[seanoliver]

I wouldn't call this the "secret" to learning a foreign language as an adult. Obviously immersion in a language is ideal, and the fact that he had already learned Spanish is even more ideal.

I'm currently 2 years into my attempt to learn Chinese and I can say that many of these tips don't apply to all languages:

1. Listening to music won't help with comprehension of tonal languages like Chinese because songs will usually ignore the tones so that they sound better set to music.

2. Reading children's books in character-based languages like Chinese will only be helpful if you're already proficient in a few hundred basic characters. Since there's no alphabet, there's no way to sound out words the way we can in English.

Otherwise, there are some great tips here. I agree that listening to classroom discussion and hearing others' mistakes is a great way to learn. It's also important to do daily, focused practice in the mornings when your mind is fresh and not muddled by other things.

Overall I think it's a good Quora answer but not necessarily a "secret" to learning a language.

[hackerboos]

Thai is tonal and they mostly keep the tones when singing. Music is a recommended way of learning Thai.

[seanoliver]

Ah good point. I'm not very familiar with Thai. I'll also say that many Chinese songs try to retain the tones as much as possible, but they're generally a lot harder to make out in music, so it's usually not the most useful learning tool. I do think listening to music is important for cultural immersion in any language, though.

[vpeters25]

> and the fact that he had already learned Spanish is even more ideal.

Knowing another latin - based language should help. I know things got much easier for me in France when I realized its similarities to spanish.