r/languagelearning

I'm building a personal collection of language learning resources that have actually helped people, not just another list of every app, website, and tool available online.

I started collecting these resources for myself because I was frustrated with seeing the same generic recommendations everywhere. Learning a language usually requires many different tools (listening, grammar, vocabulary, speaking practice, etc.), and I wanted to find resources that people genuinely found useful.

I'm not sharing my website here because I know self-promotion isn't allowed in many communities, and I'm not trying to advertise it. I'm simply looking for recommendations from people who have spent time learning languages and know what actually works. (TL)

I'm looking for things that made a real difference for you, such as:

• YouTube channels
• Podcasts
• Books
• Websites
• Apps
• Grammar resources
• Discord communities
• Blogs
• Courses
• Any other resource you think deserves more attention

It doesn't matter which language it's fo French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Korean, or anything else.

What is one resource that genuinely changed the way you learn a language?

I'll go through every recommendation, test/research them, and add the best ones to a free language learning platform I'm building for myself and a few friends.

Thanks in advance for sharing your favorites!

I don’t want to throw flowers to myself, but I think I’m pretty good at language learning. I picked up English in three months when I was 6 (so it’s not my first language), and can understand pretty much everything in Dutch, Italian and Spanish (TL). In a few years, I’d like to go in Latin America for an internship, and I’d have to be fully fluent in Spanish.
I’ve heard that listening to music in the target language does help, but I’ve also heard that it does nothing to help and it’s a scam. Any thoughts about this? Is it worth the try?

For those who don't wanna watch the video, it's a comedy skit ranting about how Anglicisms have "made Japanese worse" since it is both harder and longer to read and it invalidates the work learning kanji and native Japanese words. An example he gave was「ニューインフォメーションがネゴシエーションとパブリックオピニオンをインフルエンスした。」vs. 「最新情報が交渉と世論に影響を与えました。」

I kinda feel this learning German, since Denglisch terms, while super convenient for me, also have pronunciations inconsistent with both German spelling and English pronunciations (<A> in "das Laptop" is not /a/ but /ɛ/, which is not English /æ/) making it sometimes unpredictable, and sometimes it's jarring for me to hear English terms and slang in otherwise formal language where more native terms would be expected (i.e. in the news)

i was born into a slavic household and my first language was russian (TL). i went to a slavic school aswell so most people speak russian. in 1st grade, reading (in english) began to become really emphasized and since that i began to forget russian. i havent completely forgotten everything though, i would say i have intermediate russian skills but u can tell im not fluent. i can also understand like 60% of conversations. ive been doing duolingo for about half a year. are there any other resources that could help me or does anyone have any ideas on how i can become fluent. thank you!

My co worker who is thai asked me to tutor her and help her get better at english. The only problem is, that I don't know where to start. She plans on teaching me thai. While I teach her english. WHERE DO I STATT??? IM FREAKING OUT! I don't know any thai so that's even worse 🥲

I live in Montréal.

My boyfriend only speaks to me in French (he doesn't feel comfortable speaking English), I attend full-time at a French-language university here, I speak only in French with my friends (from that university). I watch almost exclusively French-language TV shows, Occupation Double, Les Traîtres, Big Brother (Québec), and a bunch of French YouTube videos (Romain Basso, TiboInShape, ARTE, Danii le Russe, Radio-Canada, 7 Jours sur Terre, Radio Télévision Suisse, etc.). I work in French here. When I go to stores, I talk to the employees in French. Basically, my whole life's in French here.

I'm completely comfortable speaking in French with ni importe qui, but I know that my grammar and vocabulary kind of sucks.

Is the solution just to review grammar and vocabulary from a textbook?

**TL;DR:** I worry that speaking a language I’m learning (with imperfect grammar, pronunciation, etc.) is imposing on people or making things harder for them or comes across as presumptuous. How do other language learners get past that feeling?

