How To Learn a Language in a Fun Way

Written on December 28th, 2023 by Roman Freeman

English is not my native language and I learned it mostly by myself, later applying the same tricks for learning German. Now I’m trying my luck with Japanese :) I grew up bilingual, speaking Ukrainian and Russian which sure helped a bit, but I think the most important thing is your curiosity and openness for new things.

Here I’m gonna share some “tricks” I’m using to learn languages and, most importantly, how to have fun learning a language.

You can also watch this entertaining video I made on the topic instead of reading this page.

How to make language learning fun

Immerse yourself in the language

You might’ve heard the advice to switch your phone to the language you’re learning. It’s a good start, but don’t think it alone will help you.

When I was actively learning English, I tried to surround myself with it everywhere: from changing the language settings on my phone and computer, to stopping watching movies and series in any other languages than English. I used to watch a YouTube video before going to work, read a book on the way in subway, listen to BBC radio one at work in my headphones, and watch a movie or a sitcom after coming back from work too. All in English. I was surrounding myself with it as much as possible. Luckily for me, as a software developer I had an option to read technical documentation and books in English at work as well. Which I gladly did! I would try to use cooking recipes in English, make all my Google searches in English and even renamed my entire phone book to English.

Of course, you don’t have to go that radical and cut off other languages completely, especially if you want to keep socializing with your friends and family. But if your friends are interested, you can suggest to watch a movie on Netflix together in the language you’re learning.

Your favorite video game probably has a localization in the language you’re learning as well. Books, news websites, radio, podcasts: find everything you’re into translated to the language you’re learning. Or even better: discover a local alternative and get a sense of culture the language gives you access to.

If you’re in a very early stage of your language learning journey, try watching cartoons for little kids. Animated series like Peppa the Pig can work wonders for learning how to construct a simple sentence, as a listening practice and for learning basic vocabulary without actually looking into a vocabulary! They show you the ball on the screen, then discuss what color the ball is, whose ball this is and so on. So you learn not just a single word, but how to use it. This is exactly how kids learn, making it as effortless as possible and hopefully a bit more fun, especially when you “grow out” of shows like Peppa the Pig and get to something more of a substance.

So what’s so fun about it? Let’s look into it in more detail.

Don’t just learn words for vocabulary

Learn them in context. Let me explain.

It would be so much easier, if we could scan the vocabulary and memorize all of it, like a computer. Then learn how grammar works and bam! You speak the language like a native.

Unfortunately, human brains don’t work like that (yet). So while memorizing the most used words could prove to be quite useful, it’s probably not the most fun thing to do.

Instead, what I like to do is to learn bits and expressions native speakers use. You kill two birds with one stone this way. “Kill two birds with one stone”: there you go, a good example :) You avoid the mistake of translating sentences verbatim from your language, which often doesn’t sound natural or makes no sense at all in the language you’re learning.

For example, if I tried to translate the phrase “behind the scenes” word for word from an existing Ukrainian equivalent “за кадром”, it would be something like “behind the frame”. No native speaker would say that. Even worse, you are risking not getting understood!

So you gotta prioritize learn how people actually speak, instead of convoluted sentences you’d be trying to construct from separately learned words. This way you also avoid sounding too formal or outdated like in those 50-year old movies you might enjoy watching.

So where can you can learn how natives speak?

Read! Even if you understand less than 50%

Ok, this one might be not as fun at first, if you really understand less than 50%. But. It will help you progress dramatically!

Pro tip: pick up a book that you already read in your first language, ideally multiple times. Are you a Harry Potter fan? Great opportunity to re-read it again in the language you’re learning! Your advantage in this case is: you already know the context and the big picture, so all you need to do is to look up the words and phrases you don’t know yet. And by reading, your brain will automatically reinforce the spelling and grammar of everything you already learned so far.

If you don’t have a favorite book, pick up a book for kids, ideally with a lot of illustrations. This way, you get visual presentation of what you’re reading about and don’t have to grab for a translation app all that often.

You can also read blogs, like the one you’re reading now, hey! Or a lot of other things out there on the Internet. Hang out on the forums or check if there is anything interesting going on reddit or facebook groups of your interest.

Get used to hearing the language

Reading is good for learning new words and phrases, keeping some structure in your head and remembering how words are spelled. But when you eventually will end up in a situation when you need to speak to a person, you need to be able to understand what they are saying. And in every language there is a variety of accents and dialects. So where do you start?

I’d suggest having music with lyrics, podcasts and talk shows always playing in background whenever you’re cooking or busy doing something where you can multitask. This gives you a good foundation almost on auto-pilot. At first you will just hear and recognize some familiar words here and there, and that’s already great! The same word or phrase can be spoken in a myriad of ways, so it’s already good just for training comprehension. But soon you’ll start catching how these words form sentences and your brain will map it onto all the things you’ve read, seen and heard so far, completing the picture.

You can look up YouTube channels dedicated specifically to the language you’re learning, especially those explaining pronunciation peculiarities. Or look up people doing street interviews, some of them have subtitles. Find the one you enjoy the most and check it regularly.

But my favorite way by far is watching sitcoms and movies. You can watch with subtitles at first. I prefer watching with subtitles in the language you’re trying to learn, not your language: this way you can see how the new words are spelled and maybe guess the meaning from the context in some cases. Watch a familiar sitcom and by the end of it you’ll have improved dramatically. Don’t be shy to rewatch it again and see if you need subtitles this time around :)

I remember in the beginning of my journey to learn English, I started watching the British show Misfits… Oh boy, this was not so fun in the beginning! I would start watching it without subtitles. The very first 2 sentences would already leave me completely puzzled, so I’d have to rewind 5 times to see if I can understand what they are saying. After understanding maybe half of it, I still had to turn on the subtitles and read the words I could not understand, to finally look them up on my phone. But by the end of the season one, oh joy, I was rewinding less and less and one 45 minute episode actually took me 45 minutes to watch, instead of 3 times as much in the beginning!

