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Tell me about learning a new language...

personally, I love rosetta stone. yes, it is very expensive. however, most people seem to give up and sell their copy pretty quickly. I got spanish for my daughter, unopened, on ebay for $38.

I know spanish and latin. I started both in public school. for spanish I used RS, flashcards, and translating books I got from the library. I am proficient enough that in my previous job I was a translator.

latin I used workbooks and reading. I got RS from a friend for $40 (again, unused) and I am okay enough now to read simple things.

I used duolingo. its nice for practice but you cannot learn a language with that.

I also know some american sign language and some signed english. books and dvds for those.

when my ex was in the military, I found a group on base for people who were native speakers of spanish to get together. they were happy to have me join, and I learned a TON. for asl there are groups like the flying fingers, specifically for people to learn the language. id be willing to bet there are groups like that for you. if not, find a friend and practice, even just writing emails is a lot more educational than you might think. (if youre looking for spanish or latin, hmu)

I also find Duolingo great practice for a language I started learning elsewhere. I've never used Rosetta Stone. What does it have that Duolingo doesn't?
 
The most heavily advertised language training programs are Babbel and Rosetta Stone, but there are others. Some are free. Anybody used them to learn a new language on their own? Did you actually get beyond the basics? Recommendations? Pitfalls? Warnings?

I learnt English by myself, starting at age 27 with BBC's course of English published by Salvat Editors. There were 96 lessons and I reached only lesson 57. Then I tried to understand movies with a good dictionary at hand, trying to figure out the spelling of each new word. The popularization of the Internet was a blessing because I was able to download movies and TV shows I had available to me via cable and watch them with subtitles in English or without subtitles at all. That boosted my learning, but to start thinking in English I started participating in forums like this one back in 2007. This forum is specially useful to me because it's full of irritating people who post such outrageous messages that I became irated and inspired to reply in kind. I have to thank forums.randi.org/ISF for my ability to think in English.

Caveats when you're learning by yourself:

  • You tend to imagine how the language sounds because nobody corrects you -by showing in their face that they're struggling to get what you're saying-. That is very important when you go from a language with few sound to another language with many more, like for me going from Spanish to English. The other way around is not that difficult. I have no problem learning Italian because the sounds are similar to my native language. Get help from native speakers
  • You learn a lot of unimportant things and you keep ignoring most of the basic. It helped me a lot when I started to describe all the activities I was doing. I realized I coudn't think/say "I wake up in the morning, I get up from my bed, I put a shirt and a pair of trousers on, I go to the bathroom, comb my hair, brush my teeth, etcetera"
I'm particularly mediocre in this business of learning languages, because I have a defect: the part of my brain that takes the sounds spoken and preprocesses it ( into syllables, for instance) for the high cognitive functions to understand it isn't working properly in me and never will.

From what I'm writing you'll be able to judge if you can reach a good level in a foreign language if you do it all by yourself.

If you are trying to learn French, I recommend French in Action. It's the most didactic course I have ever followed.
 
I learnt English by myself, starting at age 27 with BBC's course of English published by Salvat Editors....

....From what I'm writing you'll be able to judge if you can reach a good level in a foreign language if you do it all by yourself.

How old are you now? if you don't mind.
 
personally, I love rosetta stone. yes, it is very expensive. however, most people seem to give up and sell their copy pretty quickly. I got spanish for my daughter, unopened, on ebay for $38.

I know spanish and latin. I started both in public school. for spanish I used RS, flashcards, and translating books I got from the library. I am proficient enough that in my previous job I was a translator.

latin I used workbooks and reading. I got RS from a friend for $40 (again, unused) and I am okay enough now to read simple things.

I used duolingo. its nice for practice but you cannot learn a language with that.

I also know some american sign language and some signed english. books and dvds for those.

when my ex was in the military, I found a group on base for people who were native speakers of spanish to get together. they were happy to have me join, and I learned a TON. for asl there are groups like the flying fingers, specifically for people to learn the language. id be willing to bet there are groups like that for you. if not, find a friend and practice, even just writing emails is a lot more educational than you might think. (if youre looking for spanish or latin, hmu)

I like the old Rosetta Stone. I have an old version of Italian from which I learned all that I know (basic words and sentences). Then I bought a newer version a couple years ago and I can't keep up with it. As I recall, it requires you to speak it right away. I much more enjoyed learning the words first, by listening to the word and then clicking on the corresponding picture or reading the word and matching it up with the picture. The newer version wants you to speak a sentence early on and I just can't. It seems to me the pace is much faster with the more recent version.

I will say it all requires one to work on it quite often, if you want to retain any of it.
 
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