I learned Spanish to a moderate degree with Pimsleur's programs, and I also learned some French. Planning on taking on Russian and Chinese some time soon.

I highly recommend the Pimsleur method. I don't have much experience, but I did try the Michel Thomas tapes before it. The difference is that Michel Thomas teaches the rules of the language (verb conjugation, etc.). Pimsleur doesn't ever, ever go there. The whole Pimsleur course is built on speaking in the language and you saying sentences in the language, over and over again. It never tries to analyze why things are said a certain way, it trusts you to just learn by rote repetition the important words, and slowly begin to develop an ear for how the language works. This is how languages are learned naturally when growing up, and I found that it works brilliantly for me.

One thing though: with Spanish, I have several people I can regularly converse in Spanish with, which is very helpful. If you don't, you'll probably have to do other things (like read newspapers in the language, read books, etc.) to make up for it.

Intense studying with flashcards for vocabulary is also important and should be done every day. There is no substitute for thirty minutes without fail each morning. If you keep it up for a year, your word power in the new tongue will explode. But it must be every day.

Use native materials as soon as you can and make your vocabulary lists from them. A tutor can really help with that in the early stages.

Get a tutor or some one-on-one lessons to sharpen your pronunciation. You're pronouncing things wrong and no matter what the studies of casual students say, serious learners can adopt native accents with practice at any age. It takes hundreds of hours of practice to make muscle memory work and you need regular correction. This is the only stage where instruction is indispensable. Practice pronunciation constantly. Do it on the way to work or school, in the shower, all the time. It doesn't take brains -- you could almost do it in your sleep -- but you need hundreds of hours of practice. Muscle memory.

Arabic is really hard (and useless for picking up girls). You should expect it to take years and years. If you can't live abroad, it may never come to you. If you're only studying on-and-off, you might not have the discipline. Maybe consider an easier alternative. (Pretty much anything but Korean is easier.)

Lessons are useful but not remotely sufficient for learning a language. North Americans, frankly, don't get this at all; we think that knowing a second language means we took it in college. The fact is that people who've studied a language only through coursework (and associated tools) almost never reach the point of being able to understand conversations between native speakers or hold their own in ordinary conversation. It's really a sort of pathetic joke how badly that system works. Europeans, on the other hand, pick up languages in their drinking water; damn you, Europeans!

If you're at all able to set aside a few months to devote yourself to learning Arabic and go to an Arabic speaking country, your learning will be greatly accelerated. Failing that, here's a trick I've been planning to use for years: find a senior citizens' centre devoted to the community that speaks the language. Old people in nursing homes are often starved for attention, and they're hardwired to help younger people learn.

Finally, you have one major advantage: you're trying to learn the language of a reviled minority. (I'm assuming you're in the US, though it's true to a lesser extent in some other places.) That's a huge act of respect toward people who are used to being disrespected. If you're halfway sincere, it should be easy to meet people who would be happy to help you learn. If I were you I'd find out if there are any Iraqi ex-pats in your area. They'd likely be well educated. Not only could you learn a lot, I bet you'd make some friends for life.

It is also not necessary. You may be surprised to find that we in Europe also learn languages in a class (granted often taken for years, not semesters)[1]. This will certainly be sufficient for someone to get to a point where they can "hold their own". Interest in the language in form of self-study further enhances this, even if nothing compares to immersion.

As for studying without the luxury of immersion, vocabulary is the most important thing. You can make yourself understood with nouns and unconjugated verbs alone. Spice it up with a little basic grammar, and then start listening and reading. TV, movies, books, magazines, dictionary at hand.

[1] Europeans who speak English and German or Swedish do gain reading comprehension in a free bonus language: Dutch.

It's hard to exaggerate how far multilingualism is from the norm here. No doubt the reasons for this go far beyond individual effort or technique.

1) Practice with a native speaker.

2) Ongoing motivation to study.

Craigslist may solve this problem for you, depending on where you live and what you're studying. On Craigslist you'll find native speakers offering conversation at very low prices. Here's a current example on the Austin Craigslist:

"Conversational Japanese lesson for 20 dollars per hour (Central Austin)

Let's meet at a coffee shop, and speak in Japanese; please buy me a drink. I am a Japanese female who moved from Tokyo recently. 20 dollars per hour. "

I'm guessing this person doesn't provide organized lessons and help understanding grammar, but honestly, I've tried a couple of "teachers" charging $20-$25 per hour, and they didn't either. People with good teaching skills charge more, I guess. $20 per hour to talk to a native speaker is worth every penny, though, if only because you make sure you study so you aren't embarrassed by your lack of progress since last time. If it helps (it helped me) you can cultivate a mild crush on your tutor for extra motivation ;-)

Okay, so you've picked one of the five most difficult languages in the world for English learners to pick up ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_lear... ) -- I have a lot of friends who speak Arabic to various levels, and every single one of them did it through a combination of university classes and immersion classes in the area.

For some knowledge that you probably know, Arabic is more a collection of languages than a language itself. Regardless of the dialect you eventually want to learn, however, you're best off learning Modern Standard Arabic first. The tricky part, however, is that it's more difficult than many of the dialects, which have dropped off many of the classical forms. However, no matter the dialect, you're going to want to watch TV and read the newspaper, so off to the hardest bit comes first. :)

With Modern Standard Arabic, your best bet is unfortunately to get in a class or get a tutor. I personally have never heard of much luck with self-study, because there are so many traps you can fall into when trying to creatively use the language. If your interest is read-only, you might be okay, but listening, speaking, and writing may be too much for self-study.

