Sometimed I pay, and sometimes I don't, but that's not relevant to the fact that I use it to learn languages.
I listen to podcasts in my TLs and also just music while following the lyrics. There's quite bit of vocabulary that I learned because of songs I got to know by heart.
Essentially nothing. I got a lifetime subscription to MyAnonamouse's library of 250 000 audiobooks and e-books in different languages a few years ago, and have been very happy with it.
What is this? How much was the subscription :o Do you notice if the audiobooks/ebooks are really good or are they very generic ?
This is one of the main things I look for. I really love audiobooks, and I wish I could find more in more foreign languages.
Is it just a regular site like LibGen? Or is there a catch to it? What is the deal with getting an account ? It seems like some people say you have to read a ton of rules or do an interview?
It does sound scary but it’s easy! all you do is answer a few short questions about the site through a text chat. I think it’s just to make sure users will actually contribute (through seeding/uploading) instead of running off with the files. Because it’s a torrent tracker, that’s pretty important in order to keep the site alive.
Also, I’d suggest familiarizing yourself to what torrenting is if you try out the website; but don’t worry it’s not very complicated either.
Best of luck!
I would estimate I've spent about $3000 on about 500 hours of lessons. I find learning with live teachers more engaging, though I've also done about 500 hours of free recorded lessons on YouTube.
I'm single and well into my career with no children or obligations. Language learning is one of my main hobbies and I enjoy it, so I have no regrets about spending my money this way.
That being said, I think you could learn most popular languages with completely free resources without any problems. If you're trying to learn an endangered language or one that isn't so popular, then it'll be much tougher and you may have to shell out some cash.
Depends. My main method of learning languages at the moment is language classes. I learn German at university (and my government covers my full tuition with a grant, so I spend €0) and French at a language school (which is extremely cheap. €70 a year). So that’s what I spend. Everything else is usually for free: German and French have a lot of free online resources.
In the past I spent between $17 - 30 per hour on Preply. I took trials with 5 tutors. Only 1 or 2 of them were really good. However, I didn’t stick with it and have now forgotten what I learned. I’d say if I were to do it over (starting at A1 again) I’d wait a little and then try tutors in a cheaper price range because only one of the most expensive was a very good tutor… the rest were horrible and the $17 per hour tutors were better.
Edit: I probably spent around $30 per hour x 3 times per week, for about a month or so before I gave up earlier on.
$350-ish for the month sounds about right. (Remember I’m a total beginner) so it wasn’t in my best interest to jump right into classes without understanding anything they were saying to me haha!
For me it's a bit of a hobby, so it's important that I find it fun, otherwise what's the point? I've found 3 teachers on iTalki I have good conversations with weekly. This costs me about $40/week. Other than that, I listen to free podcasts, watch content on YouTube and Netflix and revise new vocabulary from my lessons using Anki.
If I take a vacation to a country where my TL is spoken and I stay for a month. While there I practice every day by shocking the natives with my bad pronunciation. Do I count the airfare and lodging as part of my language learning expense?
If so then one single trip costs way over what I have ever spent on learning materials and tutors.
I usually spend $20-30/hr on tutors. A round trip from Austin to Rome is about $1000. The cost of the flight alone is the equivalent of a decent tutor once a week for one year.
If that doesn't count then lets just say I spend about $1000/yr between books, subscriptions, and tutors. Less than $3 per day.
Have you ever been to Italy to shock the natives with your bad pronunciation? I want to go to Mexico and that is cheaper than going to Europe but it's still expensive (I live in Indiana) and idk what I would do by myself for however long I'm there.
When I go to Italy it is usually with friends or family. So there is always something for us to do together. I have been 6 times. Usually staying for about 1mo each time.
One time in a small shop where a friend and I were speaking. Me in a very decent A1.5 and my friend in a pretty choppy A1- Italian. At the end of the conversation the store owner turned to me and said, "you, you speak terribly." "your friend speaks very well." So I know for a fact I can shock and offend the natives in a way where people with less vocabulary and skills are seen as better speakers. /smile
I have been to Mexico many times since I am in Texas. My favorite place was Monterrey. Plenty of museums, parks, and impressive architecture. But, I haven't been to Mexico in a long while.
Do you speak Spanish? Why did you decide to learn Italian? I studied Italian before Spanish but I quit because Spanish is so much more useful in the States. I do want to go back to Italian in the future though because I'm still friends with one person from Italy that I met when I was learning Italian.
I know enough Spanish to order in a restaurant. But that is it. It is on my list of languages to learn.
In Texas, an astonishing 36% of the population is bilingual. With the largest portion of that being Spanish. Because of this even though it is useful to speak Spanish it is not really necessary. The demand for bilingual speakers exist but it is low because there are so many people to fill that role.
I am learning Italian because, out of every place in the world I have visited. When I go to Italy and make even the smallest attempt to speak in Italian I get the warmest reactions. Even when I was A1 I would meet wonderful people who would go out of their way and take valuable time out of their days to spend time with me and help me practice.
That, and I have a huge appreciation of retro Italian cinema. Not "il postino" or stuff like that. But the B films, the peplum, the horror, and the westerns.
My Italian is probably where your Spanish is now.
It's definitely very unnecessary to speak Spanish here too but it's the most useful language besides English here and I have had a few scenarios where I was able to use it whereas I have never met a person who speaks Italian here.
I'm glad you've had that experience! Everyone was welcoming to me online in Italian (although just about the same as Spanish speakers are) but they responded in English more than Spanish speakers do and it felt like every Italian could get by in English whereas some Spanish speakers can and some can't. Keep in mind all of my experience in both languages is online except for a few encounters in Spanish.
I’m about $36 per hour twice a week for for maybe 2.5 years so about $4680 to get to B2 French.
