I am still struggling to understand when people are speaking to each other in Spanish. But when they talk to me directly. And they talk slower than normal. I can understand a little. But the struggle is real. And I do a lot of conscious listening. For example, I listen to a lot of Netflix and my LingQ playlists. And I continue to wait for that time when everything is as clear as when I hear my own native language.
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Hearing French as words instead of a smear of French sounds turned out to be much harder than I expected.
Worse yet, there’s no easy fix. For instance I can’t just memorize the rules for liaison – sliding the last consonant, normally unpronounced, to be the first letter of the next word if it begins with a vowel (which happens a whole lot in French) – and I never have that problem again.
I do a couple hours of read/listen/repeat/shadow each day on my current text in LingQ. It gets better over time, but it is very, very slow.
Listening to a French film is still quite frustrating. I get about one in four or five words.
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It’s good to know someone can relate. As I’m sure many can. I put in a lot of time listening and repeating too. But when they talk and the words runs together. I get easily lost.
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I can’t say about french, but anyway. I’ll tell something about my experience, maybe you can get something from it 
I think you you should listen a lot. I mean really lot
I don’t just copy “theories” of language immersion lovers, it was my experience. Theories are real. Just want to say, that I wasn’t language lover, I hated languages at school and university. My native language is Armenian, and I just want to mention, that Armenian, Russian and English have almost no similarities, 3 languages, 3 alphabets, 3 completely different vocabulary/grammar. Armenian is indeed different from both Russian and English.
I learned Russian many years ago just by listening/watching/reading interesting content, in a natural way. I have an some accent of Russian ( because I almost didn’t speak ), but I understand Russian. And it’s not just understand I mean I really understand. I’m listening Russian videos in x2 speed, podcasts/interview in x1.5-x1.75 speed. I understand intonation/pronunciation mistakes when non-native speakers ( or polyglots ) speak Russian, I understand MY mistakes, when I speak. I understand in real time, without any conscious effort, it’s just automatic process.I don’t know grammar/rules of Russian, but I “feel”/notice any mistakes, regardless of the fact, that many people say, that Russian’s conjugation is hard. Maybe it’s hard, but it’s hard, when you try to remember them 
Reading and listening comprehension of Russian is on almost native level for me.
That’s why I agree with people, who say, that you should immerse yourself in the language, it’s not just my belief, it’s not just “the guy from Youtube said…” :), it’s my experience ) It took many years of randomly consuming content of Russian( without trying ), but anyway, for new languages I can control immersion level, and it will take much less time.
Now I’m learning English, and I can say, that my listening skills are improving day by day. I listen/watch a lot in Youtube in English, after I import some videos to LingQ and after watch and read via LingQ to repeat the “lesson” and to monitor my progress. Unfortunately I don’t use LingQ a lot, I’ll fix that 
The reason why I don’t understand English now as much as I could is because of my laziness and lack of consistency.
Also, during Youtube video watching via LingQ at first I just watch video in 1x speed in full screen, and after, during reading I increase speed to 1.25x ( sometimes 1.5x, it depends on content ), maybe this can help you. Also listen more podcasts/interviews, where people speak in a natural ( sometimes faster ) speed. Even than you understand less because of the speed, it will help you.
Also create a different channel in Youtube for immersion, it’s super important ! You can create new channel “under” you account ( same email ), google how to do it Look at your main youtube channel, and watch videos about same topics that you watch on your main account, but in your target language. Currently I almost don’t switch to my main channel.
PS: Pls don’t pay attention to English mistakes I’m just learner 
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I consider listening comprehension to be the #1 hidden landmine in language learning. Not many people mention how difficult it can be.
I live in New Mexico. My barber is a handsome, well-built young man. He is Hispanic and his older relatives spoke Spanish while he grew up, so he understands Spanish and can speak it somewhat. He has a lovely accent from what I can tell.
However, New Mexican Spanish is slower and more formal than that of Mexico and Central America. My barber wishes to maintain his heritage, so he tries to talk to speakers from those areas and is baffled. They can tell he can’t keep up, so they just switch to English!
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Sounds like a great idea. I will try that. I only like using everything here now. Because you can get points for listening and it records your streak and how long you’ve been studying for. This way I can keep track, and keep my streak going. But putting everything in different language so I can practice is an excellent idea. I am immersing myself in the language. Some days I don’t even watch tv in English. Speaking of English. Your writing is excellent. You’re doing wonderful!
