Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?

I've seen first-hand how hard it can be for people to learn a language with a completely different alphabet. Try and learn the spoken language to at least a conversational level, until you attempt to learn the written form.

If I could give 3 tips, I would suggest:

1. If it's an option, move to a country that speaks the language as a first language, and if you can limit the amount of English contact you have 2. Focus on grammar as well as vocabulary 3. Over-expose yourself to the language… watch Arabic tv, listen to Arabic radio and music …etc.

It is also not necessary. You may be surprised to find that we in Europe also learn languages in a class (granted often taken for years, not semesters)[1]. This will certainly be sufficient for someone to get to a point where they can "hold their own". Interest in the language in form of self-study further enhances this, even if nothing compares to immersion.

As for studying without the luxury of immersion, vocabulary is the most important thing. You can make yourself understood with nouns and unconjugated verbs alone. Spice it up with a little basic grammar, and then start listening and reading. TV, movies, books, magazines, dictionary at hand.

[1] Europeans who speak English and German or Swedish do gain reading comprehension in a free bonus language: Dutch.

From what I know, Arabic is about as far from English as Mandarin, so let me put in plainly:

If you want to become fluent, expect to put in about a decade of work. This is not an easy language like French or Spanish which you'd be able to pick up by studying at home. You need to go live in an Arabic-speaking country. Ideally, find a native girlfriend / boyfriend there. When memorizing vocab, it's more efficient (for me, at least) to memorize for a day or two, then forget, then relearn a few more times than to try to keep a new word in my mind for a long time span. Forgetting and then relearning just seems to be the trick to shoring up long-term memory. I find I need to learn a new word an average of 4 or 5 times before it really sticks.

I started learning japanese in college, there were 4 lessons per week, I was doing well with the grammar but spoken part was kind of stuttering rather than fluent speaking. So after 2 years of study one day my japanese instructor asked me a favor: She wanted me to help her friend's daughter study english. The girl spoke very little English. I was expected to teach that girl English in Japanese. At first I couldn't decide if she was playing a joke on me to see my reaction. When I realised she was serious, I told her that was practically impossible as I was not fluent in japanese and it might have been a problem. She just said "I believe in you, you'll do well". I said "What the hell let's give it a try, at most I'll fail miserably and have a story to tell how I pissed off an entire japanese family".

So, for 4 hours a week, I started studying with this girl, aged 12, with only a small english-japanese dictionary in my hand. She also had a similar dictionary, but it was digital and able to convert between kanji-hiragana-katakana and English. Probably it was from the future and could read also read our thoughts. Anyways vocabulary wasn't a problem but communication was. I was speaking slowly when I tried to explain basic English grammar. But day by day, my speaking got more fluent and after about 3 months or so, I was able to read a basic english text and translate it into japanese simultaneously, sentence by sentence. I guess the lesson here is sticking with the practice on an ongoing basis. I want to stress that 9 months of study with that girl advanced my japanese much further than the previous 2 year study as I was actively speaking most of the time.