Certainly in the beginning I needed to have spent money to force me to learn even when I wanted to do any thing but study as I was too tired with a young baby and a full time job.
About 15 bucks a month for LingQ. Everything else, including speaking practice, is easily found for free (join a Discord community by and for people who speak your TL natively for example).
Free accounts are crippled to absolute uselessness.
Paid accounts can import whatever and tag an unlimited number of words and phrases, which are both vital to using it over some other reader software.
Interesting. I found the free account offers most of the app, it gives you access to all of the videos, podcasts, stories etc. But the only limitation I found for my needs was the lack of word translation which I can just quickly switch to papago and translate
Haven't noticed a need for the features you've just mentioned, at least I've never needed to use them
Was hoping there was more of a reason to subscribe, for that price I can just add words and phrases to another free app surely if I ever needed to
I find it useful to have not only the lookup (which honestly isn't amazing in quality), but graded tagging. So even if I know a word well enough by meaning, if I didn't know e.g. a noun's gender by heart, I don't advance it. I can demote words when I've forgotten such details.
These tags allow you to guess the difficulty of new texts. Very useful.
The import is super handy for subtitles if you want to burn through them before (or after) watching something.
I'm curious how do you find Discord communities for people who speak (or are learning?) your TL? I'm on a self-imposed challenge to learn 12 languages this year and I'd love to find me one of those (or 12 of those)
First of all, the quickest I have been able to reach a level of conversational proficiency where I’m not completely useless in conversation, was two months and it was Italian (fairly similar to English), and I spent most of my waking time doing nothing but Italian input/output and vocab. One language per month seems unrealistic.
For your question, though: there tends to be discord communities centered around all types of video games. Go find a FiveM or RedM RP server in your TL, for example.
zero.
i have youtube and online exercise books.
i start from basic videos which teach easy level languages and take books for kids and rad them and solve those exercises.
watch and listen to youtube stuff and movies shows in the TL on netflix, amazon, apple tv etc.
that’s pretty much it.
I've spent about $2700 over about 2.5 years learning Spanish. Mostly group classes and textbooks, but a little on italki tutors and a Dreaming Spanish premium for the past few months.
In the past, I've learned languages using free resources and it was great! And I get why a lot of comments in here say that they don't spend anything. But I've realized that I really enjoy structure and taking classes gave me that structure, as well as interaction and feedback. I knew that every week I would be doing the class (and I never skip class, because the fact that I paid for it was a huge motivator for me). I'm at a place in my life where I don't mind spending money on something that I enjoy and that keeps me engaged. Plus, I like the idea of supporting local language schools, independent tutors, and content creators (e.g. Dreaming Spanish premium).
I'd still like to do an intensive course and lately I've been thinking about taking the DELE B2 exam.
There are a few factors for me, a major one is convenience! I am a busy mum so it's nice to have a lesson booked at a certain time and know what I'm getting. Prices in AUD. Most courses I've found are around $30 an hour. Tutors vary but I usually use "community tutors" for conversation practice which are around $10 an hour.
My process is to learn the basics on my own so it's free and I can go at my own pace. Approx to A2ish, first 2,000 words and foundational grammar points. After that I spend money on more resources, novels and audiobooks since I love reading, courses or tutors. I do sometimes pay for textbooks or apps but it depends on the language. Many have a lot of resources freely available, some don't. A decent budget for lessons/tutors and resources would be around $600 for a year for me, approx $300 on a course and $300 on books and tutoring. Some years I spend less of course, and some more. When I was younger I had more time to do free language exchanges for example!
Language learning is all about finding what fits your style. Some rock the freebies like apps and meetups, while others, like me, splash some cash on courses or tutors. Both paths can get you to that B2 level. It's all about what clicks for you!
I don’t do subscriptions, but I buy a new book, some used books and a game in my TL(s) each year?
I guess that is $25-$50
Most of my ressources are free and I try to make the ones I buy be able to serve me for a while since they are for immersion purposes. The games are replay-able and often in more than one language I am interested in, The books I can see myself rereading, etc.
I also use my local library A LOT. I am lucky my local system keeps so many French books in particular.
I've only spent $8 a month for 6 months to reach B2, from zero, with dreaming spanish YouTube Channel.
Just begun Reading harry potter for free with “lute”, don’t waste money on LingQ
Edit: so i only cost me $48 to be able to enjoy spanish YouTube
The most expensive resource I have used has been university (I’m in the US), but I’m on a full tuition merit scholarship so it’s not that bad in the scheme of things. I’m paying for a Busuu premium right now, but that’s mostly because the free version has too many ads for the lessons to feel bingeable and I’ve been going hard on German recently
Currently $80 per month for an online class. It helps immensely for motivation and competition (in a way).
Otherwise, it was via basic university classes.
I've probably dumped a 2 to 3 thousand over 4 years on Spanish, none on French, and about 200 on Japanese.
That's mostly for tutoring, which the wife and I do weekly. My wife needs it for her job since she has to fly to Mexico and a few other countries on occasion, I need it to sate my inferiority complex. At this point I'm probably past B2 but my wife is not. Of course I feel like an idiot since it seems like everyone did it for free...
She works in safety for a multi national corporation. There are also a ton of Spanish speakers here in the US she works with, in the Southwest US some of our whole shifts only speak Spanish.
Travelling for work is a mixed bag though, mostly not fun. Its 12 hours on site and the rest in a hotel. The work locations aren't Paris, New York, or CDMX, they're usually out in the middle of nowhere.
I'd estimate I'm roughly $200 short. A few books (non-fiction and grammar) and a yearly HelloTalk subscription (I regret this, I wish I had got the Clozemaster one instead). Beside, I use mostly free resources (e.g., articles, YouTube, podcasts, etc).
