15 Infallible Tricks to Learn Any Language in Record Time
Develop a solid competence with a very natural approach.
I’m a language whore.
Spanish is my mother tongue. English is my second language. I also speak Portuguese, French, and Italian. Lately, I’ve been trying my luck with some German and playing a bit with Russian and Swahili.
To kick-start my language acquisition journey, I use a handful of strategies that allow me to develop a quick (but thorough) notion of the language, and to gain insight into its structure, sounds, rhythm, and vocabulary. I initially focus a lot on attaining a basic level of comprehension. This will fast-track my learning process and allow it to snowball. Eventually, I get to a point where learning is quite effortless; I incorporate new things without even realizing it.
It’s not uncommon for me to think, “Wow, where did this expression come from? I didn’t know it was on my radar.” I feel my learning goes beyond my conscious level, which doesn’t happen when I follow a more traditional path or when I spend hours with grammatical exercises.
This Is How I Fast-track My Learning Process
- I start with a list of the 1000 most common words.
- I dig deeper into pronunciation. For this, I use YouTube, and also Google (A LOT). I listen to podcasts (from beginner to more advanced levels).
- I take advantage of cognates.
- I read illustrated kids’ books, or find picture dictionaries in my target languages.
- I read my favorite books. I choose either well-known or specific niche books. I start with simple writing styles.
- I join Facebook groups in my target languages. I also added multiple keyboard languages to my phone.
- I often use the languages I’m more fluent in as a source to learn others, especially during the initial phases. They call this “laddering”, and it’s a very helpful technique.
- I try to visualize or picture situations and conversations in my head. I talk to myself a lot. I go over my daily routine in all the different languages I speak.
- I don’t get into grammar rules too early on. Grammar without a context takes a lot of time and energy. I “acquire” grammar. I usually don’t learn it just for the sake of it.
- I read and listen to the news in my target languages. When possible, I try to read the same press release in over one language.
- When I have some spare time, I use online crosswords, games, and riddles.
- I’m always searching for stories on Medium.com in my target languages.
- I never underestimate the power of a good movie.
- I learn the alphabet first ONLY if it’s a different writing script.
- The proper use of subtitles makes a tremendous difference.
If I had to pick two strategies from this list to start my learning journey, it would have to be the first two. It’s how I get to jumpstart my language learning endeavor. Then I combine the rest of the tools as I wish.
I usually start with:
1000 most common words list + google their pronunciation (or use YouTube) + beginner/intermediate level podcasts + simple book (The Little Prince) + Facebook groups/Language exchange websites
It pays off to devote as much time as possible to your target language, at least initially. But it doesn’t have to feel like a chore. An improvised “immersion” will boost your skills in no time and your brain will quickly get used to the new structures and sounds. I usually find out that the initial intimidation caused by the unknown promptly wears off.
List of the 1000 Most Common Words
Here you’ll find the very basic words — I, we, you, but, and. Yet, you’ll quickly come across a handful of not so elementary words. In English, for instance, the words you find in spots 990 to 1000 on the list are: institution, middle, sea, dream, bar, beautiful, property, instead, improve, stuff, claim. These are all quite useful words, and while essential, they’re not THAT elementary. It’s believed that the top 1,000 most frequent words in a language make up over 80% of the speech. As for writing, it’s probably a different story. But you can still get away with it if you need to create simple written pieces. A very useful resource to start with your 1000 most common words lists is:
It includes links to word frequency lists in 54 languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. You can find lists of the 1,000/2,000/5,000/10,000 (and even 100,000) most frequent words.
Why are frequency lists so important?
I enjoy learning languages as naturally as when we were kids. I like to get used to their sounds, rhythm, and nuances. To do this, I usually read simple texts and use podcasts. But you need a foundation to build upon. Otherwise, your learning curve might be too steep since you’ll spend a lot of time listening to content without recognizing a single word. It’s better to have a background so there’re at least 1,000 words you can expect to understand if the speed of the speech makes it possible.
“It goes without saying that memorising the 1,000 most common words in Lingala, French or Chinese is not going to make anyone a fluent speaker. That would have been an unrealistic goal. But it turns out to be just enough vocabulary to let you hit the ground running once you’re authentically immersed in a language. And, more importantly, that basic vocabulary gives you a scaffolding to which you can attach other words as you hear them… As I packed my memory with more and more words, these connections started to make sense and I began to notice the same grammatical formulas elsewhere–-and could even pick them up in conversation. This sort of pattern recognition happens organically over time when a child learns a language, but giving myself all the data points to work with at once certainly made the job easier, and faster.” — Memorize the 1,000 Most Common Words in a Language Before Immersing Yourself In It, Thorin Klosowski (NY Times & Lifehacker writer), 11/20/12.
