How do you learn the real meaning of words and phrases without losing something by translating it all to English?

I’m learning Spanish and I’ve noticed YouTube videos and google translate, even DuoLingo or Babbel will give you a short direct translation of a word or phrase then I find out later there was some context or detail missing thet drastically changes the meaning (for instance someone telling you a phrase means something innocuous like what’s up, or no way but the literal translation AND the way it is used are both very vulgar and no one mentioned it)

I don’t want to learn the Spanish words for English words - I want to learn Spanish. I want to think and communicate eloquently in Spanish and I’m noticing it is hard to do that when my only source of information on the meaning of a word or phrase is an English translation which loses a lot.

I think for some common words when I learn more I will be able to “update” a more accurate meaning in my head from listening to tv shows and getting how and when they used it — but in the mean time I feel like I am intentionally learning the wrong meaning for each word because the translation loses so much

What do you do about this? How do you learn a language without just speaking English with Spanish words so to speak?

submitted by /u/Greedy-Parsley8428
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from Language Learning https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/118h2vj/how_do_you_learn_the_real_meaning_of_words_and/
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