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I understand what he feels and can relate. I’m Puerto Rican and I can’t understand my family or the Spanish speakers on the island when I visit. But I can understand Mexican speakers a lot better. But it’s the accent. Because there are letters that are sometimes left from a word when someone is speaking fast. And as I mentioned to someone earlier, the. Words run together when people are speaking. And that becomes a challenge in itself sometimes too.
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This has been my biggest challenge too! I can feel it gradually getting better after years of work (and I have not made it my primary focus).
One thing I am experimenting with is, on top of my mystery/suspense/sci-fi reading that I do daily in LingQ, I have started leveraging the first “big kids” book I ever read, The Wizard of OZ, which I loved and haven’t read in a long time. It’s well written and engaging with some advanced vocabulary but not too much! (Also, it’s better than the movie.)
Rather than simply reading it through, I am going chapter by chapter and drilling to making sure I know every word, and listening to it both with and without the text. First at slower speeds, then at full speed. Over and over, like a little kid. I don’t move on to a new chapter for several weeks.
I upload each chapter myself and use the ChatGPT API to get a very natural narration.
I feel like this may be advancing my comprehension faster (and it’s fun); we’ll see!
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It’s hard and requires huge amounts of work. Essentially there are several issues here. The first is decoding the sounds into words. That’s hard in French because words are chained together so you don’t know where one word ends and the next starts. The second issue is being able to understand the words at speed. Sometimes you can’t decode the sounds until you can understand at speed, because the context tells you what the words are. So it’s a catch 22. Did you hear élégant or et les gants?
You get round the first issue by reading a transcript while listening which trains the brain to recognise words from sounds. You don’t necessarily have to really understand the meaning, as long as you learn to recognise the words. For the second, you listen to as much clear input as possible ensuring it is at the right speed for you, or maybe just in the border. In other words, you are learning to understand the meaning with input that allows you to easily recognise the words.
To give you an idea of timescale, I listen to about two hours of French a day, and over six months I have seen a dramatic improvement in my comprehension. I went from understanding modest paced audio to understanding most of a film with clear audio, typically an American film dubbed into French. Native language films are often harder to understand. I still find films hard, and I have to concentrate a lot. You will need thousands of hours of audio input. I am probably at one thousand hours and I am starting to understand films. Documentaries were intelligible much earlier as the narration is slower, and clearer, with less casual day to day language.
In short, keep listening to audio while reading the transcript and you will improve. Not overnight, but over months and years.
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You need thousands of hours of listening for this. To be truly as clear as your native language, maybe you are looking at 5k or 10k hours of listening. Good luck
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I struggle! As others have said you probably just need a LOT more listening.
Questions:
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Do you even understand the meaning of all the words/sentences. i.e. if you have the transcript for what someone said, can you understand it? If not, then you still need a lot more input reading and listening.
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If you do understand the script, are you able to listen and read at the same time, at the same pace, and understand? If not, you’re comprehension is too slow. Listening and reading at the same time can help this. Or trying to read faster than you’re comfortable with. Or watching movie with subtitles (hopefully accurate ones, or very close to what the speaker is saying). You could know every word in the target language dictionary, but if your mind doesn’t piece it together quick enough then you’ll understand nothing. I think I’ve found this to be a big problem for me as I read the target language…always slightly unsure of myself and double checking. Spending some time listening and reading I think has helped me get a lot better about moving along. The other thing about listening and reading is that you can associate the abbreviated, connected speech to the words on the page and begin to recognize how the words really aren’t spoken in clear “proper” pronunciation. The way they are pronounced in one sentence may not even be the same when connected to different words in another sentence.
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If you can understand everything reading and listening, then do it faster =). And do more listening by itself. A lot more. Focus on content that has two native speakers speaking to each other. Less clear speech (audiobooks, documentaries, news reporters are to “pristine”. Watch the Easy Spanish youtube channel (although this is mostly focused on Spain…so may be a little less useful for South American and Central American Spanish). Dreaming Spanish has a lot of conversational stuff for all levels. Look for any conversational Spanish where two or more natives speaking. Movies, podcasts, interviews, “influencers”, etc.
If you are doing all these things already. Keep going
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I think you are correct. Thousands of hours. People underestimate how many hours they need and how many they have actually put in. Right now I am listening to Harry Potter. If I consume all seven books, it’s going to add a lot of time. I’m at 1,167 hours now from all sources including Crosstalk.
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