• Snowclone@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Everyone I talk to says watch TV shows in the language, you get better at hearing and understanding more fluently, for my dad English was his second language and he gave me a lot of tips about getting fluent with a language. One learn all the swear words, avoid accidently saying them, and know when people are attacking you, let go of translating, gato isn’t cat, gato is gato. Don’t translate, that’s a skill in and of itself that’s very challenging to aquire. His brothers made fun of him for making faces on sounds, particularly sounds not found in his native language, don’t avoid that, sink IN to sounds outside your language roll those rr’s until you sound like your purring, hit those gutteral sounds hard, and soften those native sounds that don’t belong. LET GO of feeling embarrassed, be a goof, say things you don’t understand, make people laugh, you can’t be precious about it. Dork it up! My dad still had an accent, but he was one of two out of his four siblings that had complete fluency.