Tried to learn German in Junior High School. Mostly failed, as evidenced during multiple trips to Germany. Moved to Budapest when I was 30, and stayed for 7 years. Became pretty fluent, kinda because I had to. They don't speak a lot of English, and are were pretty hostile to foreigners. I learned through a combination of friends, girlfriends, landlords, and an immersive 1-week school in eastern Hungary where we spoke nothing but Hungarian all week. I think several of the other commenters have touched on a key part of language learning that I think is missing... the musicality of the language. First off, you need to be able to isolate one word from another, or even what sounds make up separate words. (This is ESPECIALLY hard in Hungarian, where the emphasis is always on the first syllable, and words can be 6-10 syllables long! "Holy shit! That was ALL ONE WORD?!?") So the idea of watching a movie in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles on is a good idea. Helps you figure out the rhythm of the language, and where some letters are skipped or pronounced in an odd way. (There are 44 different letters in Hungarian!) Which taps into the old wives' tale that musicians learn other languages more easily, because they have an ear for tones and beats. Mispronouncing a word is less of a problem if it is intonated in a way that is familiar to the native speaker. They can correct the weird "e" sound you made, because the rest of the 'music' of the word is correct and familiar. So yeah... especially in Spanish (or most of the romance languages) you can get the conjugation or gender of a word phenomenally wrong, and they can still understand what you are saying. I bus go. Bus go I. All of those make sense (mostly) in Romance languages and English. Just for fun, those sentences in Hungarian: Busszal utazni. Lovagalok a buszon. En busszal fogok lovagolni. Menj busszal. ... and other phrases, depending on many different factors. (...and that's not including the 4 oddball diacriticals that I can't figure out how to create on my English keyboard) Go bus I.
Megyek a buszon.
That is indeed a blessing. The other thing is, and I've learned this both through my love of books and the ESL speakers in my life, is that as I build my vocabulary, I can combine words to make up for words I don't know. For example, I don't know the spanish word for "humanity," but maybe if I need to say it I could say something like "los todos de familia de hombres," and hope it works in a pinch.So yeah... especially in Spanish (or most of the romance languages) you can get the conjugation or gender of a word phenomenally wrong, and they can still understand what you are saying.