Learning another language is like adding a new window to your house. Suddenly you can see a whole other street.

A second language is a second way of dividing up the world. Other languages cut experience at different joints, keep words for things yours never bothered to name, and make certain thoughts easy that were awkward before. You do not only gain translations, you gain a view. The house is the same size with one more window in it.

Take twenty minutes a day rather than three hours on Sunday, since frequency beats intensity here. Learn the words for things you actually talk about. Use it badly with a real person as early as you can, because that is where it stops being a subject.