Here’s Seven Ways To Hack Learning a New Language

Bet they didn’t teach you these at school

Speaking English is at the same time both great and incredibly sucky. Everyone speaks English — so wherever you go in the world, people switch to speaking English. Usually this happens to me about four seconds after I say “Como estas?”

So I am learning Spanish. I’m past the point of “I might learn Spanish,” and even “One day I will learn Spanish” is now in the rear view mirror. I love Spain, I’d like to go to Mexico, South America sounds cool.

I like tapas and I think the waitresses are really pretty. So sue me.

I’m going to tell you what I recently told a multi-lingual, very smart friend of mine — that for someone who speaks only ONE language, I consider myself something of an absolute expert on the topic of how to learn a language.

Herein follows my case — my list of hacks. The secrets of learning a new language, from someone who speaks English and English only.

DuoLingo, if you’re reading this — I’ll be waiting for your call.

Introduction + ‘Multi-Method’ Immersion

The first point I want to make is that there are hundreds (probably thousands) of ways to learning.

You don’t need to buy a Spanish GCSE textbook and work your way through it. Learning languages has been modernised. It’s been gamified. It’s flexible, and it might even be fun.

There are ways you can sneak a second language into your daily routine (both on-screen and off-screen) so that you can gradually start to learn and improve.

My hypothesis is this: If you immerse yourself by making a lot of small changes / employing a lot of different methods, you can learn a second language more easily, and also have more fun.

Using the selection of methods that I have listed below has it’s advantages:

1. If you get bored of one of the methods, you can use another. You can do more of what’s fun.
2. For many of them, you don’t have to put aside any time at all. You can sneak ‘learning a language’ into time spent doing other things.
3. You are exposed to words and phrases that you haven’t chosen yourself. This is to say, you naturally learn words that you might never think of looking up.
4. You avoid textbook learning / learning by rote. I hate this, which is probably the reason my worst grades at school were all in languages. I think it’s better to learn phrases and sentences, as they should be used, rather than horrible lists of conjugated verbs.

OK. Let’s get into it.

1. Listen To Music You Already Know

I think that this is a really interesting one. About a week ago, I started a Spotify playlist, with songs I already know — but with the lyrics in Spanish.

A few select and unexpected artists have released some of their music in Spanish, so you can even get the actual singers.

One small hitch is that the lyrics are not a direct translation for the most part. As an example, I’m sure you’re familiar with the line “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A man after midnight.” The Spanish version, “Dame, Dame, Dame amor esta noche” translates slightly differently: “Give me, give me, give me love tonight.”

It doesn’t quite fit — but that hardly matters.

The thing I find really interesting about this is that as you learn the lyrics to a song, they become more and more ingrained — because unlike conversations, lyrics never change. Every time you sing it in the car or the shower, the words and phrases are once again reinforced.

Quick guide to well known music that you can find in Spanish: Abba, Ricky Martin, Shakira, Robbie Williams, Roxette. Also pretty much any popular song will be covered in Spanish, so really you can just find some funky covers.

2. Use Toucan — the Google Chrome Extension

Toucan is a cool Google Chrome extension. It’s very simple: you enable it, and as you surf the web it will change a couple of words to their Spanish (or other language) equivalent.

It automatically picks a few words and phrases to translate, and if you hover over them you get the translation.

This is pretty interesting because it requires basically zero time — it’s completely passive. You’re already online, looking stuff up on Wikipedia or reading the news, or whatever else.

This extension allows you to pick up the occasional word during that time… All part of my grand theory of language immersion.

3. Watch Netflix (and other stuff) in a 2nd Language

This is nothing new, but it is definitely a good idea.

Again, it’s pretty passive — you’re going to watch Netflix anyway so you may as well have the subtitles in your chosen second language. Alternatively, if you’re a legend, you can have the audio dubbed in a second language, with the subtitles in English.

One thing I’ll say is that this isn’t actually as fun or effortless as it sounds for beginners.

If (like me) you are not a Spanish speaker at all, watching a whole film in Spanish doesn’t give you the R&R you are probably looking for from Netflix. There’s too many new words at once, and I feel like you have to do it in short doses.