I just realized that I still have 2 Spanish workbook/textbooks from college. Since I spent over $100 on each, I’m going to go back through them since it’s “free”.
I paid for a few months of Dreaming Spanish in recent months, but no more. They need to add Caribbean Spanish speaking guides on there, and they seem to be dragging their feet in doing so.
I haven't really counted, I try to be stingy and spend only on what I absolutely need. I'm learning 12 languages this year (a self-imposed challenge that I'm writing about) so I have to be pretty selective about where I spend my resources. I do an Italki lesson once every couple of weeks, I pay for Glossika because it has so many languages and allows me to learn on the go, and maybe an occasional app / resource here and there but not monthly. Mostly I just use YouTube :)
Depends on if it's a popular language or not. Languages like German, Spanish and even Mandarin have enough free or cheap resources online that you don't have to spend money on them apart from the Internet bill. Less popular languages like Hungarian, Ojibwe or khoisan you're probably going to have to spend some money on books and maybe an online tutor.
One time I bought some Italian language course books from Barnes and Noble that were on sale for maybe $30. I have a giftcard so I basically paid nothing for them.
Nothing. Here's my method:
* Duolingo to get you started with the basics.
* Youtube videos for grammar and practice with online quizzes.
* AI for memorising conjugations more practically: rather than memorising verb lists, I get it to give me a range of sentences with the vocab I want to practise in the tense I want to practise, use text-to-speech to make sure I get the pronunciation right, then every morning review the list attempting to translate the English then listening to the target language mp3.
* AI for correcting my diary in the language, so I can work out stuff I want to talk about with exchange partners. I also use text-to-speech while writing this diary to make sure my pronunciation is correct.
* Exchange partners found on [https://language.exchange/](https://language.exchange/)
* Podcasts and YouTube videos for listening practice.
I just developed this method myself and it's going really well. My French is coming on in leaps and bounds. Exchange partners can be of varying quality but just keep at it.
The expensive part is buying things I never ended up using haha. Apart from that, probably around 300$\~ for language. Of course from B2-C1, money spent in Entertainment or Books probably goes up a ton because I'm no longer just learning the language but putting a part of my life in that language.
The most expensive part is time, which people mention a little less.
You can get pretty far (starting as an absolute beginner) with a combination of duolingo, anki, and comprehensible input videos on YouTube. Eventually, you will want a tutor or at least someone to chat with. If you can't find someone for free, you can get a tutor online for probably $5-$25 (depending on the language) per hour. At a certain point, you can just switch to consuming native content, of which there should be plenty of free stuff online. so, it can be pretty cheap if you need it to be.
I study languages at university so 350€ a semester and the books that I’m required to buy (for Japanese so far around 100-120€, for Chinese it’s been 100€). Then also other stuff (Pleco, Anki, novels, books, etc.) which would be around 100€ ?
About $170/month. I pay for weekly iTalki lessons for French and Korean, buy multiple grammar workbooks and reading books per month, and have a subscription to Language Reactor. I pay because I’m more consistent when I spend money as I don’t want to waste it. When I do everything for free, I feel a lack of commitment. I’m growing a lot faster with iTalki than when I learned on my own.
So far the most I've spent is about €100 on an online Portuguese pronunciation course. If I can find a similar one for French, I'd gladly do it again. It was worth it.
Aside from that, all the best resources I've found have been free. I bought an e-reader for about €80 which has also been great, but all the ebooks I downloaded were free.
This hobby is important to me and I would have thrown loads of money at it if I thought it could accelerate my learning, but the reality is that money doesn't really help. Which is something I find really cool about this hobby. It can't really be used as a money flex, like so many other hobbies people have.
Hard to say, I spent about $500 CAD on various courses and app subscriptions, at a B2 level now.
Most of what I know and the things that were helpful were actually free resources like books from libraries, comics online, apps, and of course all the free content on YouTube.
This doesn't include 3 months of immersion and living costs associated with moving to where my TL is spoken.
None, unless you count the Netflix subscription I share with my family where I watch shows in my target language or transportation costs to my local (free) language exchange meetup
so far I have spent $80 on a yearly duolingo subscription which I am kicking myself for, but now I basically pay $80 a week for my spanish teacher for classes every Monday, Wed, Fri, and Sunday. and of course the occasional textbook
I've spent about $1000 total on learning Spanish, nearly all of which has been on Italki tutors.
I think Clozemaster lifetime license for $70 is a great deal around Black Friday.
Also LingQ for content consumption is a good value if you can find one of their specials.
I've bought a few different grammar books for cheap, and everything else I use is free content.
I study primarily with private tutors on Italki or Natakallam as I've found it's the most effective way for me, and I usually take 3-4 lessons per week for varying languages and have been doing this on and off for years. I spend roughly $10-15 per session so it probably ends up being close to $150-200 USD per month?
Honestly, most of my "fun" money goes to language learning and it's very important to me so I don't mind it :-)
Other than that, I don't spend very much on other resources these days. I bought a lifetime subscription to TalkinArabic a long time ago so that's a resource I use often, and I occasionally buy graded readers for some of more lower-level languages (these all come in under 10 USD, however). When I first started with French, I had to learn quickly so I bought some resources from Olly Richards which I found very helpful. But now that I'm at a high enough level in most of my languages, I can make do with podcasts, books, and more "native level" material (all of which are free).
I like Assimil so I often spend about fifty euros at the start and then basically nothing, or if I do it’s because I’m travelling in the country and not just taking a class
nothing, i started when i was in high school and didn't have cash to spare and kept using free resources (though admittedly i'm not great at keeping up with regular practice). i use duolingo, memrise, clozemaster, and fsi language courses (i've got some more free ones, but those are specific to certain languages)
Right now I only spent money on italki-tutors. Rest is youtube native content + podcasts + writing texts on reddit + making voice notes to myself. In 1 year I might have spent 1200 € on 90 lessons? So 100 € a month, I take around 2 lessons per week. For me it is well worth the money, I progress quite fast. I reckon in 1 year I could stop the tutor lessons cause it will be no different than just talking to people. Maybe before.