Vocabulary is the backbone of language learning. Beyond syntax and grammar, words are the ones that will allow communication to take place. Most people will still understand you if you make verb tense mistakes. But less so if you use a wrong word, or don’t remember how to say something.
Picture two different tourists dying to go to the bathroom. Who’ll get there first?
Tourist 1: “Excuse me Mr, would you please be so kind to tell me how to get to the…., to the……, how do I say it?… to the room where you can find a… a… a toilet!”
Tourist 2: “Bathroom, please. Thanks!”
And the truth is, you could just say “bathroom?”, smile, thumbs-up, and that’s it.
Not that you shouldn’t pay attention to grammar and structures as your learning progresses. But I’ve always prioritized comprehension. You’ll find out you easily acquire the rest as you advance further.
YouTube and Google for Pronunciation
Lists will only take you so far. When you’re not familiar with the phonetics of the language, you might not understand how to pronounce the words on your list.
I google the pronunciation of all the words on the frequency lists — I might also use YouTube. For instance, say you’re learning French, and you come across the word “papillon”, which means “butterfly”. Try it for yourself. Google “papillon french pronunciation”. It’s pretty accurate, at least for the languages I’ve tried it with. Bear in mind these are just isolated words. But I found this strategy to be an excellent way to get used to the distinct sounds, so you stand a better chance of recognizing them when you hear them in a podcast later on. Yet, to get used to the true “music” of the language, you need to listen to the words articulated together. Which leads us to:
Podcasts
Find podcasts for beginners and also for intermediate levels. You might as well want to spend a few minutes listening to the news or more advanced content, to get a grasp of the natural rhythm and flow of the language — don’t worry about trying to understand at this stage. I’ve noticed that content made especially for beginners prioritizes comprehension, but sacrifices natural rhythm. As the level increases, you approach the natural flow of the language, but comprehension gets harder and harder. That’s why I find it useful to get used to all three levels right from scratch.
Beginner level will allow you to recognize — and apply in context — most of the words on your 1,000 words list. It will introduce you to the way you tie words together. An intermediate level podcast will take you closer to the natural speaking rhythm and, given you’re already able to recognize some of the most basic words, you might learn a few words by context. You start, little by little, to fill in the blanks. More advanced content makes it hard to learn by context but allows you to get used to the way native speakers sound.
I already have my favorite channels for the languages I’m learning. You never cease to learn a language, not even your mother tongue — you just keep on improving. I’ve developed a “sixth sense” for podcasts. I found out some of them sound way too artificial. They don’t flow naturally. I usually choose spontaneous street interviews, monologues, TED Talks, etc. Documentaries are great too.
If you take the time to do some research, you’ll find on YouTube countless documentaries that might be available in several languages. You can watch them again and again in your native language and in your target languages. This is one example:
The same documentary about the illusion of time in different languages — French, English, Italian, German, and Russian. The content might be slightly different depending on the language you choose, but some parts are identical.
When you watch a documentary you enjoyed, try to check if it’s available in your target language too. Translate its title to your target language and see if you can find it.
Going back to podcasts, I’m sharing a few of my favorite channels for different languages.
A favorite for learning German from scratch is the DW series Nicos Weg, Deutsch lernen mit der DW — A1, A2, B1 levels. It’s a very natural approach to learning German.
For French, this guy’s channel is awesome — innerfrench. And also this one from Coffee Break Languages where you learn French while you wander the streets of Paris along with Pierre-Benoit. There’re several episodes. Another great channel for learning French is Français Authentique.
Cognates
Cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. They might be inherited from a shared parent language, but they may have also borrowed from other languages. I always keep a cognate list handy. You’ll notice that Romance languages share various similar words.
“Cognates are more than 25,000 frequently used English words that are unmistakably understood by Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan speakers, among others. These words are found not only in isolation but also forming thousands of Cognate Collocations and even fully comprehensible statements thanks to a common Subject-Verb-Object Cognate Syntax.” — Cognates.org
Be careful with false cognates (words that sound similar but don’t come from the same root) and false friends (words that may sound or look similar but differ in meaning).
The site Cognates.org offers interesting information and free tools to help you spot cognates. There’s a useful cognate detector called “The Cognate Writer”, which allows you to paste a text and, according to the app, “English cognate words understandable to Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian speakers -among others-, will be highlighted in blue.” You’ll also find a free Google extension called The Cognate Highlighter Browser.
