The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.

Financialization isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing either.

I’ll preface that you’re trying a much harder language than me so maybe such a method is truly necessary but for me I didn’t do any “repeat X many times” I just tried to understand, and once I knew what was being said, I was happy to move on I never had such a structured method, although I do sometimes write down lists of words or phrases I don’t know and ask friends about it or look it up. My phone’s notes app is full of them. I don’t worry too hard about words that I keep forgetting multiple times, if they’re common words they’ll come with time.

I try to avoid Google translate/chatgpt, I feel like it’s nicer with my physical English/danish dictionary or asking friends, but I understand not everyone has instant access to native speakers.

Just remember that the biggest thing is to keep at it. Time beats all

Haha yes. I think I’m a little past that stage now - currently at Christmas with my danish partners family. Able to participate in most of the talk, understand about 80% of what is said and can guess most of the rest. Feeling quite proud! I’ll take a look at the sketch !

I’m learning danish while living in Denmark. I have terrible ADHD. I think the biggest two things I’ve found that’s helped my pronunciation and helped a lot with understanding casual spoken speech has been a) singing together with others. I think the dopamine and activeness of trying to predict how a line will be said Vs how people actually sing it shows how words can be changed and chopped up and how they can’t (how do people naturally change or squash together syllables to fit the song and/or rhyming)

B) is podcasts. I have found them very good for commuting/gaming. At first they were language learning ones specifically but now its stories, trivia, etc. I still really struggle to listen to podcasts with multiple hosts but im getting there. I think seeing stuff with subtitles is a bit of a trap - i found myself quite reliant on them and couldn’t understand anything with them off. Much better to struggle through podcasts bit by bit, pausing where I need, and after a couple of them I was mostly up to speed