If self-study is the only option, one route you may want to consider is starting with a simpler related language, Farsi. You'll get the alphabet down, some of the same words, and some of the tricks. It may be easier to start reading Farsi then translate the knowledge to Arabic for a self-studier.

I learned Spanish (lapsed intermediate) and am learning Turkish. After three years of on and off self-study, I took a month-long class in Istanbul, and did more there than the previous three years, even living with a native speaker. With that base, I'm able to progress in my self-study.

Arabic would be trivial for converts to Islam, Maronite or Coptic Christianity; because you will find an all embracing community of brothers. For me, someone who switches between Classical Arabic, and near perfect mainstream American accent, and who doesn't shy away from taking pot-shots at established religio-political dogmas on both sides .. well, tough fucking luck finding friends.

If there are any worldly Arabs who enjoy al-Mutanabi with MJ and the occasional line of coke, and who love reading scripture to ladies of ill repute: hola at me, dog.

I hold nothing sacred, and if you aim to offend, well, we should grab a beer, or indulge in some drunken pen-pal wankery to celebrate an idealized image of alleged former glory (of which I am the foremost perpetuator :-)

[Three things I will not talk about: God, Football, or the Bush Administration]

I'm not Arab, but dude we should so get a drink.

* Step 1: Learn the grammar and the few thousand most important words. This is the hardest and least fun part.

* Step 2: Read a lot in order to obtain a large vocabulary. A lot.

* Step 3: Listen to the language. TV, Radio, Movies, etc.

* Step 4: Talk to native speakers. A lot.

And it gets even worse when they (non-native English speakers) speak to English people who instinctively try to use their usual English humour and then feel confused because their conversation partner doesn't get or misunderstand what they're trying to express.

- Try all the methods, see what sticks. Your learning style, basic knowledge/ability up until now will be different to everyone else's. I personally hate rosetta stone and software like it but I've seen other people have a lot of success with it. I like classes and exams because they force me to stick to a syllabus but other people hate classroom learning. It's extremely personal and no one can really prescribe a best method.

- There will be times where you lack material (grammar, vocab, etc) and times where you lack practice. For me there's always been a cycle of learning lots of material and going out to actually use it in real life. These cycles can last a few hours, days or even years. If you ever feel like you've got a lot of knowledge, but not much confidence, its time to make native speaker friends and _practice_. If on the other hand you feel like you've hit a plateau, most likely its time to hit the books.

- Learning on and off is fine, don't sweat that at all. Its perfectly alright to stop studying for a few months here and there, especially if you're spending regular time with native speakers. I barely touched a textbook or learning resource in the entire two years I lived in Japan.

Advantages:

* Michel Thomas CDs are significantly cheaper than software-based programs

* audio format means you can study on your commute, rather than only in front of your computer, and you can easily use the CDs with a Free OS

* I like that the program is interactive, and there are two other students on the recording -- it feels like you're getting useful feedback that you wouldn't get practicing alone

Possible Disadvantages:

* the program's focus is on grammar, which is useful for me, but it does mean that you don't learn a lot of vocabulary; I am on the twelfth disc of 15, and the lessons have barely touched on the use of nouns. This might be a downside if you are trying to become conversant with native speakers.

* the audio format means you don't always get the spelling of new words (sometimes they are spelled aloud on the recording, but not always); I deal with this by looking new words up in a German dictionary as I hear them

I also bought a book (German Quickly, by April Wilson) designed as a crash course for students needing to pass a language exam. It looks like it will be helpful in filling in the gaps in the Michel Thomas program, but I honestly can't recommend it yet, since I have barely cracked it -- reading a grammar book is so much dryer and more boring than listening to audio lessons!

The other feature/problem is that you're hearing the two other students learning with you. They will often make the similar mistakes that you will make, which is encouraging. However, I think that 1 out of 3 fluent speakers on a tape is less effective for learning the correct pronunciation.

An interesting method, nonetheless.

For those who don't know the program: the way it works is that the teacher says a sentence in English, at which point you are supposed to pause the recording and formulate it in German (or whatever language). When you continue the playback, one of the other students will also formulate the sentence in German. Then the teacher will correct them if they're wrong, and repeat the correct sentence (with correct pronunciation). The idea is that the correct pronunciation is the last thing you hear.

It's true that this may be less than ideal if your goal is to speak the language fluently. I'm mostly worried about passing a (written) translation exam, so pronunciation is a secondary concern for me.

As for closer to the ground tips WRT study resources, I like the Before You Know It flash card system for getting the basic building blocks: http://www.byki.com/. They have an iPhone app, which is key; I manage to learn a few words in obscure nooks and crannies of times. I also find as many language learning podcasts as possible, put them on my iPod and listen to them when I take extended walks. I usually take a course or two, not necessarily for the coursework or diploma but to keep my study goals on track. After I get some basics, I engineer a situation where I need to speak the language, whether it's an extended vacation, working abroad, a dedicated language partner, or something more creative (I once volunteered at a kindergarten!). I've tried immersion without getting a few basics beforehand, and while it may get some to their goals more quickly, I found the frustration too great and found investing a few weeks or months of prep before trying immersion more fruitful. Additional supplemental material: movies/tv (with in-language subtitles), children's books, switching your electronics to the language, romantic partner, news articles....