I enjoy learning languages mostly for their own sake rather than for specific communication goals. As a result, I’ve always prioritised passive skills, since those are the most useful to me. However, I’ve started to feel limited by that mindset and would like to move beyond it and actually be able to converse in the languages I’ve learned.

The biggest obstacle is my fear of “imposing” on people by talking to them — a fear that exists even when I’m speaking my first language. For context, I’m autistic. I know it’s unlikely that I’m actually bothering people simply by chatting with them, or even by doing something as mundane as ordering a coffee, but at the same time I wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell if I were.

On top of that, there’s imperfect grammar and pronunciation, as well as occasionally not catching everything that was said in the first place. The conversation therefore isn’t completely smooth, which objectively does create some overhead for the other person. So, given that language learners do actually speak to native speakers, how do you deal with that?

I also don’t want to come across as arrogant or presumptuous, as though I assumed my language skills were so good that they must be better than the other person’s English.

I managed to become conversational while living in China, mostly because I had to — I was giving technical presentations for work. But I struggle to use the other languages I’ve been learning, either because my level is still low (Armenian), because the places where I could use them are touristy and people can speak English (e.g., Greek, Italian or Spanish), or because awkward, non-fluent conversations feel embarrassing (Japanese, Korean).

I'm learning a new language and want to start off on the right foot with correct pronunciation, so i don't need to re-learn it later if I don't get it right on my own. I want to do language exchange with a native speaker for pronunciation but on more of an equal basis, so would like to "talk" to a near beginner in my language.

I started thinking of the best way to do this, since actual communication would be very minimal. I have this idea of creating a conversation script (say on shared Google docs) ahead of time, with each "line" of the conversation written in both languages. The exercise would then be for the native speaker to read the (TL) line and then the learner would repeat the line. The feedback from the native speaker would be to read back the words that need better pronunciation.

Does this sound like a good technique?

Let me start off by saying that this is an anxiety thing, NOT anything about any one language being "more correct" or "better" than any other.

My brain keeps trying to tell me two things:

(1) Unless I'm going to speak a language with perfect fluency, it's not worth learning.

(2) I need to pick the language to learn based on where I want to live in the future.

For part 1, the black-and-white thinking is obvious and ridiculous, but boy is it frustrating. For part 2, that line of thinking could be helpful, except that I don't actually know where I'm going to end up living in the future!

Because of these two things, I feel demotivated to study as intensively as I know I could. Additionally, I've got 3 TL's (a C1 now B2, a B1 now A1, and an A1) to choose from but, per the second point above, neither of those might be "right," which prevents me from really committing to studying of any of them (not to mention other languages).

I've recently gotten into new hobbies (a new sport) as well as back into old hobbies (art) and it's been extremely enjoyable and beneficial to my life. Unfortunately, language learning seems to have a huge block because of these two self-reinforcing thought patterns.

Has anybody else encountered this? How have you worked through it?

Subverting expectations is so satisfying

I'm a Mexican immigrant in Alabama and grew up here. It wasn't until 2022 when I decided to perfect my Spanish as a heritage speaker and learn Portuguese. Then when I got pretty fluent in Portuguese, I began learning Mandarin in Oct 2023.

It's now been over 2.5 years/1050 hours logged. I've been to China too! (Last July 2025). Anyway, I went to visit family in Birmingham, and we went to a Chinese restaurant. I didn't use my Mandarin at first, but when my brothers and I sat down, they asked why I didn't. I took it as a challenge and used it when the waitress came. (My brothers had never seen this irl) so they were shocked. The waitress was also super surprised since you'd never expect a random Mexican to know Chinese 😂. She got super happy and excited and asked a lot of questions. My brother also said some other Mexican customers behind me were flabbergasted I could speak Chinese as well and just stared.

Stuff like this just makes me even more motivated to keep going. It's the best feeling - pulling out an ability that no one would expect you to have 😂. I could understand and be understood in the entire convo with the Chinese waitress, and I felt really happy. Right now I can usually understand and read 80%-85% of general topics in Chinese. Last year in June, that was around maybe 45-55%. I've been grinding out the practice, taking two lessons a week of pure conversational practice too.

