To want to be fluent in a second language?

Why do you want to learn Italian?

And the only people I know who have become fluent, or near fluent and don’t live in the country live with someone who is a native speaker of that language.

For kids a recommendation is 3h/week fully in a language as a minimum. So a conversational meetup can help. I have a friend who taught herself Norwegian mainly through duolingo and TV. I’d aim got lots of Italian TV, audiobooks etc.

Absolutely and you listed some good resource for French especially.

There is definitely no shame at all in having a foreign accent, it can even be endearing. But what foreign accents actually are is a lack of technical accuracy in the pronunciation of a language - i.e. not making individual sounds or following the rhythm of the language as a native would. This lack of accuracy is nothing 'negative' though, it just is what it is. Some people want to sound authentic and native-like in their foreign language and find doing so is fun (I definitely did when I lived abroad and had pronunciation lessons), so it's a case of to each their own there.

yep 😃 it’s English thats the oddity.

I speak several languages all with my English accent and I always get compliments so not looking to change it.

My daughter learnt languages at school in the countries and she sounds like a native and she hates my accent 😂

Haha, it's the case for most of the world's languages though. Romance languages (Portuguese is one) all have lots of tenses.

I’m learning portguese and oh god the tenses! & everything being either male or female

Just reading along for now, but I like the look of LingoPie and would be interested. I'm learning Spanish via a small weekly class, plus Duolingo and Language Transfer.

It's true, but it is possible to be become fluent if you have regular conversation (at least once a week) with a native speaker. It's the speaking and immersion that count. Of course that is much easier if you live in the country as you say.

That's true. And there are also different areas of a language (pronunciation, grammar, writing), which are more or less difficult. I actually think Spanish grammar is more complicated than Mandarin - Mandarin has no tenses, Spanish has LOTS and you need to learn all the conjugations and how to accurately use each of them. On the other hand, Mandarin has more difficult pronunciation for an English speaker, and also writing.

I am sure it's possible but but the people I know who are truly fluent in a 2nd language (myself included) all moved countries.

Pp who asked what is hardest to learn...I found most difficult to understand discussions where you also need a lot of local & cultural context. Radio chat, comedy etc. Some regional accents are very difficult to understand.

To get rid of or greatly reduce an accent, you need to have specialised phonetics lessons. These aren't cheap, but there are some free resources online that you can use to practise.

If it's French you learnt, there is lots of great stuff out there. Some experts regularly post videos and information on their websites; there's Michel Billiers, Christophe Patris (pronunciation avec Christophe) and French Sounds on Youtube.

There's most likely similar things out there for other commonly learnt European languages as well, like Spanish and German. The less popular the language, unfortunately, the less likely you'll find free resources like this.

It’s about 70 pounds a year

You could give up Italian and go back to German. You could get all the way to at least the bottom of CEFR C1 just with online courses that are free because the German government puts money into them.

It can be done, but you do need regular contact with native speakers, at least once a week, for conversation. You also need to practise reading and writing and have native or fluent speakers check over your work. For French and Spanish, there's the Alliance Francaise and the Instituto Cervantes, but there are also private tutors on several apps. The latter option is cheaper.

You can also try free cafe meet ups and other events in city centres.

English and German are in the same language ‘family’, so you may find it easier.

Reading books will help, as will watching movies in whatever language you’re trying to learn. Both will help familiarize you with it being spoken.

What does it, is immersion ime. I grew up bilingual due to my parents (both Slavic languages), but while I had a decent grasp of English I didn’t become fluent until I lived in the UK and was immersed in it.

I married a German and we used a OPOL approach with DC, which has meant a lot of immersion at home. A bit extreme but it worked...!

I did learn the language at school (and took it at GCSE) which helped to a degree but only so far.

I’m learning a second language & eternally grateful that my English teacher drummed things like verbs, nouns, prepositions & possessives into us! Would really struggle without it (and it’s hard enough!)

If you google FSI language difficulty you will discover that the Americans have done a list, categorised into levels according to how hard a language is for an English speaker to learn. (Level 1 includes French, Spanish, Romanian and Dutch, level 5 includes Arabic, Korean, Mandarin) Personally I think they are all hard, it takes a long, long time to develop language skills. You have to enjoy the journey.

Have you made a typo here? Because this means "I would like he/she speaks Italian."*

You mean, "Vorrei parlare Italiano."

If it's not a typo and you didn't realise you need an infinitive here then I suggest swatting up on English grammar too as a PP implied.

*Although actually it doesn't as you've also misspelt "Italian".