How to learn Spanish fast at home seems like an oxymoron, who can learn any language fast at home? Trust me, it isn’t as hard as you may think. Learning Spanish fast at home can be done quite easily, the trick is to figure out why kids learn their native language so easily.

When a child learns their native language (we’ll say English) they start from a fresh “slate”. That means that they don’t have anything to compare what they know to what they are trying to learn. This means that they do not have to “translate” their native language into anything else. Children just learn the language. This is the answer to “Why do kids learn so fast?”

When kids want to know what something is, they ask. When they see something, they use context clues and figure out what they are looking at. They don’t actively know why or how they are learning, they just are. This is the mindset they are in: I don’t know why or how I’m learning, I just know what that is. Simple right? Of course it is simple, they are kids.

Knowing what we know about how kids learn language, we can start to understand why it is so hard for adults to learn a new language. Adults already know at least one language, now we want to add a second language to it. Here is where the difference between learning a language as a kid and an adult becomes apparent.

Adults already know a language, we already know the vocabulary and grammar. So, what we do when learning a language is try to “translate” what we are learning into what we already know. This takes twice as long to do, and it is twice as hard. We have to think: OK, this is what was said, these are the words I know, this is the grammar I know, take this word out, change the order of the words, OK, I got it. See what I mean about taking twice as long?

Is it hard learning a new language? Yes, but it doesn’t have to be the hardest thing in the world. All you have to keep in mind is that things aren’t always the same when going between languages.