Anyway, I was just super happy. I also got a Rednote account where I only post in Chinese Mandarin and have nearly 3k followers. It's been very rewarding learning the language!

I’m very curious on this. I personally haven’t, but I speak Gagauz natively as my mother speaks it. I have never met another person in England who speaks it, but I like talking to my mother in it all the time! I wouldn’t be surprised if there are only a couple dozen more people like us in the country, as it is a very endangered language. I hope to bring my children up around it!

I recently stopped spending so much time playing video games and want to replace that habit with learning languages.
I’ve already read the FAQ, but I’m hoping to hear from people who became conversational using methods that actually worked in real life.
I’m less interested in memorizing vocabulary and more interested in learning how people naturally speak. What apps, websites, podcasts, YouTube channels, or study techniques made the biggest difference for you? If you became conversational, how long did it take, and what did your daily routine look like?
Thanks!

I've been stacking my list of words and phrases, and my words are divided into catergories (first, part of speech - noun, verb, adjective, phrases, etc.) and then my nouns are broken down a little further (objects, concepts, actions/occurences, etc.....)

I know Anki has a vast number of ways one can create their decks etc... Do you make multiple decks, or do you lump everything into one deck?

I'm at the level where I think maybe I'll get the most out of just throwing everything directly into one deck, but I don't want to screw myself over later if the deck gets too big.

I've been thinking about this lately. I don't mean the moment you passed an exam or finished a textbook. I mean the moment when it suddenly felt real.

Maybe you caught yourself thinking in your target language (TL), had an effortless conversation, laughed at a joke without translating it first, or realized you'd just spent several minutes speaking without overthinking every word.

I'd love to hear your story. What was the moment that made you think, "Wow... I actually speak this language."

I've been doing weekly lessons with a tutor for a while and every lesson generates a Google Doc full of new vocab, corrections, and grammar notes. I've realized I almost never go back to them — by lesson 30 it's a graveyard of docs I've looked at maybe twice.

Curious what other people's systems look like: Do you review old lesson notes, mine are often more of a scratchpad of random vocab and some grammar and answers so questions I have. Turn them into Anki cards or something else? Or do they mostly just pile up? And honestly, do you feel like you retain what you cover in lessons, or does stuff from a month ago quietly disappear?

(TL)

As a learner of Korean, I'd say one of the most interesting websites is DCinside. Where it's similar to Reddit.

Which, well... let's just say there's quite a deep amount of lore.

Alongside the community is known for having a 4chan-like user base, and this website acts almost like the capital for the Korean internet and culture: memes, politics, new slang, humor, etc.

Most Koreans use/lurk on the website despite most people also frowning on users of the site, just like Reddit.

https://reddit.com/link/1uoangm/video/kpe5ovupmgbh1/player

Hi everyone,

Two major goals of this tool:

1. Users can EASILY capture any language pieces without being interrupted.
2. The goal is to build the best system to get the surrounding context of pieces using AI, and use AI to smoothly get notes of the pieces rather than writing them by hand.

As you can see in the demo video, I can easily store any pieces that I’m not sure of by selecting them and pressing a shortcut. You don’t need to look them up, take notes immediately, or get stuck on them, which would distract you from your reading flow. Until you’re finally free, you can open this workspace and start to look up the pieces’ exact meaning and take notes on them. (I think AI will get these things done automatically)

It doesn’t really focus on pure language learning; instead, the main goal of the tool is to help people who don’t want to be interrupted by translating, note-taking, and that kind of grammar thing. Therefore, it might be more suitable for intermediate learners who have learned the language for a while but prefer a seamless flow.

- How do you think of this tool? Do you think it will help you learn the language better and more smoothly?

- Or do you think other tools have already solved these problems? (If so, I hope you can tell me which tools).

- I’m not a language learning specialist. If you think the tool is just trash, please tell me your reasons.

I won't post the MVP project link directly, but if anyone wants it, I'll send it over.