First off, I'll start by saying that this is a summary of all that I've done so far and what I'll
add a little summary at the end to make it easier to read this all!
So I've been using Mondly for the longest time with little success, its great at teaching the odd word
here and there but it never actually teaches the use cases for all of the stupid little rules with the
words. I found that its hard to learn all the ways in which you need to learn what variation of what
word.
This is where I got stuck. It was my new years resolution to learn latvian and for the first
what, 7 months of the year? I was failing at my goal and struggling to find motivation.
Then this wonderful video came along, (I'll see if I remeber to look for and find it.) and it
basically said that to learn a language fluently, you need to consume 500+ hours of the language
before even speaking it. Like a child would, and so you need native speakers talking about basic ideas.
This was massive.
And so I decided to set out with the ambitious
goal of watching Latvian news constantly. For obvious reasons this was not effective. The news is
boring and has complex words and it was all just a bit too confusing. I had learnt mandarin easier than
I was learning Latvian.
Then it hit me. Childrens TV shows. Its simple language and the reapition of words was perfect. Plus
THE KIDS LITERALLY COUNT ONE BY ONE... So hence forth a rapid consumption of Bings Latviski ensued.
The best way I've found is to stop actively learning all the words. Let your brain work for
the words, only if a word keeps coming up and you CAN'T figure out the meaning is when you use Deepl
or google translate.
ALSO KEEP IN MIND WORDS ARE SUBJECTIVE
If it dosen't make sense think
broader, or add more context. Ideally you want to keep solidifying this knowledge with lots more
repetitions, watch an episode and if it comes back on in like 2-3 episodes its fine, you should have
learnt a couple new words, let your brain rework over those connections!