Burst the language learning bubble and set yourself free
With a little help from my polyglot friends on Substack, here's our top tips and tricks, inspiration and resources to make learning a new language a little easier and a whole lot more fun.
Since I arrived in Barcelona in early February, learning Spanish has been a top priority. But I’m struggling. Living in a new country without being fluent in the language is like being inside a bubble. I’m walking down the same streets, buying groceries in the same shops, riding the metro or dining in restaurants alongside the other denizens of my newly adopted country. But I’m inside my English-speaking bubble, bouncing against my new surroundings and hoping a word or phrase will penetrate my brain which has been trying very hard to decipher this new language.
Sometimes, when I’m brave, I break out of the bubble and dare to ask a question or speak a phrase in Spanish. But if the response, not surprisingly, comes in normally spoken Spanish, which is muy rapida for me, I retreat back to my bubble, bobbing along the street, once again on the outside looking in. It’s a lonely feeling, the longing to be part of a society and not apart from it. Language, naturally, holds the key.
This July edition of “Living Your 3D European Dream” is focused on language learning as a central aspect of immersion in your new country. Learning a new language is intimidating even if we’re willing to put in the work and recognize that it can take a long time to gain a basic proficiency in a new language, let alone fluency. Through a combination of the Babbel language learning app and a private tutor through the platform Preply, a hefty Spanish grammar book, and practice conversations with my Spanish-speaking daughter and her Chilean partner, I've been making steady gains in learning Spanish. (I remind myself I learned Swedish fluently—but that was over 30 years ago.) With Spanish, there is still such a long way to go! Tengo mucho que aprender!
So given the richness of the Substack community of writers living abroad, many of whom are polyglots (“a person who knows and is able to speak several languages”), I asked for a little help from my friends. I owe a debt of gratitude to Lisbon-based
and and Montreal-based for sharing their best tips and tricks on making language learning not just effective and sustainable but fun and enjoyable.Meet Imola: Imola Zstiva speaks English, Hungarian, Hebrew, French, Spanish and Italian and wants to make Portugese her seventh language, “once my Italian and Spanish stop competing with one another.” See more about why she can’t resist “The Magic and Beauty of Learning a New Language” on her Substack, The Art of Lite Living, which she wrote in answer to my prompt on language learning.
Meet Liza: Liza Debevec grew up in Slovenia and has lived in some fascinating and lesser-known parts of the world, including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and now Lisbon, Portugal. An anthropologist, Liza had studied in 13 languages—two of which are African languages, Jula and Amharic. She can communicate, at different levels of fluency, in 11 of them. She writes the newsletters on Scattered Crumbs and Tangled Tales and Sharing Secrets (and Other Useful Stuff).
Meet Gregory: Gregory Garretson is American with a PhD in linguistics who has spent over 25 years teaching languages in various countries and speaks several languages. He writes Living Elsewhere: “a publication and a community dedicated to thinking about life from a different perspective. The common theme is living in a different culture. This often means living in a foreign country, but not always.”
Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Language Learning
And now, drumroll, please, redoble de tambores por favor, let’s hear the top 10 tips and tricks from my polyglot friends:
The first four tips are from Gregory, followed by the next three tips from Imola and the final three from Liza.
Prepare mentally for the long haul. No one has ever really learned a language quickly or easily. Anyone who seems to have learned a language quickly probably put in tremendous effort. Anyone who seems to have learned a language effortlessly probably did so over many years. Speaking from my own experience, even if you are a gifted language learner, it will take you more than two years of daily study and practice to master a language. So don’t dabble—go all in.
Adopt an attitude of curiosity. You will be more likely to learn things about your language of study if you start by wondering about it. Find things that confuse you (for example, why in Spanish it’s una llama but un problema) and think, “Hmm, I’m going to find out how this works.” If you are already curious about something, your motivation to learn will be much higher. Comparing the language you are learning to ones you already know is very helpful in this regard.