Some tools and documents they offer:
The Most Frequent Business Cognates English — Spanish
Multilingual Dictionary of Cognates — Sample (this one is SUPER useful)
Other useful resources:
Russian Cognates (for English speakers)
Read Books for Kids
Short stories for kids are a great way to associate words and images. It’s a good idea to use all the tools at our disposal to avoid, as much as possible, translating between languages. The more different your target language is from your native language, or from other languages you speak, the more difficult it’ll be to find a perfect translation. You might need to rely more on images and to learn by association.
International Children’s Digital Library
This one is a comprehensive site where you can find hundreds of children’s books in different languages. Be careful, though. Not all children’s books are beginner-friendly. Since they’re usually very descriptive and vocabulary-rich, they can pose certain difficulties when you’re just starting out. Choose the plot and style that suits you best.
You could also look for picture dictionaries in your target language. These are quite nice for beginner levels. They’re a quick and reliable way to build a decent vocabulary foundation. Some can be very thorough. And there are even multilingual ones.
Read Your Favorite Books
Start with a fairly simple and short one, like The Little Prince, who doesn’t love that one? Then shoot higher. A tip that will save you a lot of time and frustration: try to avoid ancient editions of classic masterpieces. Most languages have archaic verb tenses and structures that might add unnecessary complexity. Just like English had words like “Thy”, and “Thou”, French books, for instance, used to be written in simple past verb tense (“passé simple”), which now drives French native speakers crazy. This verb tense is obsolete now and has been replaced by the much easier and predictable “passé composé”.
So your best bet is to read books on a familiar subject in a relatively modern edition. If you’re a businessman/businesswoman, look for books in this niche. If you’re a science junkie, then you know what to look for. Your subject of interest will serve as a liaison between you and your target language.
Join a Facebook Group in Your Target Language/ Join a Language Exchange Site
This strategy will allow you to find colloquial posts and dialogues. It might also be a pleasant setting to ask for help and receive encouraging feedback and much-needed guidance. Just let people know you’re learning their language. I joined most Facebook groups of foreigners living in my city/country (like “Français à Montevideo”, or “Uruguay Expat Community”, or “Comunidade de Brasileiros/as em Montevideo”). I often find people who have just arrived and need help with Spanish. Since I’m also interested in learning their language, it’s not unusual for us to arrange a meeting in a café to improve our language skills. It’s a fun way to meet new people from different cultural backgrounds.
There’re specific Facebook groups for language learning exchange. You can also pay a visit to language exchange websites where you can find partners who are interested in learning your language as you learn theirs.
Language Exchange Partners Group (Fb group)
Vivalanga (Fb group)
tandem.net (app)
A useful tip is to add your target language keyboard to your phone. Or you can switch your phone settings to your target language. You will find corrections and suggestions that will improve your writing skills. I keep on switching my phone’s language settings from Spanish to English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and back.
Laddering
If you learn more than one language, you might want to use a few of them as a source language to work on your weakest ones. You’ll soon find out you end up strengthening all of them.
The best way to use a language to learn a different one is YouTube. For instance, if you have an intermediate level in French and you want to use it as a source language to learn German, you can type something like “Apprenez l’Allemand”, or if you want to use your advanced Spanish skills to aid you in your Italian learning journey, search for “Aprende Italiano.” Once you have a solid foundation, it’s better to use a channel in your target language to take advantage of total immersion. This is how you learn by context.
Visualization
Yes. Go crazy. Picture situations and craft conversations in your head. Talk to yourself. Go over your daily routine. Let your target language narrate your daily activities. Say out loud “Estoy yendo al gimnasio” (“I’m going to the gym” in Spanish) or “Estoy preparando la cena” (“I’m cooking dinner”). When you talk to yourself, try to do it in your target language. If you just watched a video or listened to a podcast, try to use your target language to express your feelings about it. For instance, something like “Interessante, non l’avevo mai pensato.” (“Interesting, I never thought about it that way” in Italian).
No Grammar Rules Too Early On
This approach just happened to work better for me. It made all the difference. Had I forced myself through grammar rules too early on, I might not have kept at it. English, Italian, and Portuguese are three languages I mostly learned in a more traditional way — grammar exercises, syntax, vocabulary. French was the first language I learned mostly by myself. In 2 years of learning French, I learned more than I did in 7 years of learning English. I remember going over endless lists of phrasal verbs in my English classes. What a nightmare. I hated them so much I once said, “I’ll never use phrasal verbs. I can do without them.”
