Disclaimer: before other native English speakers chew me out for teaching bad English I want to say a few things. I'm not saying that words like this should be used in written English or that it's technically correct, but it is common in the southern part of the US and its use has been slowly expanding throughout the past few decades. Also, we do also say "you all" and "you guys" as well, but if you're going to ever visit the southern part of the US it's good to at least be able to understand words like this when spoken. Last but not least, y'all is used both in cities and in the country in the South. Unlike the stereotype, it's not just said by rednecks and it's usually said pretty quickly and without a southern drawl either. 

So without further ado, I present one of the more ridiculous "words" used in English. I thought I'd include it because it is one that I would honestly use in conversation on occasion. 

y'all means "you all" and in spoken conversation you can add other contractions onto it. 

For example 

"Y'all'd"

"Y'all's"

"Y'all've" 

or the mother of them all

"Y'all'd've"

For example 

"you guys should have gone. Y'all'd've really liked that movie" 

Again, it looks really funny when written down, but it is said. 

Here are are a few links that talk about this further. 

http://es.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=y'all'd've

https://m.reddit.com/r/doesnottranslate/comments/313390/american_english_yalldve_triple_contraction_of/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_English_contractions

I should point out though that the more extreme examples mentioned like "y’all’dn’t’ve" and "y’all’ll’ven’t" I would never say and I don't really remember having heard either. 

Funny, right? I'd never really paid that much attention to it until recently. 

Having said all this, I want to discourage English learners from using words like "gonna", "wanna", "imma", "u", "r", "ur"...

Just because a word is pronounced one way in every day conversation doesn't mean that you should write it that way. It doesn't make you appear native, it makes you appear childish or uneducated so avoid those. Normal contractions on the other hand can make you appear more native. So

Bad: gonna, wanna, imma...

Good: I'm, I'll, you're, we'd, they've...

For example, I've added a couple dozen Spanish language news sites to my flipboard so that instead of having to actively seek out content in Spanish I get a large chunk of it interspersed with content in English. Along these same lines, I've tried to simply substitute English sources for Spanish sources wherever I feel like I don't lose much in the process.

I also try to use the Spanish version of Wikipedia where possible. Quite frankly though, often times the English pages for the same topics are significantly richer in content and I have to fall back on them. I can usually guess ahead of time if there will be a big difference fortunately. Similarly, I have the default language to sites like Facebook and Italki set to Spanish and when searching for something online I generally use one of the Spanish versions of Google.

Even when driving I have a couple of my preprogrammed radio stations set to Spanish stations (although Houston has somehow mastered the art of having really shitty radio stations, especially for being the fourth biggest city in the country).

On my phone, in addition to basic apps such as a dictionary and thesauraus I have anki. I don't, however, use any of the premade decks, but I instead add words, phrases or sentences that stood out to me for some reason from things I read or conversations I had (oftentimes because something about the grammar seems unusual or because it seems like a phrase that I'll probably use a derivation of a lot in the future). I try to keep them at least somewhat in context and in my opinion it's important to avoid putting anything on the back of the card in one's native language if at all possible. When I'm bored I then review some of the cards. Ultimately, it's supplemental; not something to use as a primary means of learning.

Sometimes I want to get a sense of how common a phrase is and how consistently it translates a certain way. To do that I often use linguee.

One idea that I'll probably implement soon, is to use post-it notes for various things around my apartment, but unlike the way that most people do it (and in fairness, that I've done it before), I plan to also emphasize synonyms and include any relevant notes or examples that I think might be helpful.

So what are some tricks or language learning hacks that you've picked up over the years? I'm a big believer that formal ways of learning languages are hugely overrated and ineffective when used beyond the occasional reference guide or means of assistance. Also, in order for a language to both maintain and build on itself after you stop "learning" a language, you need to have both good habits and natural means of exposure to the language. This is easier said than done.

I'm curious if anyone here has had much success just randomly contacting local groups of people from a country that speaks your target language.

For example, in my case I would like to find spanish speaking groups from Latin America or Spain here in Houston to try to join up with from time to time now that my spanish is relatively advanced, but a quick google search turned up fewer good results than expected (I guess I'm also a little more interested in dialects that I'm a little less familiar with, so that may have played a role as well). It seemed easier to find meetups of and specifically for a bunch of other language learners, but that just sounds excruciatingly slow and boring to me. 

Ultimately, I'm curious about the experience of people who've done something similar and what they've learned in the process (such as how to find such groups, how to best contact them...).

Thanks in advance for your input.