Hacker News | Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?

Hacker News | Ask HN: How have you learned a speaking language?: "remember common words. One day you will get to the stage where you recognise 95% of the words you see, and that's enough to get basic understanding of most material. You'll probably eventually want to aim for about 10,000 words of passive vocabulary. At 10 minutes a word, that's already 1500 hours , about 40 weeks, 40 hours a week.
3) Mandarin or arabic are languages that many people speak and study. You'll be able to find plenty of material online, videos, radio, news, blogs. TV and radio are probably less efficient if you're not able to read similar material, so try to find material with transcripts or subtitles and use those.
4) Teachers can be helpful, but are expensive. VOIP classes may"