How I Learned German Fast | Adventures of La Mari | American in Germany

On today’s episode I want to talk about language learning….German is my third language of five so I do have a bit of a leg up but I want to talk about what I did to help learn Deutsch as well as my local dialect Hohenloisch very fast…..so let’s talk about it!

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[Caledoriv]

Indeed, it is all about exposure to the language. The more you read, hear and speak the more you learn.

My English grades in school were mediocre until 8th grade I think. It was then that I got into anime and started watching them with English subtitles (since there was no other option for me to watch and understand them). It'd sometimes take me an hour to watch a 20 minute episode because I had to stop every few seconds and look up a word. But I wanted to fully understand what was happening, so it didn't bother me. And it helped me a lot. Soon I was the best in my class - and this lasted until I graduated. Without having to learn much (except some perticular vocabulary maybe).
The next step was watching with english dubs. I think the first show I watched entirely in English without subtitles was Start Trek. I only understood like 50% of what was said for the first few episodes... But it got better over the next few ones.
Right now, I even prefer watching shows in English instead of my mother tongue German.

I'm currently learning Japanese... And this is a bit different due to the different script. I think I'll start watching TV shows with Japanese subtitles eventually - but I want to learn the Kanji first. And this takes a lot of time :(.

[bigernie]

I strongly believe it is significantly easier to learn one's second foreign language than one's first. Same with the fifth, much more smoothly than the fourth.
This, btw, is possibly why so many from the Anglosphere find it difficult to learn foreign languages as neither the US nor the UK mandate foreign languages at school (it is different in Canada). Any schoolkid in D has to study one foreign language for years on end, and most will study two or three.