Grow up in vineland

Try your local library, mine gives you free access to Mango, sort of like Rosetta stone.

The DuoLingo app is great

Date a Latina

Watch one of your favorite movies & turn on spanish subtitles.

And then piss her off. Your vocabulary will double.

Best way is to use something like duolingo, but to also get immersed into it - do you have people you know who speak Spanish? If so, use them to practice. Have conversations with them using what you’ve learned.

Another really good way is to listen to Spanish versions of Disney songs because most people already know the words. So it's so much easier to figure out what means what

But your lifespan will be cut in half

Get a pt job where your coworkers all speak Spanish. 2 yrs later u will be good

whereabouts in jersey tho kinda depends.

there are spanish meetups in the city, and there are a bunch online if you go to meetup.com or meetsup.com, i forget which.

if you're near newark, ironbound has a ton of hispanic folk and restaurants/cafes where they'll speak to you in spanish (sometimes because they dont know english that well). but there are a ton of portuguese/brasilians in ironbound, too, so you gotta make sure you're going into a hispanic restaurant/cafe.

trenton has a ton of hispanic folk too, but i dont really know much about trenton.

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Work in a restaurant

I’m using Duolingo although it’s not given me the confidence to start a conversation

Curious what your motivation is for learning the language? Spanish can have lots of regional variations and slang so this might be important for you.

Dominicans, Mexicans, Spaniards, etc. all speak very differently. Think of the difference between English from Australia, the north of England, or Texas and you get a sense of how varied Spanish can be.

The Spanish you use informally with friends or a love interest may not be appropriate if you plan to converse in a professional setting with colleagues or business clients.

I recommend a low-cost community college course as a good way to get an understanding of grammar and fundamentals.

Self-study: Duolingo, Rosetta, Pimsleur, FSI, a good dictionary and grammar workbook

Media: novellas and local newspapers, classic spanish speaking music

Social: get friends who speak Spanish, ask them about the language; Spanish meet-ups, Spanish speaking significant other

Professional: work at a job where a majority speak Spanish

I learned on the job as an auto mechanic

Work in a hospital

La bergenline

*was. Still fine, but I feel like they've gotten worse.

Lavate Los Manos!!!

My wife teaches spanish professionally, in case you're looking for private tutoring: inspanish.nyc.

I’m Puerto Rican and learned more Spanish working in an Italian restaurant for 5 years than I did in my normal life

You’re not wrong here. Having a partner who only converses in Spanish with his family has helped me tremendously.

Has anyone tried babble?

Bueno y mal.

I second this.

Same.

Have to second meetup - I haven't used it for language but I've used it for other things and it's a great gathering method.

I was a dishwasher when I was 14. I learned a lot of Spanish but none that I could use in school without getting detention.

I never said you’d learn appropriate Spanish, you’d be learning the real shit 😂😂

There are some libraries that have Pimsleur CDs, strongly recommend as a base for starting to learn any language they offer. You can also buy it, I recommend buying them second hand (new is pretty pricy). NJ has a pretty large Spanish speaking community, if you're intent on an institution, I'm sure a course at any community college will more than suffice, and you'll never run out of people to chat with & learn from.