Hard Languages Aren't Hard. Your Method Is.

Korean has a different alphabet. Japanese has three writing systems. Danish has sounds that technically shouldn't exist. Everyone says these languages take 2,200 hours to learn. But what if the hours matter less than what you do with them?

The Category IV Myth

The Foreign Service Institute ranks languages by difficulty for English speakers. Category IV languages—Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese—supposedly take four times longer than Spanish. But those estimates assume traditional classroom learning. What if traditional methods are just particularly bad for these languages?

Why Pronunciation Changes Everything

The "hardest" languages have something in common: sounds that don't exist in English. Korean has vowel distinctions English speakers can't hear at first. Japanese has pitch accent. Danish has the stød. If you learn these languages through reading and tapping, you'll never develop the ear for these sounds. You'll plateau hard.

But if you start with pronunciation—actually making these sounds, getting feedback, training your ear and mouth together—you build the foundation that makes everything else possible. The "hard" part becomes manageable.

Pronunciation First, Always

dubchat enforces pronunciation from day one because that's when it matters most. Not as a nice-to-have after you've learned the words. As the foundation. Especially for languages everyone says are impossible. They're not impossible. You just need to actually practice saying them.