddit

moi aussi (en francais).

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marsman@reddit

Its definitely easier if you move somewhere, basically a combination of doing a load of work before moving, and then necessity. Oddly it isn't that expensive or that time intensive, and you see a lot of improvement when you are in an environment where you are immersed in a language, its all around you, you hear it every day and you have to use it. Maintaining it however is a bastard (although once you have it, its easy to pick up again, I think it takes me about 2 days or so to get back to being reasonably fluent if I visit France or Germany, I do spend two days sounding like a dickhead though...).

For the people I know who have learned a language essentially just to learn it, they all seem to have very specific competencies around language and end up learning a few different ones, rather than just one or two to a basic level. That has to be massively harder, although with the internet, online access to TV and radio etc.. It is probably easier than it was a couple of decades ago to actually immerse yourself in language - although again, without native speakers to speak to, I'd bet that you don't get the feedback mechanism and you don't get anywhere near as fluent without some sort of external support.

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Glass_Chip7254@reddit

Yeah, German. And my German has improved since then.

Learned through computer games.

Also I speak Spanish and Polish to some extent without moving there. Helps that there are enough people in the UK who speak those languages. Basically had to learn them to work in the UK as I worked in numerous places where basically no-one spoke English

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liebackandthinkofeng@reddit

I studied German from Year 7, through GCSE, A-Level and university. I have a first class degree in it and lived in Germany for a year and Austria for 5 months. I spoke it fluently but since starting work in an unrelated field and having a family, I just haven’t had the time to practice… and quite frankly, I don’t know anyone to practice with, so I can get by day to day no problem, but can I have the complex conversations I once had? Maybe, but it would be much harder and I’d be less confident. Language learning/maintenance takes a lot of active effort, even within your own language. Learning new vocabulary and how it is used and what it means in different contexts, consuming media, actively practicing grammar etc… it’s not something that you learn and then it’s done.

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FornyHucker22@reddit

I’m fluent at swearing in about 7 languages 🙂

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lookhereisay@reddit

My mum did French back at school in the 70s. No more than a few hours a week from age 8-16. She did an o level and got an A. She then never did any formal lessons again or even holidayed in France.

She can still speak it fluently, can understand most of what is being said and can write it okay. She’s teaching my 4yo and he can hold basic conversations. They practice maybe 40 mins a week max whilst walking to school or playing games.

I can barely remember anything past my hair is brown and bonjours!

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Skymningen@reddit

I did learn Swedish, starting during holidays there as a teenager, later doing a few university courses. Lived there for 6 months in 2010 and was basically fluent when I arrived.

While I am probably not quite fluent anymore I still speak reasonably well and read fluently.

When I started I was a bored teenager. Then I just liked it. Read books, listened to audiobooks and bought DVDs I could watch.

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Pink-skies0042@reddit

Try integrating the language you're trying to learn in your day to day life - watch movies or listen to music/podcasts in that language, try and read the news in that language, etc.

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FloydEGag@reddit

I speak French pretty well since learning it in school, I used to be fluent, now I’m a bit rusty but mostly on the vocab; the grammar is all there. I still read French books and magazines sometimes to keep my hand in. I also speak decent German, also learned in school and from my dad who spoke it after working there for a few years. I’ve never been fluent though.

I’m bilingual though (English/Welsh) and apparently that helps when it comes to learning and retaining languages.

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No_Candle2537@reddit

Studied German in school for 6 years. Took a couple years off. Tryna get back into it now and it's very hard without constant exposure, and more importantly I think 0 speaking opportunities.

My understanding far surpasses my abilitity to actually use the language, and I think that's purely down to it being easier to engage with media, since I don't know anybody who speaks German.

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Avacado7145@reddit

You can get to a certain level like that alone but it’s not easy. The key is learning the grammar as this is the building blocks of the language. The problem is that’s the hard and difficult part which most people don’t want to do. They just learn fun and useful sentences but you will never become fluent like that. Nothing beats fully immersing yourself in the country.

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leahwilloww@reddit

Yeah, learned Spanish at home—daily practice, media immersion, and consistency mattered more than anything.

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Shyaustenwriter@reddit

I took French to A Level 1973-5. I know no French people, have never lived there but can travel without problem, buy what I want, read a newspaper and hold a conversation. It usually takes me a day to tune my ear back to the language but after that It’s fine. I’d need a dictionary to read a novel and radio is usually too fast but other than that…….

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nancy-p@reddit

I studied french up to AS level about 10 years ago and was getting to the point where I wasn’t translating in my head, I was just understanding the language.

Not near that level now but I’ve been doing duolingo for a couple of years which has jogged my memory on a lot and helped my vocab. Nowhere near fluent though! For that I think you have to be diligently studying or living amongst it

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eric-artman@reddit

Intelligence, brain, movies & books. Wow

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