Speak!

Speaking can be the scariest for some, but you can’t get away without it (in most cases).

Use every opportunity to practice. When you hear a new word in the series you’re watching or the podcast you’re listening to, repeat it! Parrot it back and don’t be ashamed of it :) If you’re sitting down properly and dedicating time to learn the language with an app or other resources, try recording yourself. Your voice is going to sound horrible, that’s what everyone thinks of their voice. But with time you won’t notice it anymore. Most importantly, you can compare how you sound to the source and improve dramatically with every iteration.

I like to use “listen” function of google translate, where you type in the word and hit “listen” to hear what it sounds like. It might be not 100% accurate in some cases, but it’s a good start. You can also practice pronunciation with the same app by hitting that microphone icon and dictating to the app. See if it can recognize your pronunciation.

Of course, the best practice is with a native speaker and I will give you some ideas on how to find them below. But to get there you might wanna practice some more first.

And if you don’t have native speakers around to practice with in person, you can do it with someone who is also learning or interested in the same language as you, that’s better than nothing and can still be fun.

Don’t be shy to try tongue twisters

You can do it with your friends: make it a challenge or play it as a dare game. For example if you don’t manage to say a tongue twister from the first try in a certain time limit, you have to do something embarrassing your friends come up with.

Or you can do it by yourself and try it in public even, why not. So many ways to do it, you pick the difficulty :) I went on a hike one time all by myself and that’s pretty much what I did the entire time to entertain myself while walking. I did get a few weird looks, but got more kind smiles coming my way and luckily it wasn’t that many people on the way to start with. You can watch me embarrassing myself here trying my best at German and English tongue twisters. Or check out the entire hike here, where except tongue twisters I entertained myself discovering abandoned German bunkers on the way.

Find a pen pal

Here’s a fun way to learn a language: find someone online to talk to! Humans are social creatures and they crave communication. While you might not care about mundane conversations of how someone’s day went, especially if you see them every day, if it’s someone in a distant country, the same conversation becomes more interesting all of a sudden. You can learn about their lifestyle, traditions, customs and so on and this makes it more interesting.

You can meet people on chat roulette, social networks and even dating apps and websites of your preference, why not.

This works for two reasons: it keeps your motivation up and gives you more natural and live experience with the language.

I started doing it as a teenager via chat apps that probably don’t even exist anymore, and it was great for early practice. Especially when I didn’t have proper internet connection, so could not afford to stream videos and such. Text and voice communication worked wonders for me.

Of course, nowadays Internet is much more widely available so you can chat while playing video games, try those video chats with random strangers or really find someone you can connect with on the opposite side of the planet. Wouldn’t be great if you get to visit them one day?

Get advantage of flash cards and apps

Ok, this might be the least fun part of all, but is kind of important. You gotta learn grammar somehow after all.

Unlike classic language lessons and schools, I would suggest not to concentrate too much on grammar. You do need the basics though, so my way of doing it is getting acquainted with the basic sentence structure, what is commonly used for the present, past and future. Then practice listening and improve vocabulary and start speaking, however bad it might be at first. And once you get to the level of understanding basic sentences, then review the grammar lessons again, just to organize it in your head. Because learning abstract grammar rules head first worked really slow and hard for me. After I have already seen and heard enough of the language and then reviewed the grammar, I’d have that “aha moment” much faster, because I’d know what is being talked about.

Also, when I encounter a new way of a structuring a sentence, when reading a book for example, I’d break it down and review the grammar for that specific case.

There are tons of apps out there and for every language some might be better than others, so you’ll have to do some research. But I found that when starting from zero, Duolingo is really great. And if you’re using it in your browser, you won’t have ads if you’re using an adblock.

My secret trick

I already talked about the hearing practice. Which is good and you can do it in many ways. But recently, I remembered one trick which beats all the previous advice.

If you ever played GTA computer games, you know there are talking shows on the in-game radio. I wanted to understand what they talk about there, so I downloaded the file for the “Chatterbox FM” radio station for GTA 3. Back in those days, you could just find it in the game files, luckily for me, ha! Today, you can just look it up on YouTube. So what I did was, I downloaded the file on my phone and listened to it every day on the way to work. I would get very little at first, but when I did understand a joke, it would make me very excited. The best part? If I didn’t get something, I could look up the transcript later, read, translate it or even look up the cultural references. So next time when I would be listening to the same “show” on my way to work, I would understand more. I did this for weeks until I could hear clearly and understand 100% of what is being said.

Now, I’m not saying download the Chatterbox FM, although you could I guess. I’m suggesting for you to find something you are interested to understand and do the same. The motivation part is important here.

And finally, if you have thoughts on learning a language, go for it! Don’t wait for the next year, Monday, tomorrow or anyone’s permission. You can start here and now. In times we live in, it’s never been easier.

Is it an “exotic” language? Or everyone seems to learn Spanish but you want to learn Portuguese? Great! Who cares what other people think? It’s about you, after all. It’s also okay not to do it in the most efficient way or not to use “the best” resources or a paid course. It’s also okay if you eventually give up or your priorities change, at least you will have tried and had fun doing it.

Enjoy the ride and check my channel to visualize how I practice English and other languages :) I hope this little page was helpful ✌️