Having studied eight languages now, these are some of the best tips I’ve learned.

My language learning journey began back in middle school, when Baltimore County Public Schools makes you choose a language in order to continue your education. I ended up choosing Mandarin Chinese that year, as a sixth grader, because I overheard a kid saying the smart people learned Chinese. Now, that decision completely changed my life.

From there, I received a competitive government scholarship, known as NSLI-Y, and was sent to South Korea as a high schooler to learn Korean. In college I received another full scholarship to study Bangla out of Kolkata, India, and I began taking free Indonesian and Turkish courses at the embassies. I also was selected for an intensive Jingpho course at the Inya Institute, although I was not able to complete the entire course.

In graduate school, I then studied Nepali at the University of Washington, and continued studying Azerbaijani on my own. All of these different experiences has left me with such an interest in the world and its languages, and despite knowing I can’t learn them all, I’d like to try. I’m only near fluent in Chinese, but languages are a fun activity for me.

Considering I’ve studied all these languages, here are some my best tips for learning a new language.

Repetition is absolutely critical for learning vocabulary and phrases.

Sometimes, there are moments where you just can’t remember a word despite encountering it so many times during classes and in real life. I’ve felt this moment a ton of times, especially when I’m randomly in a conversation with someone in the native language.

That said, one of my biggest tips for learning words like this has been to just practice as much as I can with these kinds of words. Whether it’s writing different kinds of sentences randomly, drilling down syntax and what the grammar might be with it, but also Googling the word and seeing how it’s used in the news, blog posts, and other online content.

With languages that have a non-romanized alphabet, such as the Sanskrit or character based ones like Mandarin, you’re going to need to write the words physically on paper over and over again to get the muscle memory. I’ve found typing never really helps with learning these kinds of languages, and you’re going to have to write constantly.

And remember—”dumb” sentences are okay, you’re just learning right now!

Talking to yourself is sometimes helpful to keep up some conversation skills.

As someone who often can’t find certain communities in my city, especially when it comes to more rare languages, I’ve found the ultimate tip for me has been to just talk to myself. Whether it’s a fresh Bangla phrase I learned in class or something I encountered on a television drama from Korea, I have a tendency to repeat it to myself.

This might sound a bit strange, but sometimes I enact conversations with myself. I have to get a bit creative when it comes to this form of practice, as you want to use a wide variety of phrases, words, and sentence structures if you actually want to effectively practice. Just repeating the same things isn’t going to be helpful in the long run.

Obviously, this alone isn’t going to be the answer—we tend to follow patterns, and when you can find a native speaker, they’ll teach you how people speak outside of structured courses.

Find online news sources, television shows, or YouTubers to listen to.

This is how I’ve been maintaining my Mandarin and Korean after all of these years: through watching Asian dramas that are available on Netflix and Viki. Television shows are a little glimpse to find ways that people speak in real life, but they’re not a full substitute for learning the nuances of a language. For example, in Korea, you’re going to speak to people based on age and how well you know them—so there are up to five different ways to speak to others.

Blogs and news are a great way to practice reading. Bring a notebook out when you’re doing this kind of practice and write down the words that you don’t know, going sentence by sentence. Either at the end or in the moment, go through these words and translate them for future reference.

Something else I found to be useful was to find YouTubers actively speaking in the native language. By watching Korean beauty and lifestyle YouTubers, I learned a lot of words related to makeup, shopping, and cooking. It’s really hard to find Bangla resources, so I’ve been using Bangladeshi and Indian YouTubers to keep my listening skills sharp.

Sometimes you don’t need to go to the country to practice the language.

This is an acquired skill throughout the years. As someone who lives in an area where there aren’t a ton of native speakers in some of the target languages I’ve studied throughout the years, I’ve found different ways to understand methods of teasing out the language in everyday life.

For example, I live a couple of hours away from New York. Since my work is based there sometimes, I end up heading to the city, then, when I have free time, seeking out restaurants in the areas with high Bangladeshi or Soviet diaspora communities. There, I buy books in the target language, as well as foods, jewelry, and so much more if these options are available.

But even in my hometown, where I live, by looking up restaurants and community centers I’ve found options for language practice and immersion. I found out a lot of the Indian restaurants around here are actually Nepali, which made it a lot easier to practice my Nepali while getting some delicious food in the process. A lot of people are so open to helping you out, as they’re excited to see foreigners learn their language.

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