/lit/ - Literature

>>21766213
Unironically best way would be to pay for a language course. Not only does it have a prepared learning plan, but giving out money and having a commitment makes you more motivated to stick with it.
But they can be really expensive, so if you are on a budget there are numerous online courses, and a lot are free.
anons will recommend translating a book word by word with help of dictionary, but not only is that really tedious, it won't really help you with grammar or speaking in that language.

Some recommendations:
https://www.youtube.com/@learn_french
https://learngerman.dw.com/en/learn-german/s-9528

Comprehensible input, look up Steve Kaufmann videos on it on youtube. Try to watch older ones

All the stuff he says about video/audio/conversation is optional and comes later, the main thing is input, which means reading and ideally some writing.

>>21766213
I already answered you in the other thread anon. Just get yourself a 'learn language' book for the basics, and then talk to people. There's plenty of people who will accept payment to chat online if you don't have foreign-speakers to hand. This can be better starting out as they'll be patient with your retarded beginner language if they're getting paid. Watching TV in the language also helps you accustom to it. Simple stuff is good, like soap operas. You don't want a deep, complex plot while you're struggling to follow the words.

for me a very nice thing has been song lyrics, shorter than a story so less effort in translating, easy to memorise if you like the song, more complex subjects and vocabulary than in children's media, already prepares you for understanding casual grammar constructions speaking of, Duolingo does not prepare you at all for casual speech in Dutch, at no point it teaches you contracted forms even though they use it literally all the time unless in very formal setting and idioms and metaphors in the language

>>21766213
I learned German completely from scratch a couple years ago (I had already turned 20, so fuck the naysayers who say it's not possible to learn a language once you've reached a certain age). It was the first language I ever sat down to really learn so I made a lot of mistakes that more than likely retarded my learning.

But as other anons have said, read, read, and read some more. Go on YouTube and listen to interviews and newscasts in German. DON'T put subtitles on: you need to acclimatize your ear to the sound of the language and conflating reading with listening will slow your progress down considerably. Don't worry about capturing everything that's said because you absolutely won't: if you beat yourself up over not being able to understand anything in the beginning you will demoralize yourself and not want to continue studying it. Plod along, keep listening, keep reading: you will study for weeks and still feel like you're an idiot who doesn't know anything and then one day things will click and it will feel so good.

Perseverance is key. Absolutely drive on.

I remember when Rammstein became my new favorite band.
But I couldn't sing along because I didn't know German.
So I learned enough German to learn what their songs were about & to be able to sing along.
That certainly turns some heads on karaoke night.

>>21766213
You go to a language class.

>>21766213
Apparently neuroplasticity is increased when encountering lots of errors in a short space of time (7-30 minutes). They also found that small errors stacked over time are more effective than large ones all at once for adults learners. All this basically points to how comprehensible input works: consume materials where you're making/correcting enough errors/minute that you're getting frustrated but ensure that the errors are contained to one type or category (i.e don't try to learn everything at once). It helps to also convince yourself that the frustration indicates progress, which releases dopamine and improves the plasticity further. Also it turns out that plasticity is a state and once entered lasts at least an hour or so, so you could in theory learn other stuff right after that at an increased pace. This would explain why people learn other things faster when they are learning a language, especially one that involves new motor movements like sign.

Duolingo is a good supplementary flashcard app, but if you use it as your only resource you're going to have a very flawed foundation. Duo is total shit at teaching grammar or giving you any sort of context for what it's showing you. It simply asks you to translate another language as it is, without saying how or why. Duolingo is good for practice and making a daily habit of learning.

Check out /int/'s language learning general, there's a big wiki with links for resources in lots of languages.

>>21766213
A course.
But otherwise, a grammar book, a graded reader (if you're doing ancient languages) or interacting with people in that language and consuming media in it.

I found Duolingo very useful for getting the "feel" of a language but I should have dropped it after a year to just read books in the original (and accept that I wasn‘t going to get them.)

This is one thing Kindle is very good for as you can tap any word to get a translation that‘s good ~85% of the time. Don‘t do that for every unfamiliar word though; wait until you‘ve seen it a few times and have a sense of its usage. It might still take a few times but it‘ll build up word by word while you‘re getting familiar with tenses, sentence structure, et al in the hindbrain.