Episode Player
How To Actually Learn Any Language
Canonball
Chapters
0:00
My Experience Mastering A Foreign Language As An Adult
1:44
Why The Classroom Model Does Not Work
3:00
Establishing The Base – Digital Flashcards And The Word Frequency List
5:16
The Four Tasks And Building The Flashcard List
8:06
Estimated Time To Completion
8:50
Beginning To Converse – Speaking And Texting With A Friend
12:43
Development In The Advanced Stages
13:58
The Scale Of The Project
15:52
The Value Of Learning A Foreign Language In The Age Of AI
Canonball
How To Actually Learn Any Language
Mar 06, 2026
Season 4
Episode 8
Alex
This is a summary of what I think is the best approach to learning a language, based on my experience mastering a foreign language as an adult.
Here you can download the software that I mentioned, Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Here is a page of links to word-frequency lists for German; similar lists can be found online for many other languages:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/German
The cover art is from the painting "Before the Audience," which Jean-Leon Gerome completed in 1881.