Force yourself beyond your comfort zone. The best way to speed up your language-learning is to leave the kiddy pool of structured teaching and jump into the sea where the other language users are hanging out. Find some activity in which your current level of fluency is not quite enough, and power through it, noticing the things that are new to you. Ideally, even take notes of things you hear, so you can look them up later (see the previous tip). For some ideas, see my piece “How to Be a Good Immigrant”
Make use of spaced repetition. Seeing a word or learning a concept just once isn’t enough to make it stick. For that to happen, you need to review it several times at longer and longer time intervals. Read more about this in my piece “Loving Learning Languages”.
Start with the right mindset: If you tell yourself, “oh, I wish I could speak [insert your desired language here], but I have no talent for learning languages,” you basically set yourself up to fail before you even began! What you have communicated to your brain is that “you have no talent for learning languages” and therefore every obstacle that you will encounter (of which there will be many!), will be a proof of this prophecy.
By contrast, if your mindset is “[your desired language] might be challenging to learn, but let’s see how well I can learn just [a simple, desired goal like ordering a meal at a restaurant]” you approach the challenge from a place of curiosity!
Embrace the beginner’s mind: Feeling like a complete idiot, or at the very least, a complete beginner at something is (in my humble opinion) a very healthy thing! Nothing humbles our self-inflated ego like going back to the basics: I am… I want… I need… Please, could you help me? It is all the more useful if you happen to have a PHD and consider yourself somewhat smart. Learning a new language will quickly demonstrate to you how little you know, and how much more you have still to learn about various subjects. This fear of sounding like an idiot is the reason why so many people never brave learning a new language. But what you perceive as the most negative or frightening aspect about learning a new language, is in fact its greatest gift!
Keep a sense of humor: Learn to laugh about your mistakes and move on. Learn one small thing at a time, before you advance to the next small thing, and then the next small thing, and before you know it - these small things become one big thing and you are suddenly able to understand 60% to 80% of what people are saying, express yourself like a semi-idiot in a heavy accent, until—maybe, with a bit of luck and lot of patience, dedication, persistence and a healthy dose of humor, one day you succeed! Just listen to a few of these humbling mistakes Imola has made (and lived to tell the story):
“I have made so many embarrassing mistakes in various languages, including ordering half a pint of penis in a bar, talking about my girlfriend’s warm vagina flying into my shirt, and asking to have someone’s baby when all I wanted was a drink. I nearly died of embarrassment at the time, but these mistakes make great stories (and poems!) and endeared me to the people listening to me, who very much appreciated my efforts, no matter how badly I kept on butchering their beautiful language.”—Imola
Recognize language proficiency takes time: “You have to put in a lot of hours,” Liza says. “Many people expect it to be easier and when it isn’t, they get frustrated, especially people who are only used to communicating in one language and expect that people will understand them. There is a cognitive dissonance when you are suddenly not able to express everything you want to express.”
Immersion, immersion, immersion: “Watch Netflix/MAX with the subtitles of the language you’re trying to learn. Listen to songs and watch TV in that language. I recommend the Michael Thomas Method if you struggle with hearing the pronounciation and distinctive sounds in the new language.”
Stay engaged and excited: Liza made me feel better when she acknowledged that she too can procrastinate about sitting down for 30 minutes a day to hone her verb conjugation skills in Portugese. So not fun, even if necessary. Some ideas to tap into excitement for learning: read a simple book with lots of dialogue, add the audioversion for full immersion; find your passion, maybe it’s cooking and food, and read food magazines with recipes in the new language. And since Liza and I did The Artist’s Way community experience with
, she urged me to make an artist’s date with myself that is Spanish infused: read up on a place I’d like to go, visit, and write a few sentences about it in Spanish.
Bonus tips for good measure
You’re never too old to learn a new language. Liza offered up this about her own mother: “My mother is 76 and taught herself Spanish about 12 years ago. She reads Spanish novels, listen to Spanish podcasts, and travels in Spain and South America. It is mostly the attitude makes a difference.”
Make it enjoyable! Imola advises, “Choose the means that is most enjoyable to you. Whether it is joining a class in person, or on line, hiring a tutor, joining a conversation group, or—choosing to immerse yourself in the language and culture by spending an extended time in the country, just make sure you choose something that would bring you joy. Immense joy if possible.”
