You start off by watching this video right here.

Then you stare at this screen.

Then you pick a language you have no business learning.

Do one lesson.

Forget about it.

Then search up videos about how to learn that language in six weeks, made by a YouTuber who learned it in six years.

But if you want to actually learn a language, you have to make sure you're not doing it for the wrong reasons.

Sure, if you learned a hard enough language, it would probably impress a lot of strangers, and it would probably get you a lot of views on YouTube.

Subscribers too.

I think some people even make money from it.

But if you're a beginner, you should really be picking a language that's easy enough for you to actually enjoy learning it.

You shouldn't pick a language if you're going to treat it like a chore.

So, to maximize your chances of success, here's a chart of some popular languages, ranked by how much time it takes for an English speaker to learn them.

If you're not sure what language you should start learning, I would just pick either Spanish, French, or Portuguese.

Not only are they the easiest for English speakers, but many countries speak one of these as an official language.

I don't know why, but it's probably just a weird coincidence.

However, if you do want to go for a harder language, it is possible.

Just remember to ask yourself, do I really have the right motivation?

For example, wanting to understand anime is not going to motivate you to learn Japanese for more than a day.

However, my friend speaks Spanish, and I want to understand them, is a pretty good motivator.

Because that's probably why they made a group chat without you.

Some people have to take a language class for school, but that by itself is not a great motivator, because your finger might slip, and you might accidentally paste all your assignments into DeepL.

However, the British invaded my country, and I need English to survive, is the perfect motivation to start learning English.

And so far, it seems to have been a huge success.

So now that you've picked your language, it's time for the easy part, which is learning it.

Usually, people on the internet will tell you that the fastest method to learn any language is to get a language partner, or a tutor, or a friend who's willing to sit down with you and talk to you like a baby until you start picking up words and sentences.

And while this is probably the fastest way, it requires human interaction.

So instead, here's a method that you can do all by yourself, at home, to become fluent in a language.

The first step is learning the basics.

This is actually a very easy step, but many people try to skip it by doing one or two Duolingo lessons.

Other people get stuck on the language learning side of YouTube, watching 138 videos about how to learn Korean, none of which include a single word of Korean.

But the whole time, all you really had to do was find a beginner textbook for that language that has practice exercises for you to do.

It might take you a month to finish the whole thing, but the progress you'll make is equal to about two years of Duolingo, or about 12 years of school in America.

And you can find these books for free just by googling beginner, then the language, textbook PDF.

And there you go.

You could also just get them from the library, or as they say in France, zee library.

Zee library.

Isn't zee library fun to say?

Imagine if you googled it.

Once you finish the beginner book, it's time to practice listening.

You don't even have to worry about speaking right now, because first, you need to learn what the language is actually supposed to sound like.

The easiest way to do this is by watching YouTube videos in that language.

The idea behind this is that you're not going to understand everything, but by looking at the video and using context clues from what you do understand, you can slowly pick up the language without even realizing.

This works especially well because every language only has a few thousand words that are actually used in regular conversation.

So over time, you'll start recognizing the same few words and phrases in every video you watch.

And you can really pick anything to watch, as long as it's interesting and you can understand at least 30% of it.

If you put on a video and it sounds like gibberish, it's not your fault.

They're just talking too fast.

This is probably because they're trying to gatekeep their language.

Do not let them do this.

To fix it, just go to the YouTube search bar and add the magic word easy.

And just like that, you get served up a bunch of videos that you can understand.

Automatic captions also help a lot, because you can rewind and look up the words you don't know.

There are even websites like Reversal Context, where you can look up a word or phrase and actually see it used in a real sentence.

But whatever you do, do not turn on English subtitles.

Many people who try to learn Japanese, for example, watch anime.

This is not a bad way to learn Japanese, but people who turn on English subtitles will just read the subtitles.

And even though they think they're learning Japanese, in five years, all they'll have to show for it is this profile picture and the Discord Nitro subscription.

But luckily, you've been using subtitles in the right language, and you can now understand at least 70% of everything you watch.

It's time to unleash step three, which is speaking.

To start speaking, just keep watching YouTube.

Except now, you pause after each important sentence and repeat it out loud, or at least whisper it.

Try to pretend like you're having a real conversation with an actual person, and even think of different possible situations where you could use the sentence.

Whenever you find a sentence that sounds really useful, write it down in a notebook.

You're probably never going to look at that notebook ever again, but it's nice to get some writing practice.

Now, at any point in this entire process, once you feel ready to start speaking, sit down and record yourself talking to a camera and just talk about your day, stuff you did, stuff you're looking forward to, and even ask a couple questions to the imaginary person on the other side.

If you ever forget how to say something, fill it in with English and move on.

Later, you can watch the recording back and look up whatever you didn't know how to say using DeepL or Reversal Context.

To an outsider, this might look like a lonely way to learn language, but if you've ever heard someone say they're self-taught, this is exactly what they were doing.

And that's all there is to it.

If you keep reading about the language, watching YouTube, and talking to a camera for long enough, you'll become fluent without ever having to talk to an actual person.

Congratulations!

But one day in the future, you'll probably have to travel and you'll eventually have to talk to native speakers.

And all you have to do is just learn the culture and keep up with the politics.

For example, if you ever visit France, this is what you might expect to see.

But what you'll actually see is hundreds of French farmers driving their tractors into the capital to form a blockade.

If you stop a Frenchman on the street to ask what happened, he'll just tell you that this is a normal day in France.

French people use creative protest as a way to pass the time and you clearly must have not read about it using Ground News.

Hashtag sponsored.

Ground News is an app and a website that feeds you news from multiple sources while also telling you straight up if the sources reporting on an article are biased.

For example, when I'm reading that BBC article about how French farmers are protesting getting absolutely shafted by the government, the Ground News browser extension shows that this article is from the center and the left and right seem to be covering it pretty equally.

If you click on full coverage, you'll see that 306 sources are covering this story and there's a summary from each political viewpoint.

The bias insights feature tells you how the left, right, and center are reporting on the story differently.

You can even see tabs showing your bias distribution, the factuality of the sources, and who owns them.

But what I do most often is compare headlines.

This article makes the protesters look like angry manure-slinging traffic blockers while this article makes them look like strong revolutionary heroes.

Very interesting.

I recommend browsing the international edition so you'll never have to look confused in foreign countries.

Just go to ground.news slash easyactually or click the link below and you'll get 30% off their unlimited access vantage plan today.

I was also going to ask you to subscribe but the number can't fit in the circle anymore.