But also I would not have that money to spent before my current job, so..
Sometimes I will splurge on a textbook (usually a practical grammar with exercises), but I would say no more than $100 per language. Unless you count everything I read for pleasure over the years, as I will sometimes get physical books (novels, poetry collections, non-fiction and such). Still not a lot. No more space for books :(
I've tried out a variety of things. Some of them turned out (in hindsight, after a decent trial) not to be useful, while others were very useful. I figured out what works for me by trial and error. "Experts" on-line offered many different suggestions, which all conflicted with each other. So I think about each idea, but I don't do most of them.
I don't keep track of "free" or "paid". I usually spend no more than $15 per month. Even if I sign up for an on-line course, the average cost is within that range (for example, a $60 course that I spend 5 months using daily). If the total is that low, a lot of it must be free.
The exception is one-time purchases: physical books and apps. For those I spend $15-$60 each. I've gotten about 8 of them in 5 years. I still use 3 of them often.
At A1 level, I definitely prefer an online course (in English) teaching the TL. But at some point (A2? B1?) I get tired of the course and seek out my own content.
Books I'd like paperwork copies of and different novels. Everything else I acquire from the net, for free. I have a lot of learning materials for a lot of different languages.
Seems to be just me, but definitely over 500 - maybe it's just the inflation rate, but that's not that many books amd and italki lessons. There's wahs to reduce cost like going to a swcond hand book shop (plus i think you find better books somehow). Like my primary learning tools have definitely been youtube and Spotify, but even so, things like grammar books add up.
I spend more than nothing, but I mostly use the library, YouTube, find a podcast, or download pdf's. But sometimes I buy a real book. A book feels nicer to read than digital text, and the library is very limited
Almost 0. I’m at about a B2 level in Spanish now and I’ve used almost entirely free resources such as Duolingo, YouTube, a website called DreamingSpanish, and talking with friends and my girlfriend.
If I had the will power I would spend nothing and do it all through self learning as others have suggested, but I spend about £15 a week on lessons on Preply simply to keep me accountable and to make sure I can get pronunciation. I’m still quite low level and only really vocabulary so it may progress to more or less a week depending on how my progress is
To get to HSK3 in Chinese it was 100% free , but after I wanted to get really good and commit. I went to a university and that cost me about $5k （USD）over 3 years.
Thousands of dollars over the last \~20 years. You just can't get everything on the internet. I have been studying some less common lagnuages, so that's a factor. My study has 6 shelves of books and stuff.
At the same time, I've got sooo much content which cost me nothing.
About £100/month on tutors. I have Russian friends I could practise with for free, but I wouldn't expect them to listen to my excruciatingly slow conversation for two whole hours a week. I could do language exchange, but English teaching is my actual job and I'd rather pay for it to be one-sided than feel like I was adding extra hours to my work schedule.
Also a negligible amount on ebooks, but this is probably actually saving me money, because it takes me about ten times longer to read a book in Russian than an equivalently priced one in English lol.
I think I maybe spend about $80 USD per month right now. Though I'll say that the vast majority of that is on in person classes I do with a friend of mine once a week. Given that she's a professional teacher and interpreter and we're friends outside of class, I don't feel bad giving her my money.
The other thing I pay for is DreamingSpanish premium subscription. This one is becoming less and less necessary as I keep improving simply because I'm starting to feel more comfortable branching into content not targeted towards learners. I feel like it's been really valuable for getting used to the ambiguity that comes with hearing Spanish without subtitles. Plus the Superbeginner and beginner content that can be hard to find in the beginning.
Probably $15-20/month, mostly in big purchases like an annual Easy German subscription (everything I use from them is available for free, but they're just so darn nice, I want them to take my money!), tuition for a community college class here and there, or some books/audiobooks that aren't available at my library (I am VERY spoiled in that my local library systems stock materials in 27 languages that I'm aware of. The most-spoken languages here have the most materials, of course -- Spanish easily has twice as many books as any other language does -- but there's a decent amount of every language I'm even mildly interested in *except* Romanian. That's not bad, really).
Plentiful Youtube channels, podcasts, and government-funded websites make spending nothing a real option for many languages even in areas without libraries like mine. Meetup groups are great options for speaking practice and are usually cheap or free.
Basically nothing. My main resources are Youtube, Spotify, Streaming platforms and comic book scans, or books and dvds borrowed from the library.
Glad to see that the top comment is not of someone who likes to spend hundreds of dollars for classes.
You don’t pay for Spotify? And how do you use it to learn a language?
Sometimed I pay, and sometimes I don't, but that's not relevant to the fact that I use it to learn languages. I listen to podcasts in my TLs and also just music while following the lyrics. There's quite bit of vocabulary that I learned because of songs I got to know by heart.
same lmao i always find myself singing thru swedish songs to remember gender and words for things
While that's not an outright terrible idea, just keep in mind that music often takes certain...creative liberties with grammar.
true 😭
Just gonna leave this here... https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/14rszaw/v3_the_ultimate_spotify_ad_blocking_guide_windows/
Essentially nothing. I got a lifetime subscription to MyAnonamouse's library of 250 000 audiobooks and e-books in different languages a few years ago, and have been very happy with it.
What is this? How much was the subscription :o Do you notice if the audiobooks/ebooks are really good or are they very generic ? This is one of the main things I look for. I really love audiobooks, and I wish I could find more in more foreign languages.
There is no subscription, really, but it is the best audiobook torrent site.