Resources for language learning
The Olympics of Languages by Imola
From Gregory Garretson:
Why Swearing in Other Languages Feels So Good
From
: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the self-taught language learnerFrom
A musician's perspective on language learningFrom
who writes The Average Polyglot: Duolingo Is Ruining Language LearningMy previous articles in The Living Your European 3D Dream series:
A move to Europe is easier than you think
Living Your European Dream in Spain: Deep Dive Guide to Visas
Living Your European Dream, May edition: Why I'm lucky to have Spanish healthcare
A love story lured me to Barcelona. Spoiler alert: It isn't mine (yet)
LET’S CHAT! In the comments, please share:
What are your best tips and tricks for learning a new language?
Any embarrassing moments you’re willing to share?
Do you think it’s possible to learn a language fluently at any age? Perhaps you’re proof of that! I’d love to know.
Thank you for being a subscriber to Living in 3D. Writing for you is such a joy. This month I reached a major milestone after consistently publishing every week since October 3, 2023. Thank you SO MUCH for making it happen! I’d be grateful if you’d help me put this publication in front of more people by liking ❤️ this post (or sharing or restacking it) or if you have a newsletter, recommending it to others. Paid subscribers—HUGE HUG for the extra support. I don’t take that for granted, and it is helping me believe I can reach my next milestone: 100 paid subscribers. If a paid subscription isn’t in your budget, you can make a one-time donation here.
I had just finished reading an article in The Economist entitle "Is being bilingual good for your brain?" when I received Gregory Garretson's note linking to this wonderful article! Many good tips (and links) here indeed! (That Economist article is here, BTW: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/06/27/is-being-bilingual-good-for-your-brain)
Being a musician my natural tendency has been to apply methods for learning and mastering musical works to language learning. I suppose I tend to think that there is a lot in common between language and music: semantics, grammars, idioms, style, and endless room for nuance and interpretation. The short essay I wrote about my approach is here: https://leavingamerica.substack.com/p/a-musicians-perspective-on-language
I’ve heard the best way to learn a new language is to live with a partner who speaks it. But I happen to love my American husband, so that option was out for me when we moved to Spain together four years ago.
I started with Pimsleur which I highly recommend. I only did the first 30 lessons and then lost interest. But those first 30 gave me so much!
I then dropped into an online course that was self paced and helped a bit, but again lost interest.
And then, I found the holy grail: DreamingSpanish.com and the concept of comprehensible input. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
They say one of the reasons most of us find it difficult to learn a new language is that we are bored with traditional methods. Who among us really wants to go back to the school days of memorization and verb conjugations?
I’ve learned everything in the context of conversations and phrases. I’ve never conjugated a verb. I know how to speak in various tenses, but have never studied how to do so. All thanks to comprehensible input.
But the biggest thing for me was the fact that the videos on dreamingspanish.com were super interesting. I was learning about various places around the world, learning about the culture of Spain (and eventually Mexico, Argentina, Columbia). The videos are on topics of interest to adults. I still look forward to seeing what new videos they put up each day. Finding something that keeps your interest is key.
At first, I used the filter on the site to only listen to videos in Spain Spanish. But eventually, I got to the point where I could watch Spanish from speakers of other countries and recognize the differences. No grammar. No memorizing.
I dip into Madrigal’s Magic guide to Spanish once in a while to understand why things are the way they are and love to see how much I’ve progressed as I flip through that book and see the things I already know because I learned them naturally.
Totally agree that you need to put the time in. I started with a half hour every day. And then ramped up to two hours per day every day for two years. Sure, some days I only got a half hour in, but I stuck with it.
I’m at a level I’m very happy with at this point. I can communicate in Spanish effectively in most contexts. So now I only do a half hour a day.
Absolutely recommend finding something that works for you and is of interest to you. For me it was comprehensible input and dreamingspanish.com. I eventually got to the point where I could understand Español con Juan. And now I can watch YouTube content that’s created for native speakers, not just language learners. I also can listen to podcasts made by native speakers for native speakers.
I wish you all the best of luck with your language learning.