Arabic is especially hard IMHO, I've taken a handful of Arabic (MSA) courses, studied by immersion, and even worked professionally with Arabic text (machine translation research). When I started to learn German from scratch as a native English speaker I still knew more German than Arabic simply due to cognates and ease of reading. Doh! Good luck!

Otherwise there is Tim Ferriss method http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-lan...

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

He has a number of reviews of software packages and websites, along with his own "language hacking" guide.

"I want to be able to correctly speak the 5 tones of Thai and be able to read a given text of several sentences aloud to a local (who is not necessarily familiar with English and European accents), so that they can understand it."

And he failed at that... http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/327591-one-guys-effort-t...

I watch a live streaming weather channel from beijing, and another channel out of nanjing. Since the connections are spotty, I have $mplayer -dump the stream straight to file, and then play from that. This endows mplayer the ability to seek, and of course plays much smoother without the cache issues.

Use IRC. Typing the language is great practice and native speakers can offer helpful advice.

Staying motivated is the hardest part, prevent burn out any way possible. Use automation when it makes sense, though It's easy to spend too much time messing with tools to learn, rather than learning.

http://quizlet.com/

For example, there are thousands of French flash card sets, but not all of them have English as the first language (and some of them are French and English but English is the second language). I've found that really the best way is to stab in the dark until you find a user who has created the best content.

Oh, and while you're here, it would be great to have some nice smartphone formatting or an app for doing revision on the move.

Looking forward to the audio features!

I started learning japanese in college, there were 4 lessons per week, I was doing well with the grammar but spoken part was kind of stuttering rather than fluent speaking. So after 2 years of study one day my japanese instructor asked me a favor: She wanted me to help her friend's daughter study english. The girl spoke very little English. I was expected to teach that girl English in Japanese. At first I couldn't decide if she was playing a joke on me to see my reaction. When I realised she was serious, I told her that was practically impossible as I was not fluent in japanese and it might have been a problem. She just said "I believe in you, you'll do well". I said "What the hell let's give it a try, at most I'll fail miserably and have a story to tell how I pissed off an entire japanese family".

So, for 4 hours a week, I started studying with this girl, aged 12, with only a small english-japanese dictionary in my hand. She also had a similar dictionary, but it was digital and able to convert between kanji-hiragana-katakana and English. Probably it was from the future and could read also read our thoughts. Anyways vocabulary wasn't a problem but communication was. I was speaking slowly when I tried to explain basic English grammar. But day by day, my speaking got more fluent and after about 3 months or so, I was able to read a basic english text and translate it into japanese simultaneously, sentence by sentence. I guess the lesson here is sticking with the practice on an ongoing basis. I want to stress that 9 months of study with that girl advanced my japanese much further than the previous 2 year study as I was actively speaking most of the time.

My recommendation would be to start with a Pimsleur course. Don't worry about writing and vocabulary at first, just get a feel for the language. With Arabic, you have a different alphabet to learn - do that before you try learning written vocabulary, or you will be forever hamstrung by romanized transliteration messing with your pronunciation. For vocabulary, spaced repetition is the way to go. There are lots of sites and systems for this. Go with the ones that give you a high level of control over what you are studying, and train only production (i.e. going from English to Arabic), recognition will take care of itself. For grammar, here's a cute idea I had some success with in Japanese which has highly regular grammar (I don't know about Arabic): as you learn the grammar rules, write code to produce them. E.g. write a function to conjugate the past tense. When it's working, you have the basis of a game to test yourself. Use your powers of abstraction to bypass rote memorization.

Don't be down about the fact you don't manage to keep studying religiously. As long as you get some studying done, no matter how little, you are making progress. There is a lot of snake oil out there - if you find something isn't fun or isn't working for you, don't try and force yourself. Most of us learnt languages the wrong way in school, and learned a lot of bad study habits and worst of all, got the idea that it's supposed to be hard and take a long time. Not true - use your experience of learning programming as a template for what your experience of learning a real language should be like. (assuming you are a programmer, apologies if not)

From what I know, Arabic is about as far from English as Mandarin, so let me put in plainly:

If you want to become fluent, expect to put in about a decade of work. This is not an easy language like French or Spanish which you'd be able to pick up by studying at home. You need to go live in an Arabic-speaking country. Ideally, find a native girlfriend / boyfriend there. When memorizing vocab, it's more efficient (for me, at least) to memorize for a day or two, then forget, then relearn a few more times than to try to keep a new word in my mind for a long time span. Forgetting and then relearning just seems to be the trick to shoring up long-term memory. I find I need to learn a new word an average of 4 or 5 times before it really sticks.

Most people go abroad for a limited amount of time. You should study tapes before you go, to use your practice time there effectively.

I think the Michel Thomas tapes/CDs are the best to start with, for the languages they are available in (mostly Romance languages). After you are done with these you can switch to Pimsleur for more study.

I found that the Michel Thomas tapes are enough background that you can have simple conversations, which of course is only the start of learning a language.

