What is the best possible way to learn a language for free and without someone helping you?

Hi!

I really love you passion about learning a new language. I myself speak 4 languages. I will highly encourage you to learn as much as you can, super helpful, helps you when you travel, when you meet people, when you work or study, helpful everywhere.

Next steps are:

Get a job in a country where the language you want to learn is spoken. You work to pay for life and learn so much language along the way. All your customers and friends will be native speakers. It is the absolute best!

I used to teach Portuguese to a student and he enjoyed the 1:1 experience, however, it was paid. Given you mentioned you would like to learn for free, meaning, without paying for the experience or for the course itself, I would recommend 2 ways: 1 - Try meeting up with a group of people with the same interest as yours, for example, https://www.meetup.com/PhoenixSpanishLanguage/. 2 - Try using the free resources of an app/site like www.busuu.com. I hope it helps, and happy learning!

Great question, Julia!

Learning a new language is a great skill, and will open doors for you in the future. I see you've gotten some great advice, so I'll briefly share my personal experience and advice on this.

When I was in college I got accepted to study abroad in Brazil, but I had no idea how to speak the native language. I downloaded Duolingo, and it was a great starting point for learning portuguese! The app keeps improving, now offering a chat function, which really tests your ability to have conversations in the language.

While apps are great, I would suggest spending time with people who speak the language face-to-face. Languages are often much different during real conversations than they are on paper. I took spanish for three years in high school. It was a great experience, but even after all that time I wasn't comfortable speaking the language. My best friend is from Mexico, and being around her and her family all the time is what really taught me the language. Now I can follow along with most conversations, and can speak it pretty well too!

Good luck, and I hope this helps!

Hey Julia,

It's really great to hear that you are interested in learning another language!! I learned Chinese in school and it was one of the best and most enjoyable decisions that I ever made. It has opened doors for me that would have otherwise been unavailable to me and granted me so great opportunities. If you are looking to learn a language and not have to spend any money, I would recommend downloading the app DuoLingo. It is a free app, has many languages, and tons of lessons. It's an easy fun way to learn a language and its extremely accessible given that you have it on your phone. Also download the app Hello Talk. This app pairs you with someone who wants to learn English from the language you want to learn (i.e. I am paired with Chinese people who want to learn English). Its a cool way to practice your language and meet people.

I would also watch Youtube videos in the language, especially children's TV shows in the language you want to learn. It may seem silly, but kid's shows don't have advanced language, use simple sentence structures, and often come with subtitles. Youtube is a great platform for language learning and you should be able to finds tons of language resources online to help you out.

I hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck.

Best,

Austin

Check out the app Duolingo. There is a free and paid version that sets you up with a daily curriculum.

https://www.duolingo.com/