[graypegg]

IMO, learning a language was way better suited to impulsive excitement. (Of which ADHD folk tend to be experts in) I moved provinces to make that work (Ontario Canada => Québec Canada), honestly in a pretty stupid move. But now it's not just a thing I need to convince myself to do, it's an imperative that people are cheering you on for. The rush I got from doing my first fully French bureaucratic phone call is unmatched. If that call was going to be in English I would've delayed doing it for months.

Embrace a bit of chaos if you can afford it and your brain sort of craves it. (Applies outside the realm of language learning as well, whatever deep-end you can afford to drown in a few times, drown as fast as possible in it. You'll learn to swim after the third or forth time.)

[Rendello]

I'm also an anglophone from Ontario who learned French impulsively. I think if I'd studied things like grammar, vocabulary, and conjugation, I would've advanced from the B2 plateau easily, but when I was motivated to learn French, I wasn't sure sure how to study those things.

[graypegg]

I guess the opposite side of that hypothetical would be "would I have been as excited about learning french long enough to reach my current level of comprehension if I was going to traditional classes."

Personally, I don't think I would've been. I mess up on some conjugate forms, and I have a bad tendency of skipping words that leave me in an unfinishable sentence ("J'en ai un" => "J'ai un... euh de... ça") but the past year, I don't think anyone has visibly struggled to understand me. Friends are a great help in figuring this stuff out.

It's not that I don't think a traditional language education is good, it would just spend my excitement budget way too quickly. If you CAN find motivation to be in a classroom, that is BY FAR the fastest way to be a clear and fluent speaker in any language.

[Rendello]

I agree on the class thing. The only classes I attended to learn French (besides all the grade 1-11 classes which were a joke) were during French immersion program, and I can't pin down any specific thing I learned in class itself. The 5-week immersion program helped immensely in general, though.

I was motivated to learn because I was dating a bilingual person, and so for once in life I had very strong, continued motivation for a good amount of time. I learned on my own and from texting.

I suppose what I meant was that I wish I had tried something like Anki for conjugation and potentially even vocabulary. I find when I read in French or follow conversations, I can understand pretty well and the details of the grammar or words used don't stick in my head, and so I've been at a B2 for years. Granted, I stopped using the language for a long time, but even when I lived in Montréal, I was fluent, but never actively improving through just living in the language.

(Sinon, si tu as assisté à des meetups tech à Montréal l'année dernière, il y a de bonnes chances qu'on se soit déjà parlé en personne.)

[conradludgate]

I have enough impulsivity in my life. Paired with some baseline amount of anxiety I end up getting pretty stressed as is.

Moving far away is the last thing I could ever imagine doing right now.

[graypegg]

Totally fair, but that's only the "deep end" for language learning right?

If you wanted to learn a specific programming language for example, build something as fast as possible, tell people about it, and expect to fail.

Most people will cheer you on, and everything you learn will be punctuated by random bursts of "wow, I got that working!". If it goes south (which it probably will) you were already mentally prepared for that. (A bit of self-deprecation humour helps there.) And people will STILL cheer you on. "Wow, you're a beginner, and just jumped in?"