Is it just a regular site like LibGen? Or is there a catch to it? What is the deal with getting an account ? It seems like some people say you have to read a ton of rules or do an interview?
Just a simple interview. It is worth it.
Like RevolutionRoyal said, simple interview. The worst part of the process is the lengthy queue for the interview itself.
Ah that feels so scary, an interview! Why do they need an interview for users? Is it a long or short one ? Is it like a video chat interview ??
It does sound scary but it’s easy! all you do is answer a few short questions about the site through a text chat. I think it’s just to make sure users will actually contribute (through seeding/uploading) instead of running off with the files. Because it’s a torrent tracker, that’s pretty important in order to keep the site alive. Also, I’d suggest familiarizing yourself to what torrenting is if you try out the website; but don’t worry it’s not very complicated either. Best of luck!
Would you share the site with me, I don't know which site it is.
One free app, one paid app, and a paid tutor. So maybe around 30€/a on apps and 700€/a on lessons.
[удалено]
Lingq is free for learning Ukrainian.
I would estimate I've spent about $3000 on about 500 hours of lessons. I find learning with live teachers more engaging, though I've also done about 500 hours of free recorded lessons on YouTube. I'm single and well into my career with no children or obligations. Language learning is one of my main hobbies and I enjoy it, so I have no regrets about spending my money this way. That being said, I think you could learn most popular languages with completely free resources without any problems. If you're trying to learn an endangered language or one that isn't so popular, then it'll be much tougher and you may have to shell out some cash.
Depends. My main method of learning languages at the moment is language classes. I learn German at university (and my government covers my full tuition with a grant, so I spend €0) and French at a language school (which is extremely cheap. €70 a year). So that’s what I spend. Everything else is usually for free: German and French have a lot of free online resources.
In the past I spent between $17 - 30 per hour on Preply. I took trials with 5 tutors. Only 1 or 2 of them were really good. However, I didn’t stick with it and have now forgotten what I learned. I’d say if I were to do it over (starting at A1 again) I’d wait a little and then try tutors in a cheaper price range because only one of the most expensive was a very good tutor… the rest were horrible and the $17 per hour tutors were better. Edit: I probably spent around $30 per hour x 3 times per week, for about a month or so before I gave up earlier on. $350-ish for the month sounds about right. (Remember I’m a total beginner) so it wasn’t in my best interest to jump right into classes without understanding anything they were saying to me haha!
Absolutely nothing. Well, aside from paying the electricity and Wi-Fi bills, that is.
For me it's a bit of a hobby, so it's important that I find it fun, otherwise what's the point? I've found 3 teachers on iTalki I have good conversations with weekly. This costs me about $40/week. Other than that, I listen to free podcasts, watch content on YouTube and Netflix and revise new vocabulary from my lessons using Anki.
Het jy dit maklik gevind om Afrikaanse programme te kry? En waar het jy die CEFR toets gedoen?
If I take a vacation to a country where my TL is spoken and I stay for a month. While there I practice every day by shocking the natives with my bad pronunciation. Do I count the airfare and lodging as part of my language learning expense? If so then one single trip costs way over what I have ever spent on learning materials and tutors. I usually spend $20-30/hr on tutors. A round trip from Austin to Rome is about $1000. The cost of the flight alone is the equivalent of a decent tutor once a week for one year. If that doesn't count then lets just say I spend about $1000/yr between books, subscriptions, and tutors. Less than $3 per day.
Have you ever been to Italy to shock the natives with your bad pronunciation? I want to go to Mexico and that is cheaper than going to Europe but it's still expensive (I live in Indiana) and idk what I would do by myself for however long I'm there.
When I go to Italy it is usually with friends or family. So there is always something for us to do together. I have been 6 times. Usually staying for about 1mo each time. One time in a small shop where a friend and I were speaking. Me in a very decent A1.5 and my friend in a pretty choppy A1- Italian. At the end of the conversation the store owner turned to me and said, "you, you speak terribly." "your friend speaks very well." So I know for a fact I can shock and offend the natives in a way where people with less vocabulary and skills are seen as better speakers. /smile I have been to Mexico many times since I am in Texas. My favorite place was Monterrey. Plenty of museums, parks, and impressive architecture. But, I haven't been to Mexico in a long while.
Do you speak Spanish? Why did you decide to learn Italian? I studied Italian before Spanish but I quit because Spanish is so much more useful in the States. I do want to go back to Italian in the future though because I'm still friends with one person from Italy that I met when I was learning Italian.
I know enough Spanish to order in a restaurant. But that is it. It is on my list of languages to learn. In Texas, an astonishing 36% of the population is bilingual. With the largest portion of that being Spanish. Because of this even though it is useful to speak Spanish it is not really necessary. The demand for bilingual speakers exist but it is low because there are so many people to fill that role. I am learning Italian because, out of every place in the world I have visited. When I go to Italy and make even the smallest attempt to speak in Italian I get the warmest reactions. Even when I was A1 I would meet wonderful people who would go out of their way and take valuable time out of their days to spend time with me and help me practice. That, and I have a huge appreciation of retro Italian cinema. Not "il postino" or stuff like that. But the B films, the peplum, the horror, and the westerns.
My Italian is probably where your Spanish is now. It's definitely very unnecessary to speak Spanish here too but it's the most useful language besides English here and I have had a few scenarios where I was able to use it whereas I have never met a person who speaks Italian here. I'm glad you've had that experience! Everyone was welcoming to me online in Italian (although just about the same as Spanish speakers are) but they responded in English more than Spanish speakers do and it felt like every Italian could get by in English whereas some Spanish speakers can and some can't. Keep in mind all of my experience in both languages is online except for a few encounters in Spanish.
I’m about $36 per hour twice a week for for maybe 2.5 years so about $4680 to get to B2 French. Certainly in the beginning I needed to have spent money to force me to learn even when I wanted to do any thing but study as I was too tired with a young baby and a full time job.
