Two Years of Studying and Practicing Foreign Languages
Two years ago, I shared my experience of studying foreign languages here, and I want to share an update.
Spanish
As I mentioned in my previous post, I resumed studying Spanish in 2022 and spent a lot of time listening to Language Transfer, Duolingo, doing grammar exercises, etc. I also used the Listening-Reading method with several books and attended language exchange meetups.
Going to language exchange meetings was an amazing experience. I joined three different groups and spoke with native Spanish speakers from Spain, Peru, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and other countries. At first, it was somewhat difficult, but over time, it became much easier. At one point, several people even asked me how long I had lived in a Spanish-speaking country - one of the best compliments for any language learner!
It was very interesting to observe different approaches to language learning. Some people dabbled in multiple languages at an A1-A2 level, frequently switching focus but never progressing beyond basic phrases. Others brought grammar books and asked for help, while some wrote down words. Many people at the meetups were multilingual. Some joined purely for socializing. Interestingly, the most popular languages for learning were English, Arabic, Spanish, and French.
I also did some targeted practice on my own. For several months, I wrote my daily journal in Spanish and made an effort to think in Spanish. At first, it was frustrating that sometimes I struggled to form simple sentences, but with consistent practice, it became easier. I also used ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode for speaking practice. While it’s not perfect, it’s at least as helpful as conversations at language exchanges - if not more.
Additionally, I played several RPGs in Spanish: Black Geyser, Divinity Original Sin, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Baldur’s Gate 3. RPGs are great for language practice because they contain extensive dialogue and texts on various topics. Many games offer Spanish text with English voiceovers, which helps with comprehension. Initially, I manually wrote down unknown words for later translation, but it was clearly inefficient. After trying various apps, I settled on DeepL, which allows OCR translation of screenshots, making the process much smoother.
Duolingo is a controversial app, so I’ll just say that I use it as a supplementary tool for practice. I completed the current versions of the English-Spanish and German-Spanish courses. They helped me expand my vocabulary, but by the end, they became too repetitive.
Listening-Reading is one of my favorite ways to transition from studying to immersion and improve listening comprehension. Previously, I had already gone through a couple of books using this method, and I continued with The Way of Kings. The audiobook is about 46 hours long. In the beginning, I had to look at the English text constantly, but by the end, I could listen to the audiobook without using the English version and still understand almost everything.
After finishing it, I finally felt ready to start reading books in Spanish. To make things easier, I began with a translated book, Trenza del mar Esmeralda by Brandon Sanderson. At first, it was quite difficult, especially due to the whimsical writing style. After a halfway point, I started truly having fun. Deciphering the text and enjoying the language itself made the experience almost magical.
Next, I read the Reina Roja trilogy by Juan Gómez-Jurado. Reading it was much more challenging than anything before, but I persevered and succeeded. I think I encountered around 200–300 new words per book. Another book I read was La Noche era terciopelo, which had a wonderful noir ambiance. I absolutely loved it.
After that, I attempted to read Don Quixote in Spanish… and failed utterly. The language was too complex, and the sentences were too long, so I gave up.
Another series I read was La guerra de los cielos by Fernando Trujillo Sanz. The books were relatively easy - I encountered only about 50–100 new words per book - but I wasn’t happy with the final one. The series ended with too many unresolved questions, and I didn’t like the style. It felt like there were no truly good characters - most were just outright bad. I attempted to read the sequel, but I found all the characters unlikable, so I dropped it.
Finally, I read El Sendero del Guardabosques by Pedro Urvi - a 20-book YA fantasy series about Rangers. It starts with a group of characters at the beginning of their training and follows them for many years. I enjoyed most of it, but I was extremely disappointed with the ending. After 20 books, I expected a satisfying conclusion, but instead, it ended with multiple cliffhangers. As for vocabulary, in the first book, I encountered around 300 new words, and each subsequent book had fewer and fewer unknown words.
I read all these books using Kindle, which is a godsend. Being able to tap on a word and instantly see a translation is invaluable. Manually looking up words is too time-consuming and tedious. After finishing a book, I usually export the new words to Anki. However, Kindle’s dictionary isn’t always accurate, so I use ChatGPT and DeepL to verify translations.
But sometimes I’m frustrated. Even after looking up 100+ Spanish words in a book, Kindle sometimes fails to recognize the language of a new word or auto-detects a completely random language. And the fact that looking up the words always opens the dictionary first isn’t the best experience: if the word is absent from a dictionary (like a verb form), you have to manually switch to web translation, which can be annoying.
Currently, I’m reading a Spanish Pokémon fanfic, and I’m having a blast! It’s insanely long - 2.2 million words! I’m on chapter 141 of 170. While the language isn’t too complex, it frequently uses colloquial expressions, making it great for vocabulary expansion. I read it using the Readlang web extension and exported new words into Anki from time to time.
Based on an estimate of around 250 words per page, I’ve read approximately 4.6-5 million words in Spanish (including the fanfic). Now, I can comfortably watch YouTube videos, listen to audiobooks, and read books without difficulty. I can also speak Spanish fluently on most topics. I’m satisfied with my progress and will continue consuming native content.
German
I worked through the following books with Listening-Reading:
- Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen
- Unsouled by Will Wight (only the first book was available in German)
- Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce
- Hidden Legacy by Ilona Andrews. This series amounted to around 80 hours of listening, which took me over four months. At first, it was somewhat difficult, but by the end, I could listen comfortably.
- Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews (books 1-3)
- Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews (books 1-5). I stopped because I needed a break from listening to too many books by the same author.
- Der Sieger von Rapgar by Alexey Pehov. This was an interesting case. Pehov is one of my favorite modern Russian authors, and this is my favorite standalone book by him. When I first attempted the audiobook in September 2023, it was too difficult - there were too many unknown words, and the language felt complex. One year later, I tried again and succeeded! The translation was quite different from the original, but I loved it. The rich language and the narrator’s voice were fantastic.
I also listened to two books without lookng at a text version:
- Der Herr der Ringe 1. I read “The Lord of the Rings” years ago and decided to listen to the German version. It was wonderful - I understood about 90%, mainly struggling with fantasy-specific vocabulary and place names.
- Hexen gibt es doch. This was a random Audible recommendation. It was fun, and I understood about 95%.
At first, I listened at 1x speed, but over time, I increased it to 1.25x or even 1.5x, as some narrators spoke too slowly. All in all, it amounted to 250 hours of listening (measured at 1x speed).
Book reading:
- Cradle by Will Wight, books 2 and 3 (the rest of the series is only available in English). After reading the third book, I added around 350 new words to Anki.
- Chroniken der Seelenfänger by Alexey Pehov. I originally read this series 9-10 years ago in Russian and decided to reread it in German. The first book took me over a month to finish, and I added about 1.5k new words to Anki. The first third of the book was challenging - even in Russian, it had rich language, vivid descriptions, and a wide range of topics, making it quite a challenge in German. However, after that, reading became gradually easier. The second book took me about a month (~1.1k new words). After that, my reading speed increased: the third book took me three weeks (~900 new words), and the fourth only ten days (~500 words). Naturally, external factors influenced my reading time, but the progress is evident.
- Currently, I’m reading Der 13. Paladin by Torsten Weitze. I’m on the eighth book out of thirteen. It took me about two months to read the first seven books. The first book added 650 new words to my deck, the second 400, and by the seventh, I was adding fewer than 200 words.
This amounts to around 1.5 million words in total. While I’ve listened to many audiobooks, I’ve read less in German than in Spanish. My listening comprehension is strong, but I sometimes struggle with complex sentences while reading. I can talk about most everyday topics, but I need more practice to speak fluently without pauses. In the future, I also plan to deliberately focus on some grammar practice.
Japanese
I studied and practiced Japanese from 2012 to 2016. By the end of that period, I was able to read visual novels with the help of a translation tool and watch anime while understanding most of it. In 2019, I tried to refresh my Japanese before a trip to Japan, but it wasn’t very successful. At the beginning of 2024, I decided to start learning again.
I tend to overprepare, so I spent most of the year studying rather than actively practicing. First, I used Kanji Koohi to review kanji, a resource I had used before and liked. Next, I practiced recognizing and writing katakana and hiragana using Skritter. It was fun and helpful, but I eventually stopped using it since I didn’t plan to write Japanese by hand.
I also downloaded the Core 2.3k Anki deck and revisited my old Japanese deck from years ago. It was useful, but I had to delete many cards with extremely rare words, and sometimes, I realized that my old translations were incorrect.
The best tool for me was Renshuu. This platform has a wide variety of decks with kanji, vocabulary, sentences, and grammar. I used it consistently throughout the year, and it significantly boosted my progress. I only wish it had been available back in 2012 when I first started learning Japanese…
In August, I began reading manga. I experimented with various tools like Mokuro, but some didn’t work on Mac, while others didn’t function well. In the end, I wrote a good prompt for ChatGPT-4o and used it to parse and translate manga pages. I read several volumes of different series, and while it was pretty challenging, it was also fun.
In December 2024, I started reading on Satori Reader, an incredible resource with a wide range of stories at varying difficulty levels. You can read the stories, listen to the accompanying audio, and look up unknown words. But what makes it truly valuable is the abundance of hand-crafted comments and explanations covering grammar, cultural customs, and broader concepts. This was extremely helpful for me. I read several different stories, including Fujiki, The Wedding of the Fox, My Sweetie is Japanese, and News, and I learned a lot. Then, I moved on.
In January 2025, I started reading the light novel Spice and Wolf. It has a fantastic story, but the language is far more complex than anything I had previously read in Japanese. The biggest challenge for me was onomatopoeia - words that imitate sounds, states, emotions, etc. If you know kanji, you can often guess the meaning of a new word to some extent, but when you come across words like でれでれ, ぐんにゃり, or ちゃりちゃり, you have to rely entirely on context to understand them. Another difficulty was that the author frequently wrote verbs in kana instead of kanji, such as たまる instead of 溜まる.
It took me about a month and a half to finish the book. I added around a thousand new words to my Anki deck, though I suspect at least 10-20% of them are not particularly useful. Unfortunately, looking up Japanese word translations on Kindle isn’t always smooth. Kindle often selects only one kanji or kana by default, requiring manual adjustment to highlight the full word, which can be inconvenient with vertical texts. Maybe I’ll read my next Japanese book using a different tool, like Ttsu Reader.
While I was able to finish reading my first Japanese book, this is just the beginning of my journey of studying Japanese. I have a lot to learn and practice, but I’m looking forward to doing it.
Conclusion
I’d love to learn more languages in the future, but I also understand the difficulty of maintaining so many at once. Anyway, while language learning is difficult, I think it is worth it.