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Comment by TsomArp | Hacker News Reader

Impressive. But which one is your mother tongue?

Mother tongue is Swedish, and I had done some school Spanish when I was younger. However I feel the Spanish was more in the way than actually helping me at the time.

I think french is estimated to require about 600h of study, or something like that, for an English speaker, and that is probably a bit more than what I did. But it seems ball-park right.

Edit: Na, thinking about it, I think I did do about 600h, maybe even a bit more.

Wow! So you spent more than 6 hours a day for three months?

Yes, maybe. I would say maybe 4h per day on week days, and some more hours on weekend. And then the last couple of weeks I spent even more than that, maybe upwards 10 hours, or more. But then I was at an immersive course, where we where only allowed to speak french. When I travelled France I also lived a couple of days with an old retired wine consultant. He only spoke french, and when I got back from day trips in Provence, I would sit with him and just talk and drink wine. That also helped a lot.

In the few years I've been studying Spanish, I've found that the (take your pick of) wine/mezcal/sidra always helps a lot with my ability to speak.

This comment is certainly a bit tongue-in-cheek but being able to relax the nerves a bit and just give it a good effort sometimes goes a long way. Sounds like landing with a wine consultant who doesn't speak your native tongue is about as good a scenario as possible!

The Ballmer Peak applies to many things it would seem.

I duno. Spanish and French share a lot. I am positive it helped you.

Dunno about "a lot", especially when it comes to writing. Or you mean it as "more than Japanese and Russian"?

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