> I always thought that two near-monolinguals dating or getting married would be the quickest way to learn a new language, although I never had a chance to test this hypothesis
They have an expression for this in French:
"La meilleure façon d'apprendre une langue est sur l'oreiller"
"The best way to learn a language is on the pillow"
I saw lots of other exchange students improve their French immensely when they started dating a native. My experience was that having that sort of language partner is nice because they're sympathetic to your mistakes and there's lots of built-in incentive to have more interesting conversations.
I learned French almost entirely by helping raise my (now ex) girlfriend's 6 year old son. Best teacher I could have asked for, and he wasn't even trying to teach me :)
She was also very helpful as she was a native French speaker, but fluent in English.
They have an expression for this in French:
"La meilleure façon d'apprendre une langue est sur l'oreiller"
"The best way to learn a language is on the pillow"
I saw lots of other exchange students improve their French immensely when they started dating a native. My experience was that having that sort of language partner is nice because they're sympathetic to your mistakes and there's lots of built-in incentive to have more interesting conversations.