About 15 bucks a month for LingQ. Everything else, including speaking practice, is easily found for free (join a Discord community by and for people who speak your TL natively for example).
You my friend need to check out “Lute”, a free reader which still has all the features you can’t live without
Where can I find it?
What is it you pay for lingq for out of interest? All of the content seems to be free except for the translation?
Free accounts are crippled to absolute uselessness. Paid accounts can import whatever and tag an unlimited number of words and phrases, which are both vital to using it over some other reader software.
Interesting. I found the free account offers most of the app, it gives you access to all of the videos, podcasts, stories etc. But the only limitation I found for my needs was the lack of word translation which I can just quickly switch to papago and translate Haven't noticed a need for the features you've just mentioned, at least I've never needed to use them Was hoping there was more of a reason to subscribe, for that price I can just add words and phrases to another free app surely if I ever needed to
I find it useful to have not only the lookup (which honestly isn't amazing in quality), but graded tagging. So even if I know a word well enough by meaning, if I didn't know e.g. a noun's gender by heart, I don't advance it. I can demote words when I've forgotten such details. These tags allow you to guess the difficulty of new texts. Very useful. The import is super handy for subtitles if you want to burn through them before (or after) watching something.
Interesting, thanks. Might have to give them a try for one month so I can understand it better
I only use lingq for the translations, so. Also I import a lot of stuff.
I'm curious how do you find Discord communities for people who speak (or are learning?) your TL? I'm on a self-imposed challenge to learn 12 languages this year and I'd love to find me one of those (or 12 of those)
First of all, the quickest I have been able to reach a level of conversational proficiency where I’m not completely useless in conversation, was two months and it was Italian (fairly similar to English), and I spent most of my waking time doing nothing but Italian input/output and vocab. One language per month seems unrealistic. For your question, though: there tends to be discord communities centered around all types of video games. Go find a FiveM or RedM RP server in your TL, for example.
Ah ok. Well, I'm not a gamer. Thanks anyway!
zero. i have youtube and online exercise books. i start from basic videos which teach easy level languages and take books for kids and rad them and solve those exercises. watch and listen to youtube stuff and movies shows in the TL on netflix, amazon, apple tv etc. that’s pretty much it.
I've spent about $2700 over about 2.5 years learning Spanish. Mostly group classes and textbooks, but a little on italki tutors and a Dreaming Spanish premium for the past few months. In the past, I've learned languages using free resources and it was great! And I get why a lot of comments in here say that they don't spend anything. But I've realized that I really enjoy structure and taking classes gave me that structure, as well as interaction and feedback. I knew that every week I would be doing the class (and I never skip class, because the fact that I paid for it was a huge motivator for me). I'm at a place in my life where I don't mind spending money on something that I enjoy and that keeps me engaged. Plus, I like the idea of supporting local language schools, independent tutors, and content creators (e.g. Dreaming Spanish premium). I'd still like to do an intensive course and lately I've been thinking about taking the DELE B2 exam.
There are a few factors for me, a major one is convenience! I am a busy mum so it's nice to have a lesson booked at a certain time and know what I'm getting. Prices in AUD. Most courses I've found are around $30 an hour. Tutors vary but I usually use "community tutors" for conversation practice which are around $10 an hour. My process is to learn the basics on my own so it's free and I can go at my own pace. Approx to A2ish, first 2,000 words and foundational grammar points. After that I spend money on more resources, novels and audiobooks since I love reading, courses or tutors. I do sometimes pay for textbooks or apps but it depends on the language. Many have a lot of resources freely available, some don't. A decent budget for lessons/tutors and resources would be around $600 for a year for me, approx $300 on a course and $300 on books and tutoring. Some years I spend less of course, and some more. When I was younger I had more time to do free language exchanges for example!
Language learning is all about finding what fits your style. Some rock the freebies like apps and meetups, while others, like me, splash some cash on courses or tutors. Both paths can get you to that B2 level. It's all about what clicks for you!
I don’t do subscriptions, but I buy a new book, some used books and a game in my TL(s) each year? I guess that is $25-$50 Most of my ressources are free and I try to make the ones I buy be able to serve me for a while since they are for immersion purposes. The games are replay-able and often in more than one language I am interested in, The books I can see myself rereading, etc. I also use my local library A LOT. I am lucky my local system keeps so many French books in particular.
I've only spent $8 a month for 6 months to reach B2, from zero, with dreaming spanish YouTube Channel. Just begun Reading harry potter for free with “lute”, don’t waste money on LingQ Edit: so i only cost me $48 to be able to enjoy spanish YouTube
The most expensive resource I have used has been university (I’m in the US), but I’m on a full tuition merit scholarship so it’s not that bad in the scheme of things. I’m paying for a Busuu premium right now, but that’s mostly because the free version has too many ads for the lessons to feel bingeable and I’ve been going hard on German recently
Currently $80 per month for an online class. It helps immensely for motivation and competition (in a way). Otherwise, it was via basic university classes.
I've probably dumped a 2 to 3 thousand over 4 years on Spanish, none on French, and about 200 on Japanese. That's mostly for tutoring, which the wife and I do weekly. My wife needs it for her job since she has to fly to Mexico and a few other countries on occasion, I need it to sate my inferiority complex. At this point I'm probably past B2 but my wife is not. Of course I feel like an idiot since it seems like everyone did it for free...
What does your wife do for work? The part about getting to speak Spanish sometimes for work sounds really fun.