You can try LingoPie, which is an app which is purpose-built to help you learn languages whilst watching TV — and gives you translations with one click. For me, the advantages don’t really outweigh the costs though, and it is a little pricy after the free trial.

If you’re really as bad at Spanish as me, you can get on YouTube and watch Peppa Pig in 0.5x speed. And still not understand it.

To be absolutely clear, that’s the level I’m at… Bamboozled by 0.5x speed Peppa.

4. Get DuoLingo

“I’m not just going to use boring bloody DuoLingo…” — me, not that long ago.

My preconceived notion of DuoLingo is that it’s basically just learning by rote, and teaching you a word at a time. This is very far from the truth. Actually, it’s just not true.

DuoLingo was invented by a certified genius (who also founded reCAPTCHA, the ‘prove you’re not a robot’ thing), and has been gamified to within an inch of its life.

Delete all the apps you usually doom-scroll through on your phone and download DuoLingo — it genuinely works as an alternative way to kill time, when you’re waiting for the dentist or whatever.

A very important part of this concept is streaks — a reward for doing something multiple days in a row without missing a day. I am on day two of my streak, but over six million users are on a 7+ day streak.

I recommend this article from DuoLingo if you’re interested in learning more about how streaks build habit, and also this one about gamification in the app.

5. Get a Tutor

I know that getting a language tutor shouldn’t be included on an article about how to hack learning a new language. I don’t need to walk you to the door here — it’s obvious that getting a tutor will help.

I’ll make only a few, brief points on this.

Firstly, that learning a new language from songs / Netflix / etc, should allow you to learn phrases as they are used by actual people in that language. But a tutor can probably help you join the dots with why the language is used like that. You can’t ask Netflix why something is said that way, or how else you might say that.

Secondly, for me accountability is important. If I know I’m paying for a tutor, I’m going to show up — and I’m also going to make an effort to practise in between times

Thirdly — tutoring is a really easy source of income for people who know lots of languages. As such, it’s pretty competitive — so finding an online tutor is not super expensive. You can still find tutors for £10 per hour ish which is really not a huge investment once a week.

6. Tinder for Languages??

I haven’t started with this yet — but I heard about it from a chap I met in a hostel in Thailand, and I think it’s probably pretty bloody cool.

There are now apps you can download and sites you can sign up to where you connect with other people who speak the language you want to learn, and want to learn the language you speak.

It’s not actually Tinder — there’s no dating involved — so sorry for misleading you there. Well, unless you find someone you like, I suppose.

But the concept is similar. You chat with text messages, images and voice notes, trying your little heart out to speak their language and correcting their (probably much better) English as you go.

Here is a really good article with a list of language exchange apps and sites. I’m downloading HelloTalk right now and will report back.

7. Post-it Note your House

One final little bonus hack which scores quite high on the immersion thing (and I won’t lie, I haven’t got around to doing this one either). You can learn reinforce words of things that you find around your house by sticking post-it notes to everything and writing the Spanish translation.

When it comes to learning phrases, or languages as they are spoken, this doesn’t score very highly. It’s more of a A-Level revision tip. But it is passive, and I imagine that the words get pretty reinforced once you’ve seen the same post-it note every morning. If you want to convince your housemates you are losing your marbles, it might be fun as well. Big thanks to my sister for sharing this idea with me.

Round-up

I’ll round this article up firstly by reiterating that I’ve been using some of the above tips to get started, and realistically my Spanish capability is that of around a competent two year old, or a decently well trained Spanish parrot.

I’m thinking about doing a ‘100 days in’ follow up to this article which might have some actual wisdom from the experience gained. In the meantime, ask me anything about the first verse of “Livin’ La Vida Loca (Spanish Version).” I’m all over it.

Second thing I suppose worth mentioning is that this is my first ever article on Medium, and I don’t really know where that journey is going to go — or if it will end right here. Put it like this, I haven’t bothered proof-reading. Please follow me because i desperately need the numbers.

Finalmente (oi oi, that’s Spanish), there are clearly a lot of ways to hack learning a language, most of which were previously unknown to me. So far, it seems that the above are effective and dare-I-say-it, fun. Genuinely interested to know in the comments of any further hacks, tips and more.

Alright. Adios then. Wish me luck.