A vocab primer pdf or website with like 200 of the most common words and phrases & listening to people talk is probably going to get you through the majority of conversations. Word frequency in natural language follows a Zipf’s law distribution, so focusing on the most common words & phrases first is very efficient.

Practice, spaced repetition, and quizzing for memorization and long term retention. Beyond that learning verb conjugations and maybe a English/Spanish book that has one language on the left page and the other on the right for more expanded vocab and variety.

I always imagined that if I really wanted to learn Spanish without living among Spanish speakers, I’d put on Family Guy or some other show with simple English and that has good subs and dubs. Then either use English audio with Spanish subs and perhaps after getting used to it a bit Spanish dubs with English subs. And after getting the hang of basics, Spanish with Spanish dubs. As Family Guy is so simple you’d get the context from the show, know a word here and there and your brain fills in the holes. Not at first, and then quite badly, but I think if you have like the very basics down, like a weeks course or something, and then you just start binging a show you know like that, constantly on the background, I’d assume you’d be a somewhat functional speaker in a year or two at least. Or you’ll just learn what “giggity” is in Spanish and nothing else. Either or. Or something in between. Or not.

Nevermindme just passing by I’ve no actual suggestions

To practice listening, dreaming Spanish has a ton of videos spoken slowly for different levels. There’s a YouTube channel and a website: https://www.dreaming.com/spanish

This lady, Butterfly Spanish. And Anki flashcards - the app seems really backwards at first but it really works.

I agree that Duolingo is annoying. Felt like I got somewhere with it but it wastes so much of your time.

Pimsleur works well for that.

https://lemmy.ml/comment/25302051