I kind of enjoy talking about languages a little too much and I'm studying German, too, so fair warning that this will be a very long and probably rambling post, LOL. You're more than welcome to message me if you have a question about German, want reading/watching/listening suggestions or practice exercises, need help translating something or understanding audio, or anything else; I'm happy to do what I can to help! c:
1. The easiest way to learn will 100% depend on your personal learning style, so I would first try to figure out what type of learner you are if you haven't already. It's important to note, though, that no matter how you do it or which language you pick, seriously learning a new language is a big commitment and
not easy. Instead of specifically looking for something easy that may not be as effective, look for something you can have fun with and that you won't mind putting the necessary time and effort into, and that suits your learning style so you can get the most out of it.
If you're an audio learner, for example, you would probably do well with a learning method that focuses on listening and/or speaking practice. If you're like me and learn best by reading and/or writing, you'll most likely find a text-based method like a textbook more effective. I would suggest giving one method a shot (say, studying with a traditional textbook) and if it doesn't seem to be working well for you, try another (maybe an app/software like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo) until you find something that clicks.
If you have the option available and afford it, taking a formal class or finding a tutor can also be extremely helpful, even just for a short time to get you going, and might be your best option especially if you're monolingual learning your second language. With your first foreign language, it's not just new vocabulary and grammar you have to wrap your head around, but the very concept of how a different language works. A human teacher can adjust and work with you to give specific advice and focus on the areas where you're struggling. I started learning German as a requirement for school and so I had 7 years of classes through high school before I started actively learning it on my own. By that time I still had a lot to improve particularly with listening, speaking, and general vocabulary building, but I had a solid foundation to build on and that made it so much easier to continue by myself.
2. How you stay motivated will again depend on you personally and kind of goes hand in hand with #1: if you find a learning method that clicks with you and you enjoy using it, that alone can help keep you motivated. On the other hand, if the method isn't working well for you, that can discourage you from continuing. Beyond that, though, honestly I haven't really found the answer myself yet, at least not for a brand new language. I've been trying to learn Russian on my own for a few years, but I still haven't made a huge amount of progress because while I love the textbook I have, I keep losing focus and going back to my German instead and I haven't quite figured out how to effectively kick myself back. ^^'
Once you get the basics down, however, staying focused and motivated will actually get way easier because you'll be able to actually start using the language and can combine your studying with watching your favorite TV shows, listening to music, reading books, and more - see #4!
3. For a new language, I'd suggest a short (~15-30 minute) session every day. You'll want to adjust your study schedule to suit you, of course, but it's generally better to consistently study a little bit a day than having big study sessions less often and/or trying to cram too much into your brain at one time.
4. Basically, immerse yourself in the language as much as possible, concentrating on the areas where you need the most improvement. Visiting the country where your target language is spoken would be ideal, but if you're not able to do that, then engage with the language in every way you can at home. For German, like I said I could already kind of speak it by the time I had to learn independently, so the following advice is more for if you're at an intermediate level rather than a total beginner (although you can absolutely benefit from this at any level and should give it a go anyway, it works best if you've got a good vocab base and a fairly solid grasp of the grammar essentials already.)
In my case, I really needed to work on listening skills, so I started gathering everything I could find in German -- Youtube videos, songs, movies & TV shows, etc. -- and just watched/listened to them as much as possible. We rarely practiced listening in school, so I could barely understand anything at first. I focused on simply getting used to the sound of the language and recognizing key words, and over time. I understood more and more until eventually instead of recognizing a word here and there and nothing else, I could understand almost everything except for a few words.
Find a movie/episode/scene/etc. that you know well in English and watch it in German. If subtitles are available, they can help a lot,
but don't rely too much on subtitles or you'll end up holding yourself back because you aren't actually paying attention to the audio. Try to understand the dialogue without subtitles first, then to check if you're right or if you couldn't understand, turn on German subtitles. Avoid using English subtitles as a crutch unless you absolutely need to know the meaning of a line and can't figure it out in German. For one, if you're reading English, you're not learning German, and two, subtitles don't always match what's actually being said, even for the same language, in which case you're
really not learning anything. This is especially true for dubs: it seems like dialogue and subtitles for most dubbed productions have separate translations, don't ask me why.
Some suggestions for where to look for videos to watch: Youtube is an invaluable resource. There are German youtubers you can follow, German songs you can listen to, and people often upload scenes from movies and TV in various languages, sometimes along with subtitles and/or translations! Just search for the name of the movie/show/scene/etc. you want and "German" or "Deutsch". Feel free to PM me for specific suggestions of stuff to watch and where to watch it if you want. ^^ If you have Netflix, most if not all Netflix originals can be watched in German (at least here in the US; depending on which country you live in, the available languages could be different), as well as many other series and movies. Other streaming services might have German options, too, so be sure to check!
Die Sendung mit der Maus is a fantastic kid's show and unlike a lot of German sites, you can access and watch the videos in other countries, including in the US. They also have podcasts to listen to.
When you get to a point where you can generally follow what's going on without too much trouble, the next step is to try watching shows and movies you've never seen before for the first time completely in German and see how you do. You probably won't understand everything that's happening and that's perfectly fine; just work on getting the gist at first and train yourself to fill in the gaps in your understanding by paying attention to context and nonverbal cues.
Then along with listening practice, I also started engaging with German-speaking communities online, including here on CS, in order to actually use what I had learned, and that I think is what really worked to keep me from becoming demotivated and stopping. Instead of just staring at translation exercises in a classroom, I was using my German "in the wild" to get to know people I might never have interacted with otherwise and that was an amazing feeling! It was like I had unlocked a door to a whole other world and that made me want to keep learning as much as I could. So go online and start using what you've learned, and don't worry about messing up. Just do your best! You could post in the German thread here, join or follow German-speaking groups/pages/people on social media, follow German Youtubers and comment on videos, and so on.
Other tips:
- Switch your phone and other devices to German (just make sure you know where to go to switch it back in case you get lost).
- Write or print out labels with the German words for various items around your house and stick them on those items so you remember every time you look at them.
- Play video games and apps in German. Multilingual support is very common for games these days.
- Just like with movies and shows, read books in German that you already know well in English, then as you get better switch to reading books for the first time in German. Bonus points if the book was originally written in German. The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte) and the Inkheart (Tintenherz) trilogy are two that you might be familiar with in English.
- Songs can be a great resource for listening and even speaking practice (if you sing along), as the pace is usually slower and the words clearer and more drawn-out than in regular speech. But, do not look to songs for learning grammar. Lyrics are a form of poetry and the rules governing poetry are much looser than they are normally, meaning you'll come across phrases and grammatic structures that work fine in a song but might sound strange or downright wrong elsewhere.
5. I started with German in 6th grade, so I was 11, almost 12 years old.
6. I just love languages and linguistic for no reason in particular that I could explain. But one of the best things about learning a new language is like I said above, using it to talk to people you would probably never have gotten to know if you hadn't learned their language. Not only that, but you get to see what all your hard work has been for and just how far you've come from not knowing the language at all when you actually use it!
7. Absolutely! I would want to learn every language in the world if I could. I think that's actually a big part of the problem I've been having with sticking with Russian: there are so many languages I want to learn that when I sit down to work on Russian, I start thinking about how much I'd like to learn, let's say, Mandarin. So then I get distracted and start looking at Mandarin basics before I remember how much I'd like to learn Irish. Or Finnish. Or Icelandic. Or Spanish. Or ...