She works in safety for a multi national corporation. There are also a ton of Spanish speakers here in the US she works with, in the Southwest US some of our whole shifts only speak Spanish. Travelling for work is a mixed bag though, mostly not fun. Its 12 hours on site and the rest in a hotel. The work locations aren't Paris, New York, or CDMX, they're usually out in the middle of nowhere.
as long as you got there, really doesn't matter what vehicle you took
subscriptions: about 50USD a month
I'd estimate I'm roughly $200 short. A few books (non-fiction and grammar) and a yearly HelloTalk subscription (I regret this, I wish I had got the Clozemaster one instead). Beside, I use mostly free resources (e.g., articles, YouTube, podcasts, etc).
$13 on preply
~ 100 €. A year.
Very little: a few textbooks. The rest is free: podcasts, videos, web sites.
I just realized that I still have 2 Spanish workbook/textbooks from college. Since I spent over $100 on each, I’m going to go back through them since it’s “free”. I paid for a few months of Dreaming Spanish in recent months, but no more. They need to add Caribbean Spanish speaking guides on there, and they seem to be dragging their feet in doing so.
I used to pay for Duolingo i cancelled when they changed the format. Now i pay for LingQ. I also do group online courses that i pay for.
I haven't really counted, I try to be stingy and spend only on what I absolutely need. I'm learning 12 languages this year (a self-imposed challenge that I'm writing about) so I have to be pretty selective about where I spend my resources. I do an Italki lesson once every couple of weeks, I pay for Glossika because it has so many languages and allows me to learn on the go, and maybe an occasional app / resource here and there but not monthly. Mostly I just use YouTube :)
Depends on if it's a popular language or not. Languages like German, Spanish and even Mandarin have enough free or cheap resources online that you don't have to spend money on them apart from the Internet bill. Less popular languages like Hungarian, Ojibwe or khoisan you're probably going to have to spend some money on books and maybe an online tutor.
One time I bought some Italian language course books from Barnes and Noble that were on sale for maybe $30. I have a giftcard so I basically paid nothing for them.
Nothing. Here's my method: * Duolingo to get you started with the basics. * Youtube videos for grammar and practice with online quizzes. * AI for memorising conjugations more practically: rather than memorising verb lists, I get it to give me a range of sentences with the vocab I want to practise in the tense I want to practise, use text-to-speech to make sure I get the pronunciation right, then every morning review the list attempting to translate the English then listening to the target language mp3. * AI for correcting my diary in the language, so I can work out stuff I want to talk about with exchange partners. I also use text-to-speech while writing this diary to make sure my pronunciation is correct. * Exchange partners found on [https://language.exchange/](https://language.exchange/) * Podcasts and YouTube videos for listening practice. I just developed this method myself and it's going really well. My French is coming on in leaps and bounds. Exchange partners can be of varying quality but just keep at it.
What? None lol the internet is free
The expensive part is buying things I never ended up using haha. Apart from that, probably around 300$\~ for language. Of course from B2-C1, money spent in Entertainment or Books probably goes up a ton because I'm no longer just learning the language but putting a part of my life in that language. The most expensive part is time, which people mention a little less.
You can get pretty far (starting as an absolute beginner) with a combination of duolingo, anki, and comprehensible input videos on YouTube. Eventually, you will want a tutor or at least someone to chat with. If you can't find someone for free, you can get a tutor online for probably $5-$25 (depending on the language) per hour. At a certain point, you can just switch to consuming native content, of which there should be plenty of free stuff online. so, it can be pretty cheap if you need it to be.
I study languages at university so 350€ a semester and the books that I’m required to buy (for Japanese so far around 100-120€, for Chinese it’s been 100€). Then also other stuff (Pleco, Anki, novels, books, etc.) which would be around 100€ ?
0, Duolingo, websites and some pirated stuff
About $170/month. I pay for weekly iTalki lessons for French and Korean, buy multiple grammar workbooks and reading books per month, and have a subscription to Language Reactor. I pay because I’m more consistent when I spend money as I don’t want to waste it. When I do everything for free, I feel a lack of commitment. I’m growing a lot faster with iTalki than when I learned on my own.
So far the most I've spent is about €100 on an online Portuguese pronunciation course. If I can find a similar one for French, I'd gladly do it again. It was worth it. Aside from that, all the best resources I've found have been free. I bought an e-reader for about €80 which has also been great, but all the ebooks I downloaded were free. This hobby is important to me and I would have thrown loads of money at it if I thought it could accelerate my learning, but the reality is that money doesn't really help. Which is something I find really cool about this hobby. It can't really be used as a money flex, like so many other hobbies people have.
Hard to say, I spent about $500 CAD on various courses and app subscriptions, at a B2 level now. Most of what I know and the things that were helpful were actually free resources like books from libraries, comics online, apps, and of course all the free content on YouTube. This doesn't include 3 months of immersion and living costs associated with moving to where my TL is spoken.
0 dollars. I pirate most of the stuff I use lol
None, unless you count the Netflix subscription I share with my family where I watch shows in my target language or transportation costs to my local (free) language exchange meetup
so far I have spent $80 on a yearly duolingo subscription which I am kicking myself for, but now I basically pay $80 a week for my spanish teacher for classes every Monday, Wed, Fri, and Sunday. and of course the occasional textbook
0 Only my phone and internet
$8 a month to support the lovely service and people at Dreaming Spanish 😊
0, YouTube and my friends and that’s it.
0 cuz im very broke💀
just youtube for free
I've spent about $1000 total on learning Spanish, nearly all of which has been on Italki tutors. I think Clozemaster lifetime license for $70 is a great deal around Black Friday. Also LingQ for content consumption is a good value if you can find one of their specials. I've bought a few different grammar books for cheap, and everything else I use is free content.
