International Living, Marriage & Travel

There are so many scam out there that try to sell you programs that will let you speak fluently in a month. While I find that skeptical unless you have a def ear and spend all day every day for a month only studying that one language, maybe. But I was wondering what is the fastest you've learned a language and how did you do it?

The quickest way to learn a language is through an intermediary. A person who you can converse with in a common language and who is a native of the language you are trying to learn. From here, you can progress to other avenues like enrolling for a language class or online studies with an input from your mentor. You can take advantage of interactive classes on Busuu.com and Babbel.com which are good interactive sites to study a foreign language.

I think the quickest way to learn a language is to be with those who only speak that language for a period. There are many Chinese dialects, and I only know Cantonese. There was once I went to work in another town, where everyone speaks Hokkien (another Chinese dialect), though they can speak Mandarin and English, the people there are very used to speak Hokkien. While I was with them for a few months, I got to pick up the spoken language quite fast.

It might not be easy for us to be there, so the alternative is to find a friend or tutor who can communicate with us in that language always.

It took me six months to learn Spanish. Having a tutor and a friend who we could communicate in Spanish really boosted my learning. I also moved to Spain for a few weeks on a work related trip and I also benefited from that.

The quickest way would be with some immersion program like Rosetta Stone. However, the 2nd quickest way might involve some lesser program combined with living in the target nation. Note, when you live in the target nation, you would always pick stuff up, even if you're not really trying.

I think that the best way to learn any language is to try to become fully involved with people that speak the language. I'm planning to take a trip to South America later this year in order to take a spanish immersion course. But, before I go, I'm studying with the Rosetta Stone program.

For me, the quickest way to learn a language or dialect is to speak it. When I would take a vacation in the province in my younger years, I would try my best to learn by speaking the dialect. When I go home after a week of vacation, I could converse using the dialect, at least using the basic words and phrases. When I worked in a Japanese company, we were required to learn conversational Nihonggo. It was very difficult studying by reading. But when some Japanese came to our office, we started speaking what we had learned. It was fun to learn and easy too.