2. Find a live-in girlfriend or boyfriend who doesn't speak your language and is not motivated to learn it.

3. Carry a dictionary in your pocket, which you will have to reference constantly to speak with the aforementioned gf/bf.

4. Spend all of your time with people who don't speak your language.

5. Study a lot. Use a succinct grammar book like those published by Routeledge, use a Pimsleur course to get the language feel, and hammer away at vocabulary.

I lived in China, Ukraine and the Philippines and studied their respective languages without the benefit of a monolingual live-in girlfriend. I still learned these languages with varying levels of proficiency, but it was slow going. Then I moved to Brazil and followed the steps above. The difference is remarkable. I was completely conversational and literate in Portugese in about four months.

If Spanish is what you want to learn, then it's pretty easy. Go to Antigua, Guatemala and spend 12 weeks in one of the 150 language schools. It will cost between $150-$200/week for classes with your own private instructor.

I spent 10 weeks at this school:

http://www.travelpod.com/ad/Proyecto_Linguistico_Francisco_M...

Be careful, this is a backbacker and gringo town. You might find yourself partying late into the night and not studying too much. Here's my favorite bar:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4123596654

There are two main reasons for this (in my mind at least):

1) I haven't been fully immersed in Polish; it's too easy to speak English instead.

2) I don't understand English grammar.

If you have an analytical mind, I think point 2 is very important. The amount of textbooks I've read and failed to understand because it's like they're written in a different language. I think it's a bit like when discussing programming terms with a non-techie.

Anyway, I'm now spending my time learning about nouns, adjectives, verbs and what object and subject are in relation to a sentence.

It's a crying shame that I've got to the age of 28 without knowing this stuff, and a damning indictment of the English educational system (and myself!) /but/ I think it'll be worth it ;)

I ask because I spent a year or two studying Polish (not in Poland, though) and in my experience, Polish people were nonplussed by this. In fact, they were rather consistently cold and unhelpful. Their attitude seemed to be "Polish is for Poles, why are you intruding?" I'm curious to know if this is endemic or if I just fell afoul of small sample size. I eventually bailed and decided to go learn a language where people would react to my feeble attempts to speak it by kissing me and offering me food.

p.s. Knowledge of English grammar would be nice, but you're overestimating how much it would help you learn a Slavic language. Latin actually would be better, because like Latin the Slavic languages are still highly inflected (i.e. they vary word endings by case). Anyway, you'd be better off learning from an undergraduate Polish grammar textbook in English, or, if you can read it, a children's grammar in Polish.

How do Poles react to your attempts to learn Polish

I think you were a victim of a small sample size :) All the Polish people I've met have been seriously impressed with my attempts to speak and learn Polish. For those that don't speak English, the effect's the same, usually with a smile on their face. There's one shop I love going to as the various staff there always try and have a conversation with me in Polish, very friendly and patiently.

The reason I need English grammar is because the description of grammar doesn't make any sense to me - I'm at the real basic stage of working out when to use adjective forms of a noun and so on. Shameful, but true sadly.

AJATT's a great website for learning Japanese - you might be able to adapt it to Arabic: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

At the core of AJATT are the following principles:

1. Total immersion

2. Use of an SRS (Anki is free, cross-platform, & open source) to learn vocabulary IN CONTEXT

3. Language exchange with a Skype buddy to work on pronunciation

I don't know if #3 would be adequate for mastering Arabic pronunciation though. Japanese pronunciation is relatively easy for native English speakers so it's not an issue, but you might have to find somebody IRL to help you out.

I've never had a lot of luck with Rosetta. It often came away with the wrong meaning of the words, etc. I prefer knowing a little of the basic grammer to see what's going on first. This makes it easier to learn other related languages.

I learned a good amount of French in a few days because the verb forms and latin roots are so similar. Rosetta is like asking a native speaker the rules of their grammer. Can you say why you speak the way you do - other than "that is/ is not right"? I can't very well.

I think the Pimsleur audio lessons are nice for Spanish and French, not so much for Arabic. I think the best route (barring immersion study) is to take classes, or do self study with the Al-Kitaab textbook and then take more advanced classes (as my first teacher did).

1) Most important is how much time you put in. Don't worry about the on-and-off, though regular is better. Don't worry too much about efficiency unless you're putting in the hours. For Chinese I estimate I've spent at least 2000 hours studying to get to where I am today.

2) Vocab's important. SRS can help with this. I personally like using online dictionaries and translating the example sentences. Any word you don't understand in an example sentence, look up. It will take a long time, but eventually you will start to remember common words. One day you will get to the stage where you recognise 95% of the words you see, and that's enough to get basic understanding of most material. You'll probably eventually want to aim for about 10,000 words of passive vocabulary. At 10 minutes a word, that's already 1500 hours+, about 40 weeks, 40 hours a week.

3) Mandarin or arabic are languages that many people speak and study. You'll be able to find plenty of material online, videos, radio, news, blogs. TV and radio are probably less efficient if you're not able to read similar material, so try to find material with transcripts or subtitles and use those.

