There have been studies published that say language learning after your 20s is exponentially harder, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just understand that it might take more time, and might not come as naturally to you as you’d hope.

If you’re able to learn your basics, enough to form simple sentences. You know, things like “Where is the bathroom?” “How much is this food?” “I like dogs” etc. You’ll be able to start immersing yourself in Spanish at your own pace. Studies show that immersion in a language is the easiest way to learn, so that’s my only real advice.

I’m trying to learn Spanish at the moment as well, I live in Texas in an area with a lot of Spanish speakers, and I’m hoping being able to speak Spanish will help me find work. So I know the struggle of learning this language too. Hell, I studied German for like 6 straight years and only got to a kindergarten level.

Immersion of course is better than anything, but if you can’t immerse yourself, I highly recommend doing youtube comprehensible input methods. Check out this vid by Stephen Krashen for a good intro.

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• Do not give up, your learning curve is slower the older you get, this is absolute normal.
• There are free courses on YouTube and bunch of other websites you can use and it also helps repeating the vocabulary once in a week, the stuff you try to learn. If you need additional help finding some material to learn Spanish - there are apps, YouTube courses, text courses and so on, let me know and I DM you the stuff you need it.
• I am also miserable at language, I do not imply you are but I want to say that I feel your frustration, I am trying to learn Chinese since over 10 years and its awful painful for me, I had 4 years French and Spanish in school and I barely can order something in French which is embarrassing for me. For me language is also a pain, I have a inner barrier so I simply learn very slowly new languages or make the same grammar mistakes over and over again. My problem was that I always hated it, so maybe it is not entirely because of my age but it is a factor. Just do not lose hope. Most things are in your head, if you really want it, you get there. Do baby steps, celebrate small victories and repeat vocabulary really on a fixed schedule.

Personally I need to write things down to have a learning curve, maybe check what is best for you, others prefer hearing things first but I personally need to write things down to get used to it. I think if you know what method works best for you, then you will make progress.

Language itself or communication in general is very important, as you say you do not get much friends without at least the basics, no one expect that it should be perfect, but if you cannot communicate at all with someone, this is pretty much dead sentence to connect.

A good way to learn a language is finding a tandem partner. There are plenty of Spanish speakers wanting to learn English. You could teach each other through casual communication (more fun, too)

Hey spanish is hard. Just try basic vicuabulary, little by little youll be able to do more complicated ideas, it feels more dificult to learn a laguage when old because by default we use more complicated ideas and vocabulary, so going back to basics feels lacking.

This is a good platform: https://www.duolingo.com/

Have you tried Duolingo? It’s a pretty good language learning app. Languages are hard to pick up but the more you immerse yourself into it the better you’ll do. Also there are a lot of speech to text language apps, those can help you until you’re more comfortable.

If you’re washing dishes offer to buy some coworkers some cervezas and work your way to friendship from there, it’s Puerto Rico, an American territory that has tons of American familial ties, there are bound to be some people that speak English, but don’t rely on English, befriend someone who understands English and then work towards a better grasp of the Espanol utilizing your new friend as help with learning by using their grasp of English to help grow your grasp of Espanol.

If you’re into marijuana there are always communities online that you can contact and find a smoke buddy or a dealer, even on an island like PR, Reddit used to be super helpful with this with their localized ‘trees’ and ‘ents’ subreddits, but alas Reddit isn’t as open and usable as it used to be thx to Spez’s attempts to become a Elon Musk tech bro clone.

I’m also a New Yorker, and I have family by marriage in PR, but since leaving NYC I’ve moved around a lot within the US, never really got a chance outside of the US, but these tips are based on some of my experiences making friends in New places. I’m generally a fairly successful social chameleon, I can adapt to most groups easily and make friends and enjoy myself, but my natural disposition is one of a loner, I’m not the type of person that enjoys popularity, I much prefer a smaller tighter group of Friends that I feel I can trust, my point is if I can do it anybody should be able to.

So when you’re in a new place you have to put yourself out there, and you have to do it cautiously and with your own personal safety in mind, and every place has dangers, you just gotta know how to spot them and avoid them, just because it’s “country” or a tropical Caribbean island doesn’t mean everybody is nice there.

Good luck, hope some of this helps.

What methods did you use to learn during those 3 years? What were your learning (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc)? Did you manage to retain some of the knowledge acquired during those years? Honestly you picked a hard language to learn, 3 years learning Spanish without some proper teacher is not that much to be honest, I’ve been learning German for that amount by myself and I’m not even close to being that good honestly, so don’t feel bad about it.

u alr speak european… why waste effort learning some spain-variant dialect??