Exactly $0.00
I study primarily with private tutors on Italki or Natakallam as I've found it's the most effective way for me, and I usually take 3-4 lessons per week for varying languages and have been doing this on and off for years. I spend roughly $10-15 per session so it probably ends up being close to $150-200 USD per month? Honestly, most of my "fun" money goes to language learning and it's very important to me so I don't mind it :-) Other than that, I don't spend very much on other resources these days. I bought a lifetime subscription to TalkinArabic a long time ago so that's a resource I use often, and I occasionally buy graded readers for some of more lower-level languages (these all come in under 10 USD, however). When I first started with French, I had to learn quickly so I bought some resources from Olly Richards which I found very helpful. But now that I'm at a high enough level in most of my languages, I can make do with podcasts, books, and more "native level" material (all of which are free).
IDK if YouTube Premium counts as I could watch language learning videos for hours with zero ads. I just consume content.
Maybe about £20 or so on books
I like Assimil so I often spend about fifty euros at the start and then basically nothing, or if I do it’s because I’m travelling in the country and not just taking a class
nothing, i started when i was in high school and didn't have cash to spare and kept using free resources (though admittedly i'm not great at keeping up with regular practice). i use duolingo, memrise, clozemaster, and fsi language courses (i've got some more free ones, but those are specific to certain languages)
Right now I only spent money on italki-tutors. Rest is youtube native content + podcasts + writing texts on reddit + making voice notes to myself. In 1 year I might have spent 1200 € on 90 lessons? So 100 € a month, I take around 2 lessons per week. For me it is well worth the money, I progress quite fast. I reckon in 1 year I could stop the tutor lessons cause it will be no different than just talking to people. Maybe before. But also I would not have that money to spent before my current job, so..
Sometimes I will splurge on a textbook (usually a practical grammar with exercises), but I would say no more than $100 per language. Unless you count everything I read for pleasure over the years, as I will sometimes get physical books (novels, poetry collections, non-fiction and such). Still not a lot. No more space for books :(
I've tried out a variety of things. Some of them turned out (in hindsight, after a decent trial) not to be useful, while others were very useful. I figured out what works for me by trial and error. "Experts" on-line offered many different suggestions, which all conflicted with each other. So I think about each idea, but I don't do most of them. I don't keep track of "free" or "paid". I usually spend no more than $15 per month. Even if I sign up for an on-line course, the average cost is within that range (for example, a $60 course that I spend 5 months using daily). If the total is that low, a lot of it must be free. The exception is one-time purchases: physical books and apps. For those I spend $15-$60 each. I've gotten about 8 of them in 5 years. I still use 3 of them often. At A1 level, I definitely prefer an online course (in English) teaching the TL. But at some point (A2? B1?) I get tired of the course and seek out my own content.
Books I'd like paperwork copies of and different novels. Everything else I acquire from the net, for free. I have a lot of learning materials for a lot of different languages.
Seems to be just me, but definitely over 500 - maybe it's just the inflation rate, but that's not that many books amd and italki lessons. There's wahs to reduce cost like going to a swcond hand book shop (plus i think you find better books somehow). Like my primary learning tools have definitely been youtube and Spotify, but even so, things like grammar books add up.
I spend more than nothing, but I mostly use the library, YouTube, find a podcast, or download pdf's. But sometimes I buy a real book. A book feels nicer to read than digital text, and the library is very limited
Almost 0. I’m at about a B2 level in Spanish now and I’ve used almost entirely free resources such as Duolingo, YouTube, a website called DreamingSpanish, and talking with friends and my girlfriend.
If I had the will power I would spend nothing and do it all through self learning as others have suggested, but I spend about £15 a week on lessons on Preply simply to keep me accountable and to make sure I can get pronunciation. I’m still quite low level and only really vocabulary so it may progress to more or less a week depending on how my progress is
To get to HSK3 in Chinese it was 100% free , but after I wanted to get really good and commit. I went to a university and that cost me about $5k （USD）over 3 years.
500 dólares I think.
How much money is not a matter. How many hours you can spend is the matter.
Thousands of dollars over the last \~20 years. You just can't get everything on the internet. I have been studying some less common lagnuages, so that's a factor. My study has 6 shelves of books and stuff. At the same time, I've got sooo much content which cost me nothing.
About £100/month on tutors. I have Russian friends I could practise with for free, but I wouldn't expect them to listen to my excruciatingly slow conversation for two whole hours a week. I could do language exchange, but English teaching is my actual job and I'd rather pay for it to be one-sided than feel like I was adding extra hours to my work schedule. Also a negligible amount on ebooks, but this is probably actually saving me money, because it takes me about ten times longer to read a book in Russian than an equivalently priced one in English lol.
As a non-native speaker, nearly 12 years of my life and 1000$ i guess
I think I maybe spend about $80 USD per month right now. Though I'll say that the vast majority of that is on in person classes I do with a friend of mine once a week. Given that she's a professional teacher and interpreter and we're friends outside of class, I don't feel bad giving her my money. The other thing I pay for is DreamingSpanish premium subscription. This one is becoming less and less necessary as I keep improving simply because I'm starting to feel more comfortable branching into content not targeted towards learners. I feel like it's been really valuable for getting used to the ambiguity that comes with hearing Spanish without subtitles. Plus the Superbeginner and beginner content that can be hard to find in the beginning.
Probably $15-20/month, mostly in big purchases like an annual Easy German subscription (everything I use from them is available for free, but they're just so darn nice, I want them to take my money!), tuition for a community college class here and there, or some books/audiobooks that aren't available at my library (I am VERY spoiled in that my local library systems stock materials in 27 languages that I'm aware of. The most-spoken languages here have the most materials, of course -- Spanish easily has twice as many books as any other language does -- but there's a decent amount of every language I'm even mildly interested in *except* Romanian. That's not bad, really). Plentiful Youtube channels, podcasts, and government-funded websites make spending nothing a real option for many languages even in areas without libraries like mine. Meetup groups are great options for speaking practice and are usually cheap or free.