Multilingual people of Lemmy who learned a language (or multiple) as adults, how did you do it?

I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that's more of a content for my daydreaming.

I often encounter issues due to language barriers.Mainly with 2 languages.

Since the start of war, I've been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can't really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.Probably like someone who doesn't speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that's fairly common over there).

And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.Which I also encountered as "would've been useful now" a few times.

Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn't my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.