4) Teachers can be helpful, but are expensive. VOIP classes may help with the cost, or living in a country that speaks the language. The main thing teachers will help with are correcting usage mistakes and pronunciation. Working with a teacher is in my opinion not much more efficient (maybe less) than self-study for pure vocab learning, so self-study vocab if you want to save money. Useful exercises are writing essays (ideally by hand) and having them corrected, and reading passages out loud for pronunciation practice. General chat can be helpful for building confidence and because it uses different vocab.

5) There are lots of free resources for learners online. For example, http://www.dliflc.edu/products.html has an Arabic grammar search, and some other Arabic resources if you look for them. It maybe worth trying some of these. Try different language versions of topics in Wikipedia, sometimes the foreign languages are translated directly from the English versions. Or for words you can't find in a dictionary, try doing a search with the target language equivalent of "what's the meaning of xyz".

6) Unfortunately though vocab and time are the limiting factors, so though you may be slightly more efficient with software and specialist podcasts (definitely worth at least trying some free learning site podcasts for arabic, sure there must be some out there), optimise for maximum time spent rather than software bought. While my mandarin is a long way from where I want it to be, I'm reasonably fluent in the basics, and given time I'm confident I'll get there on the rest.

7) I've spent a fair amount on private tuition, but nothing on specialist software, and the textbooks I've bought I haven't used much. A good dictionary will do you just as well as a lot of textbooks, though textbooks won't do any harm, just not essential. So don't worry too much about not having the right tools so long as you are able to figure out example sentences in a dictionary, armed with plenty of patience you'll probably be alright. Incidentally I'd say with today's internet, it's probably less important to go overseas to study than before, although it probably won't hurt (apart from the disruption of moving to a new place). Language partners can help, but if you're aiming for 500 hours of study it's likely that you can earn enough to pay for a teacher for 500 hours in less than 500 hours doing something other than teaching English, so consider this more for fun unless you particularly enjoy teaching people.

8) Don't worry too much about age. Do worry about motivation and the time you spend. Kids grow up in an environment with educational TV shows, parents and teachers correcting their mistakes, and many hours of language classes learning literature, grammar, composition, public speaking, and so on. You can do some but not all of this, but as an adult you have responsibilities and so the limiting factor is likely to be the time you decide to spend on these areas. Try finding kids TV on youtube or equivalents, but realise that it's going to be more expensive and hard to simulate the learning environment of a child compared to a child growing up in the country.

9) You'll forget things if you don't study for a while, native or non-native speaker. But you'll pick them up soon enough when you start studying again. So don't worry too much about that, aim for regular study, but study when you can is better than not at all.

10) Before spending the thousands of hours and the money to learn a language, be clear about your goals and the level you want to attain. You can go anywhere up from understanding a menu and asking someone where they're from to understanding a country's culture and literature and being able to talk fluently with natives. To really get good at a language you'll need to spend a lot of time, this will be easier if you can justify it for reasons beyond just the language, probably professional or personal reasons in the long term.

Put the time in and you'll get there before too long. Have fun.

Edit: http://gloss.dliflc.edu/ has lessons for many languages. Edit2: Karaoke can be fun too - search youtube. Edit3: I like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgElZAj3ePI quite funky, though it's difficult to know if her accent / vocab is standard, it's still fun to try to follow.

Learning a language by first learning to mimic songs is a great way to build pronunciation skills, and also get to know common words and how they go together. You then also have a tune to associate with different constructs, and it's much easier to memorise a tune than it is to memorise words.

iTunes apps page: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/321speak/id382201422 our site: http://321speak.com

http://www.shawshara.com/wiki/Main_Page

The page for the song I linked to above is:

http://www.shawshara.com/wiki/Ayami_Beek_(song)

Edit: although looking at the (English) lyrics reminds me that karaoke is a particularly good way to learn to say how much you like somebody, which is useful but not the be all and end all

Edit2: The world cup Waving Flag song is fun and is translated into lots of languages. Here's the Arabic version with subtitles and translations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apeVbw02nzc

I definitely notice that I can speak better when I do the lessons regularly. I try to listen to each lesson three times to really get it.

I have also studied at university and bought the Pimsleur course for Mandarin. Pimsleur is good but only if you are just starting out. I like how it focuses on repetition and gets you speaking which is the most important part.

I grew up in a bilingual home but was not raised bilingual. I used to nag my mother incessantly to teach me German words and I picked up some vocabulary that way. I also used audiotapes some. When I was 16, a friend of the family got married and several of her relatives came, some of whom spoke no English. I finally began speaking German during the month they were visiting. I later lived in Germany as an adult -- not really in an immersion setting, though, because I mostly interacted with American military families and mostly spoke English. Still, living there did improve my spoken German a good deal. I speak conversational German but really can't read or write it that well and can't much follow the news because they use words I don't know. I studied French formally in school for a time. I read and write it a little bit but really don't speak it fluently and never developed an ear for it. Growing up in a home where I heard German regularly meant I started out with an ear for it, and that really helped.

FWIW: My mother has said she learned English by watching TV. I have found that helpful with trying to pick up a little Spanish but I am really not persistent enough with it.

First one - English: I pretty much grasped the concept of English language simply by watching (a lot - and for years) Cartoon Network as a kid (FYI: my parents don't speak languages other than Croatian). And I probably watched all those cartoons over and over as they were replayed. When I got to the point where English was thought in school, I pretty much knew everything they were gonna teach us - it was just brushing out the knowledge correctly, and most importantly - putting it to use. Later, since I was around computers (and even later - internet), it all came to me naturally word-by-word since I was using English actively.

