Hi, it's the fox. Quick answer before you scroll: yes, you can absolutely practise speaking a language completely alone. Talk to yourself out loud, narrate what you're doing, shadow audio, argue with the radio — anything that gets real sound out of your mouth. The trick isn't finding a person; it's making noise on purpose, every day. I'll give you seven ways I actually recommend.
Published 26 May 2026
Every week someone tells me the same sad thing: "I'd speak, but I don't know any Montenegrins." And I get it — I'm a cartoon fox, my social circle is limited too. But here's what I've learned from thousands of people learning through me: the ones who get fluent aren't the ones with a Serbian flatmate. They're the ones who talk out loud when nobody's listening. Speaking is a motor skill, like juggling. You don't get better by watching; you get better by dropping the balls in your own kitchen.
Making coffee? Say it. "Pravim kafu. Voda je vruća." (I'm making coffee. The water's hot.) Walking to the shop, doing the dishes, looking for your keys — describe it in your target language, out loud, in simple sentences. You'll hit a word you don't know within about ten seconds, and that gap is gold: it tells you exactly what to look up. This is the single habit I'd keep if I could only keep one.
Nobody can hear you in there, so use it. Rehearse the little conversations you'll actually have: ordering a burek, telling the taxi where to go, explaining that no, you don't want the tourist menu. Say both sides. Play the grumpy waiter and yourself. It feels ridiculous. It also means the first time you do it for real, your mouth has already been there.
Find a short clip with a transcript, play it, and speak along a half-second behind the speaker, copying their rhythm and melody. This is called shadowing, and it's the closest thing to stealing a native accent. Two minutes of a news clip, done daily, does more for your ć and č than an hour of silent flashcards. If pronunciation still trips you up, our guide to thinking in the language pairs nicely with this once the sounds settle.
Read a paragraph out loud. Then close the book and try to say what it meant in your own words. The reading warms up your mouth; the re-telling forces you to actually produce language instead of just echoing it. Children's books and simple news sites are perfect — no shame in Bambi.
Voice-memo a sixty-second story about your weekend. Play it back the next day. You'll wince — everyone does — but you'll also hear the one sound you keep flubbing, and hearing it is how you fix it. I promise the cringe fades faster than the progress does.
The mouth is a muscle. It doesn't care whether the room is empty — it only gets stronger when it moves.
When you're doing flashcards or a lesson, don't just recognise the answer — say a full sentence with it. See the word umoran (tired)? Don't tick it and move on. Say "Danas sam umoran." Turn every silent tap into a spoken sentence and you double the value of the same ten minutes.
Narrating your day is brilliant, but it can't correct you or surprise you. That's the one thing a partner gives that a wall doesn't — a reply. So talk to me. I'm free, I'm awake at 3am, and I will never once sigh at your grammar. You can ramble at the fox in the Gora app, out loud, and get an answer back in the language, which is about as close to a real chat as you can get with nobody in the room. It's also a soft place to fail before you fail in front of an actual human — which, by the way, you should also do, ideally from day one.
Pick two of these seven. Do them tomorrow, out loud, for ten minutes. The person you're waiting to practise with will turn up eventually — and when they do, your mouth will already know the way.