There’s a much more natural, friendlier way to incorporate the rules of a language. And that’s not always by deliberately learning them, but by slowly acquiring them. There’s no need to learn how a sentence structure works. Get used to absorbing content in your target language, and you’ll inevitably grasp these nuances. Before you know it, you’ll use them without consciously thinking about them.
“We learn better from stories, real conversations, examples and episodes than from rules and facts.
We learn best from content that matters to us.
It is easier to listen to and read content that is at the right level of difficulty, however the interest and relevance to the learner is the most important consideration.” — 7 Concepts of Natural Language Learning, PickTheBrain.com
News in Several Languages
I found this habit to be very useful. Countless sites populate their home page with news in different languages. Why not read the same press release in many languages? This strategy quickly allows you to find patterns, equivalencies, similarities, and differences. When I say “News”, it can mean anything: fashion world news, sports news, financial news, tech news, political news. You pick.
Resources:
The News In Your Language, BBC
Online Crosswords, Games, and Adventures
Some sites include games, fun quizzes, riddles, crosswords, and trivia. I’m not a great fan of these games, but I find them really useful as an aid to learning a new language in a more spontaneous way.
Resources:
Multilingual Crosswords (this website includes several resources to learn languages)
Search for Stories on Medium.com in Other Languages
I’ve read interesting stories in Italian, French, and Portuguese. The strategy I adopt to find them is to search for a specific term in my target language. For instance, say I want to read something in Portuguese about the learning process, so I type “aprendizagem” into the search-box on Medium. You’ll not only find related stories but also several publications in your target language. In the above example, I found two interesting publications (“Medium Brasil”, e “Conectando Pontos”, which means “connecting dots” in Portuguese). Medium.com might become your ultimate language learning hub.
A Good Movie
A good foreign movie is excellent for incidental learning. Don’t push yourself, just enjoy the movie and let the words find their own way into your memory. Many of them will. You’ll notice fresh words in your written and spoken communication. You might even remember the movie scene where you first heard your newly acquired word.
A friend of mine learned English by watching and reading The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. He’s now almost bilingual. He started with a very basic foundation he had learned in our high school English classes.
One of my favorite movies is “La vita é bella”, and it’s also a great way to improve my Italian with the help of Roberto Benigni.
Alphabet
If you’re learning a language with a different writing script, it’s a smart move to get acquainted with the alphabet. I’m now interested in learning Russian. Since its writing system is Cyrillic, I decided to learn the Russian alphabet first. Otherwise, I couldn’t associate the letters and words with a sound. Russian pronunciation is pretty straightforward. Each letter has a specific sound, which isn’t affected by the surrounding letters — though there are silent letters, such as the letter “ъ”, which is called the hard sign, and has a “separating” function. But mostly, Russian letters will still sound the same when tied together. So once you learn the Russian alphabet and its sounds, you’ll be able to read every single text you come across without hesitation. That really gives you an edge.
Subtitles
The proper use of subtitles will take you far. A strategy I often use for short videos or excerpts is to watch the video in my target language with English subtitles. Then I watch it once again without subtitles. Finally, I watch it for a third time with my target language subtitles. I always learn something new by using this approach.
Final Thoughts
This guide doesn’t intend to be a learning method, although you can use it to design your own step-by-step plan. I’m sharing here a collection of tips, tools, and strategies that, when correctly combined, can send you into beast mode. These techniques, if applied regularly, will get you to an upper-intermediate level in most languages in record time. Remember that consistency is key.
Of course, each skill needs to be honed. You’ll need to increase your reading time, raise the level of your podcasts, devote time to writing (you can use Facebook groups, a blog, or even Medium.com for that), and, if possible, find opportunities to speak.
Speaking helps develop self-confidence, so it affects my attitude when I speak. Lack of self-confidence might hold you back. I usually prioritize input (reading + listening), but try not to neglect output (writing + speaking).
I’m also the queen of procrastination, so I don’t work as much as I should to keep my languages at an optimal level. But I also realized you don’t necessarily lose what you learn when you don’t use it. Not always. Not indefinitely. Skills might just rust a bit. You might think you forgot many things, but then, you do a little refresh and they start coming back slowly. It depends on how deeply rooted the skill is.
The good thing about procrastinating is that it helped me find the fastest strategy to learn a language. One I find useful, interesting, and that it keeps me hooked. The fact that I can see my evolution in quite a short span of time is a bonus. It keeps me motivated. And I hope it’ll keep you too.
Good luck! Buena suerte! Bonne chance! In bocca al lupo! Viel Glück! Boa sorte! Удачи! (Udachi!) Kila la kheri!