German: During those active cartoon watching days, Cartoon Network got "locked", and I switched to a German program where I watched (german synced) anime. The "putting it to use" part did not happen with German language, so even tho I cant really speak properly today (never studied or used it), I do however find it that I can understand 85% of the time exactly what they are saying (i can even read properly many things). I have a really hard time doing the talking since I've always listened (the cartoons) and never actually talked - never put it to use.

Today, as a 20ish year old guy - I'm studying Japanese (anime history & Go board game - kinda just kicked in), and I find it that I have a really hard time expanding my vocabulary. I am missing all that easy long-time immersion in the language that previously did the trick. Now I gotta hard-study it. I guess I could watch a lot of Japanese movies & anime but I don't really have the time or will to do so today.

1) Learn to read the alphabet, including as much pronunciation as possible (Trivial with German, slightly harder with Russian)

2) Learn just enough grammar to be able to recognize units of meaning and general semantic structure(ie be able to recognize generally when somethings a new word vs a new form of an old word, as well as word order). If you spend more than a week on this, you've spent far too much time.

3) Scour the web for children's stories and other material aimed at beginning readers. Pop the stories into google translate, and go word by word, making sure to distinguish each's meaning. Don't worry about consciously memorizing words, just cram in the volume. Aim for an hour a day. Subvocalise so you get the idea of the sounds of words

4) Once you're getting through stories with relative ease, search out video material where both the audio and the subtitles are in that language (This may be hard, depending on the language. Anime is a GREAT source of this type of thing for Russian). Speak along with the dialogue.

5) Once your comprehension's gotten good, seek out native speakers, and pester them to all ends of the earth (I admit unfair advantage in having a ready supply of conversational partners in both languages). Quantity, quantity, quantity.

I feel this approach trades off comprehensibility and fluency for absolute grammaticaloty, though I wonder if it might have gotten me past the toil threshhold (the line at which it is pleasurable, rather than a chore, to consume media/converes in a lanuage) a bit faster, with commesurate long term learning benefits.

Some day it'd be great to have rich, interactive ways to do learning. Rosetta Stone is cool. My experience is that this is good for a colloquial/conversational emphasis. It's all about details at some point though -- so Alif Baa / Al-Kitaab might not be so bad.

Personally, I don't know Arabic -- but I had a friend who was staying with us who was studying it at a university -- so I was curious to look it up. There are a lot of different theories about the best way to learn language: immersion, multimedia, native speakers, etc. I think when you're learning a language for the first time though, there's so much ground to cover, that it doesn't matter which direction you take. The best direction is the one you can go furthest in (is the most sustainable because of interest, convenience, availability, etc.) which is most positive and least negative. I.e., we don't learn a language perfectly the first 100 times traversing through it. But gradually we get there.

But it's probably like with programming -- the most undervalued link is actually just putting yourself in front of it (as much as possible, in a sustainable manner). This can be something as simple as eating at a restaurant where they speak Arabic. Or it can be flashcards, etc. At any rate, I guess they still use it at Midd too (I'm from California -- UC Berkeley and Stanford, I think use Al-Kitaab too, or used to):

http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/arabic/curriculum/courses

But yeah, depending on interests / how engaged you'll be with the language in the future (reading a newspaper can be both a goal and a tool -- but only if you really need it / want it), it probably all depends.

If you only care about conversation and not reading or writing, a foreign girlfriend can work well too, if she's sufficiently patient.

I've seen first-hand how hard it can be for people to learn a language with a completely different alphabet. Try and learn the spoken language to at least a conversational level, until you attempt to learn the written form.

If I could give 3 tips, I would suggest:

1. If it's an option, move to a country that speaks the language as a first language, and if you can limit the amount of English contact you have 2. Focus on grammar as well as vocabulary 3. Over-expose yourself to the language… watch Arabic tv, listen to Arabic radio and music …etc.

The thing that helped me the most was chatting by msn with my coworkers (not cellphone). You have the structure of a conversation with read/write times. You also get the latest jargon and regionalisms in written. Don't overlook this useful resource!!!

Second, you really must have a strong interest in the language, culture, or people of the target language (or at least be able to grow that interest over time). Preferably, the sound of the language should also appeal to you on a certain level. Learning a language is a commitment. That said, it is possible to dabble in different languages. It is one of the best ways to learn whether a language will interest you over the longer term (and a great vignette into another culture).

A good book on the subject is How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. He has a system of techniques that he's developed over the years, having supposedly learned a couple of dozen languages. It is helpful to study other polyglots, such as Sir Richard Burton, as well.

I learned French on my own. I can speak passably and understand it well (spoken and reading).

Here's my method:

1. Get a good grammar book. You can get a simple grammar book to start with. I like the Dover Essential grammars (e.g., Essential French Grammar). They're short, concise, and less likely to overwhelm. Plus, they're a handy reference later on.

2. Get a good dictionary. Start with a bilingual dictionary. Eventually, you can get a dictionary in your target language (a dictionary that natives use). Make sure it has pronunciation in IPA. You can then read the definitions in the target language, which helps add to the volume of consumed text and meaning. This is a tip I got from http://www.antimoon.com, a great language learning site.

