How to learn a language in just a few months, for free?
- Romina Mena
- May 20, 2024
- 6 min read
Romy Mena | March 12th, 2024
If you are reading this, I figure you have an interest in languages, I have it too, I am passionate about languages. That is why I want to help you achieve your goal of learning a new language and share my best tips with you.
I speak Spanish as my native language, English, Portuguese, French and Italian. I learned English when I was very young, it's basically as if I had always known it because I have no notion of ever learning it, but I always liked it and I was always very good at it, always getting the highest grades and sometimes I even had skipped exams because I had very good grades.
But I didn't just learn it at school, it all has to do with what you surround yourself with, what content you consume, for example: music, movies, series, books, etc. When I was growing up, I always liked watching Disney Channel and listening to music in English, so I was always immersed in the language, which meant that I never stopped learning.
When I was about 19 or 20, I realized that I loved Portuguese because I discovered a song in Portuguese but didn't understand anything.
So I decided that I would study Portuguese until I understood the meaning of the song. When I finally got to the point of completely understanding the song, I didn't want to quit, I understood more and more things and could speak it. In 3 months I already understood everything, and in 6 months I was already speaking Portuguese at an intermediate level.
I developed a learning system that worked for me for the other languages I speak, which are French and Italian. I want to emphasize that it was also very easy for me because these are Romance languages and are closely related to Spanish. In a few months I am going to start learning German with my same previous method and I will write another article focused on self-taught learning of the German language and I will tell you if it works too.
For now, I'll tell you how I learned to speak 3 Romance languages on my own without paying a single dollar and without going to language classes or losing motivation.
1. Duolingo
This app is great, I highly recommend it. This app gives you vocabulary bases and it's easy for common phrases that you can use to get you out of trouble if you are on a trip. In this app you can define a goal of how many EXP you want to earn per day, I defined the highest goal per day which is 50 EXP, which is more or less equivalent to 4 or 5 lessons per day.
When I started using this app, it didn't have everything it has now. Nowadays, Duolingo is much more optimized and has a leagues section that depending on how many EXP you earn, is the league that you're in and what position you have. I think this helps a lot to maintain motivation, because if you're a competitive person, you'll always want to be in the highest league, in the highest position.
Lastly, a great feature of the app is that it tells you how many days you are on a streak. And of course, if you are someone dedicated and persistent, you will never want to lose your streak, on the contrary, you will want it to continue increasing.
2. Find a Youtuber who teaches the language
I have applied this to all the languages I learned on my own. But it's very important that you find a teacher who is a native of the language they teach. I have no doubt that there are other non-native teachers who teach a language and do it extremely well. But sometimes they have slightly marked accents or they can make some grammatical errors, or they don't know all the expressions that, for example, you as a native know because you are from a specific place.
If you are interested in learning Portuguese, I recommend 2 Youtubers, Philippe Brazuca and Marcel.
If you are interested in learning Italian, I recommend Lucrezia Oddone:
And finally, if you want to learn French, I recommend Elisa:
All of them are my trusted Youtubers, I have even thanked them personally for their work because thanks to them I learned a lot of things such as typical expressions of the country, new music, movies, series, places, etc.
In addition to looking for YouTubers who are teachers, look for other channels. For example, if you are interested in cooking, search: “Comment faire une omelette?” (How to make an omelet?) and so you can find channels that are of interest to you and help you reinforce your vocabulary.
3. Plataformas que refuerzan el aprendizaje de idiomas
For this point I recommend Lyrics Training website:
I love this website because this is how you can discover new music while you learn. The site consists of you searching for a song in the language of your choice and while you watch the video you can fill in the missing words to complete it. This is an excellent exercise since you put your ear into practice and use it used to understanding the language.
I also recommend Language Reactor, it's an extension that you add to Google Chrome and when you open Netflix, it allows you to see subtitles in 2 languages at the same time. Let's say you are watching “The 7 Lives of Léa” and you want to watch it in French audio to train your ear and the French subtitles but you are not going to understand everything, so in that case, you can activate the LR option and this is how allows you to put subtitles in 2 languages at the same time.
Finally, when there's a word that you do not understand or that you do not know what its meaning is, you can simply click on the word and its meaning will appear.
4. Use artificial intelligence to your advantage
I started using AI recently, but like everything, it's a matter of taking the time to learn. So I discovered that I can talk to Chat GPT in 5 languages! The prompt I used was the following:
“Hello GPT Chat, I want to talk to you in 5 different languages to practice. I want you to ask me 5 questions. The first in Spanish, the second in English, the third in Portuguese, the fourth in French and the last in Italian. “I want all the questions you ask me to be related to the singer Fletcher.”
Chat GPT did an excellent job and obeyed my orders. The prompt that I just gave you above, I did it by voice in the mobile app because I wanted Chat GPT to answer with voice and I also wanted to be able to answer back with my voice to really put my skills into practice.
The prompt I used is just an example of what I like, you could choose any other topic that is of your interest so you can talk with Chat GPT and practice your language.
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