I’m wanting to start learning Spanish, and I’m looking for a free option that isn’t Duolingo.
I don’t like the gamey fomo aspect of it.
Anyone have a favorite place they found?
Language Transfer is free and teaches you why the language is the way it is rather than just memorization.
My recollection is you can get to a 3000 word conversational level much faster than via straight memorization (ex. Duolingo).
Thank you! I’m also going to check it out, I had been trying to use duo lingo to learn French but it was pure garbage.
Language transfer is amazing! Gets you to a level where you can start learning on your own - I was able to start reading children’s books in spanish and work my up from there.
The Italian course is also excellent, gave me enough skills to feel comfortable traveling & speaking Italian
This looks awesome! Never heard of this one before.
I also want to learn Spanish. I’ll check it out too.
Second this. It gives a really good baseline.
I second this too. I listened to all 90 episodes of the Spanish course.
A vocab primer pdf or website with like 200 of the most common words and phrases & listening to people talk is probably going to get you through the majority of conversations. Word frequency in natural language follows a Zipf’s law distribution, so focusing on the most common words & phrases first is very efficient.
Practice, spaced repetition, and quizzing for memorization and long term retention. Beyond that learning verb conjugations and maybe a English/Spanish book that has one language on the left page and the other on the right for more expanded vocab and variety.
To practice listening, dreaming Spanish has a ton of videos spoken slowly for different levels. There’s a YouTube channel and a website: https://www.dreaming.com/spanish
Thank you!
I love Dreaming Spanish too! So far I have 150 hours on there.
This is how I got to fluency over the last 2 years. Highly recommend.
It’s paid once you get to intermediate level, but the beginner stuff is nearly all free
I don’t think so. There’s definitely free stuff all the way to the top, maybe less of it.
At least when I did it.
Huh, didn’t realize that. They definitely have some intermediate videos on YouTube for free but I guess not as many as on their page.
This lady, Butterfly Spanish. And Anki flashcards - the app seems really backwards at first but it really works.
I agree that Duolingo is annoying. Felt like I got somewhere with it but it wastes so much of your time.
Anki is incredible if you use it regularly. Super customisable as well
Thank you!
Edit: is this the right flash card app?
That is the correct one, yep! You can also get it from F-Droid!
Cool, thanks!
Do you know of a good spanish Anki deck?
I always imagined that if I really wanted to learn Spanish without living among Spanish speakers, I’d put on Family Guy or some other show with simple English and that has good subs and dubs. Then either use English audio with Spanish subs and perhaps after getting used to it a bit Spanish dubs with English subs. And after getting the hang of basics, Spanish with Spanish dubs. As Family Guy is so simple you’d get the context from the show, know a word here and there and your brain fills in the holes. Not at first, and then quite badly, but I think if you have like the very basics down, like a weeks course or something, and then you just start binging a show you know like that, constantly on the background, I’d assume you’d be a somewhat functional speaker in a year or two at least. Or you’ll just learn what “giggity” is in Spanish and nothing else. Either or. Or something in between. Or not.
Nevermindme just passing by I’ve no actual suggestions
TIL: https://comparelanguageapps.com/index.html
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Pimsleur works well for that.