3. Develop a set of flash cards. These days, I always use SRS (spaced repetition software). I started with SuperMemo, one of the originators of the technique. Sadly, this app is a bit neglected and the interface is poor. My SRS app of choice these days is Anki. It's a great app written by an Australian who wanted to learn Japanese while living in Japan, so it supports kana and other character sets well. Plus, it's written in Python and OSS. It works on many platforms.

4. By a Pimsleur audio course. This is probably the best way to get some speaking ability early on, with good pronunciation. Pimsleur also uses the SRS technique. There are other audio courses, but Pimsleur is the best, IMO.

5. Begin listening to native speakers. If you don't live in a country that speaks the language, you can rent movies and turn on the subtitles (turn them off later, either after you've learned a bit or if you've seen the movie a couple of times and know the story). You can also listen to the radio. Find a good station that has web broadcasts with speakers and no music (I listen to rfi.fr). Listen. Daily. Even when I barely knew the language I would put this on in the background and just let my subconscious be immersed in it. Eventually, I started to be able to pick out words. Later, I understood phrases, etc. Eventually, you'll hear something over and over and be compelled to look it up. This is how you learn the daily idioms.

6. Join a speaking group (e.g., via meetup). The only way to become fluent is to use what you've learned, even if you stumble early on (and you will).

7. Ideally, move to a country that speaks the language. Even if only for a few months. I moved to France for two years. While you're there, find excuses to get out every day and talk with people. Take a class on your favorite subject (fencing, basket weaving, etc.) with locals. Go to the market.

When learning a language, you go through stages. The first important stage is beginning to understand the spoken language. The next step is being able to follow a conversation. At a certain point, things will "click" and you'll have learned enough to where you're not studying so much as consuming. Eventually, you learn new vocabulary through use--just as with your native language.

Language is a uniquely human trait. Our brains are wired for it. We learn through saturation. Follow the advice of Antimoon and expose your brain to as much content as you can. Read or listen every day. Eventually your brain starts to work things out.

Finally, once you've learned your language, keep it. You must review or you'll begin losing it. I listen to the radio.

IMHO, the far most important thing to do is to listen. I prefer podcasts, but anything (radio, films, TV, overheard conversations in bars) will do.

Understanding spoken language is also (again in my opinion) by far the most difficult part of learning a language. Especially in real life, and really noisy, situations, where you probably only hear half of the sounds people are making. The rest you will have to fill in yourself - which is sort of like solving crossword puzzles in real time.

This takes a lot of practice, and there's really no way around that.

Starting by studying all the rules of formal grammar is, I think, a bit like learning to play tennis by first studying the rule book a couple of years...

I liked how the previous poster highlighted the need for a concise grammar, focusing too much on grammar rules can be fatal and a huge time waster. This was one of the mistakes i made while studying english, this and the on-off attitude, the lack of material and many other errors that now can be easy solved using the net. Things will go a lot differently with my 3rd language (japanese, that i'd like to use in the future to learn mandarin).

The main point that emerges from this great thread is basically that you must leverage the high amount of quality and cheap language-learning material that is now available. Try everything, discard what doesn't work, and as soon as you have defined a plan stick to it.

I think the choice of whether to use a grammar or not depends on the student. If you're a beginning language learner, then it may be best to put it off. If you understand the concepts of declensions and conjugations (and the different tenses, moods, etc. typically encountered), then a grammar can be a quick way to get the lay of the land.

One of the first things I do is to learn the personal pronouns, articles, and conjunctions (short work). Then I'll look at "to be" and "to have" (at least for the Indo-European language family). That way, when I start listening, I've got some scaffolding upon which to start building my understanding. This is one of the few areas where learning a language as an adult has an advantage over the immersion of a child--you can use your cognitive capabilities to take a short cut.

You can fit it into any other learning you do. It really helps put things into your "long-term memory".

Software: Mnemosyne - http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/ Anki - http://ichi2.net/anki/

[1] http://www.myexplore.ca/en/

There's only so much you can learn from books and taking lessons. My skills really took off to fluency level when I moved to the particular country (US, Mexico, Brazil, respectively) for at least few months (I would say at least 6 months) and practiced with native speakers.

http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html

that worked for me that should help you too. These days Internet radio helps learners. I didn't have that when I started out.

It's got pretty good voices and it can speak your text at 6 different speeds in 10 languages in a male or female voice.

From personal experience:

The biggest factor in how fast you improve during your studies is environment. Noticed I said during your studies. Simply being immersed isn't good enough. To create your environment you can (in order of effectiveness):

Find a boy/girlfriend who natively speaks the language. Its best if they cant speak yours. This is steroids for your language learning.

Failing that find roomates - the more the better. Nearly as good.

It doesn't matter if your stuck in your home country - I've met Japanese people who rock at English just because they either had a lazy English speaking partner who couldn't be bothered to learn the lingo or likewise lazy roommates.

Start reading websites, magazines, listening to music and watching films or youtube all in your target language. Pursue your interests as much as possible using your new language. If you like hip-hop then listen to underground hip-hop artists via youtube. Grab their lyrics from the net and translate. Sing it out-load in the shower.

Skype for discussions, Lang8.com for writing blogs and peer review etc etc etc

If your looking at becoming very conversational (talk about wide range of subjects comfortably but not yet bling bling) then its going to be 3 years plus. With that in mind you have to be a well oiled machine with vocabulary management, just being 10% more efficient with your vocabulary means a saving of 3-4 months and compared to the traditional use of lists on paper, software such as Anki helps you be at least 20% more efficient.

Assuming your in this for the long haul, don't neglect the reading and writing part for languages with scripts or "funny" symbols. Rather prioritize it since being able to read books and magazines will help you grasp how things are said naturally. You'll meet new words everyday and come across them time and time again in context helping you internalize them faster. Unlike conversation, you control the pace when reading and its more comfortable for beginners and intermediates. I tried learning Kanji the way native Japanese people do and failed miserably. I tried some books most crap but one gem called "Remembering the Kanji" was absolutely amazing. In 2months I got through 2000kanji and by 6 could draw every single one from memory. And there were faster learners than me! I'm sure there's something for Arabic script if that's tricky.

Get the basic tools. Get a learners dictionary to start. Once you start getting better, try an Arabic dictionary for Arabic kids i.e. no English written whatsoever. Ideal would be a dictionary for the pc to aid faster lookups via copy and paste. Don't by cheap crap though as it will probably have awful explanations and old fashioned examples ending up in you sounding like someones granddad. Likewise look for a good grammar reference.

Get a dictionary plugin for Firefox. I use rikaichan for Japanese. I simply hover over a word and the definition pops up instantly. Very handy.

Lastly implement all of the above slowly one by one, remember Rome wasn't built in a day and have fun.

Hope that helps and good luck.

Now that one would be a tricky one.. Starting a relationship when you can hardly communicate with eachother? ;-)

Now, even if I start a conversation in German, he responds in English. Bad habit. :)

I've absorbed as much as I can absorb from listening to people, language CDs & trying to read the free daily papers. I have pretty good but imprecise reading comprehension. I can have a basic conversation but I get tenses wrong sometimes and cases wrong often. (Farking cases.)

This winter I'm going to pay for a few weeks of one-on-one immersion at the local Berlitz school and hope that gets me over the hump!

Perapera-kun link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3343/

Some might want to try the Listening-Reading approach once they have mastered the basics. I am currently reading Harry Potter in Japanese using this method. Easy way to cement kanji readings.

What is/was Lang8.com? It looks like there's nothing there now.

Unless you want company, don't take group classes in an institute. It's a waste of money and time, because you learn at the other's speed; schools are only useful if you need to take an exam and get a diploma.

You are way better off getting a couple of books with grammar and tapes that you can play over and over again until you finally get it. This step is cheaper than an institute. After a while (not that long), hire a private teacher who can correct your pronunciation, answer your questions, teach you about idioms and slang and, if he's a native, tell you cool stuff about the country (which will wet your curiosity and thus keep you going). This step is more expensive. Beware natives who aren't teachers, they are only useful to get some practice (after you know a little and can actually have a conversation).

Use flash cards to learn new words. These are pretty useful and pretty much mandatory when learning to read and write Chinese and other languages with weird characters - like Arabic.

Grab a regular index card and cut it in half (or more if you are pinching pennies); write on one side the meaning of the word, on the other side, write it in your target language and then upside-down write it's pronunciation. This way, in one card you have the writing, pronunciation and meaning of a word. Keep a batch of them in you pocket/wallet at all times; to practice, simply grab some, read one of the sides and: a) if you read it in the target language, make sure you pronounce it correctly and know it's meaning (this is why you write the pronunciation upside-down, so you can read the word and test if you can pronounce it without peeking); b) if you read the other side, make sure you can pronounce the word and write it correctly.

(If you are learning a language with a Latin alphabet, make sure you use different colors for each side of the card, so you can tell them apart and sort them quickly.)

Use drills. These are exercises developed during WWII to teach Japanese and German to Americans when time was short and teachers were the enemy.

There's 3 kinds of drills:

a) Patterned response drills: ask a question, answer it; change some word in the question and ask it again, answer using the same pattern than before, but with a change that reflects the one made in the question. Example (in Spanish): 1. ¿Ya comiste? (Q) Estoy comiendo ahora mismo (A) ; 2. ¿Ya corriste? (Q) Estoy corriendo ahora mismo (A)

b) Substitution: Given a sentence and a replacement word, re-write the sentence by correctly using the replacement (you have to know what to substitute). Example (Spanish): 1. José va a comprar un carro (sentence), avión (replacement) -> José va a comprar un avión (result); 2. José va a comprar un carro (sentence), nosotros (replacement) -> Nosotros vamos a comprar un carro (result).

c) Situational: Imagine a situation where you need to chat with someone else, and go ahead and write that conversation down. It's like writing an essay.

Do a couple thousand of drills and you are ready for anything :-)

Simple flash card app that's amazing for vocab. Good luck, man.

i call it babelfin.

I wonder whether singing helps. The overall musical structure might make proper phonetics easier to memorize; on the other hand I've heard quite a lot of people who can sing without an accent, but sound very differently when actually speaking. Maybe it is too much rote memorization.

Summary: study, listen, speak, converse (esp with native speakers), immerse, repeat. Add read and write for bonus points.