1. Use foreign words as soon as you learn them, even when speaking English.

2. Sit down and learn the most basic grammer i.e. sentences in the present.

3. Learn 20 words every day

It's easier to stay dedicated if you go to an actual class, so I would highly recommend you start going to class, it will allow you to come into contact with the sound, grammar and words you need. Also understanding.

For software I recommend http://www.rosettastone.com/ , I was highly impressed at how fast I was able to learn German using only the software and a pen pal. (I couldn't speak very well but my reading and writing was pretty good after just 2 months)

Unfortunately books/classes/software only help to a point, you need to be in the environment and speaking in order to become fluent. Which comes back to point 1. Use the language, even if you only know 10 words, and even if you're speaking English.

I studied Italian for 4 months before I went to Italy, and it didn't help me shit. Knowing some words and understanding the grammar doesn't help you speak or understand it. You need to use it. A lot.

Seconding that recommendation for Rosetta Stone. It's quite expensive, though.

coughs piratebay coughs

I was wondering how that rosettastone stuff was. I looked into it but reviews were just opposite ends of the spectrum with some people raving and the others saying it was terrible.

Any good? As in did you use it for German/Italian and did it help?

People who say Rosetta Stone is bad are people who aren't committed or motivated to learn a new language, it's probably the best software for the task.

That's what I figure but I'm OSD in my dedication so I wouldn't find it hard to put time into it

you're Office of Secretary of Defense?

RS is good for certain kind of exercises, but using it solely is a bad idea and i know something about bad ideas [cutscene]. It doesn't really teach grammar. I would use it accompanied with a basic textbook for grammar or an internet course if you're poor.

I didn't use it for Italian, but I used it for German. As I said, it got me reading and writing to a good degree after 2 months, but I couldn't speak it very well.

Of course, it's not really fair because I already knew English and Afrikaans (dutch), both of which are extremely similar to German.

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Germans are absolutely terrible at english, and I've friends who've gotten pretty good at chinese, it's hard but doable.

Watch a shit load of movies in that language.

Find someone you wanna have sex with.

too ugly

Put a paper bag over her head c:

no i mean I'M too ugly to get laid xD i guess paper bag over my head?

No, a ragful of ether, much more effective. Useful phrases would include:

"hey does this smell like ether to you?"
"no officer that's my girlfriend and she just had a little too much to drink"
"I plead not guilty"
"why don't YOU pick up the soap motherfucker"
and
"no, that doesn't smell like eth-....."

GREENCARD MOTHERFUCKER

I learned English by a combo of using flash cards and learning grammar rules when I was 10. Then moving to England and secondary school/a levels, uni and professional career round hurr kinda helped c:


The "learning individual words + grammar of the language" helped in learning a few other European languages. However learning Mandarin could prove a lot more complicated due to phonetic differences. I guess Dird would be le expert on that matter.

I never thought someone would use "expert" and "Dird" in one sentence.

Ever.

You did it again.

I feel ... dirdy. :E

.

out of interest, what are you doing there? how long have you been there and for how long would you like to stay there?

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In cantonese they seem to stretch the word ending vowels a lot. Gawddayum HK movies.

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I am learning mandarin now for four years. You can learn some basics so you can tell a taxi driver where you want to go. But if you want to immerse yourself in the culture plan to stay a year or longer. And even then the local dialects are still a pain in the ass.

But have fun in China. Beautiful country!

Talk while eating rice, you sound chinese !

Also it helps if you find good tutorials. I wasn't interested about russian before, but somehow i was after watching these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-LyIzHnsc . Can't figure it out.

I am in the same boat as you now, comrade. I would like to learn the language of ze russians, but no idea why.

I don't know about mandarin specifically. But like several people already mentioned, Rosetta Stone. I also picked up some audio course by some dude called Michel Thomas which I found pretty helpful, felt like I got somewhere fairly quickly.

Gl, please keep us updated how well you do with what help. I've been thinking of learning a random language for years but never got into it, after reading this I want to again!

get a chinese girlfriend, lol

Helps alot I can say. But get one with very bad english so you are forced to speak chinese <:

if you know the basics, you could try some dvds with subtitles (maybe in slowmotion gg)

Join an irc channel where people speak the language you wanna learn.

troll in the language you want to learn, best method

You need to be able to speak with someone in that language. That's why it's easiest to learn a new language with a friend or with someone who speaks it fluently. Good luck

in terms of something to listen to you could always try the Michel Thomas cd's

some people swear by them

all available on thepiratebay

this link below is to a torrent for every language in 1 torrent as it seems noone has seeded just Chinese

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6008874/Michel_Thomas_Complete_V3

Once you have a textbook or some sort so you know the most common words and more or less understand the normal syntax, just consume media in that language. For example:

* Watch movies with English subtitles
* Listen to songs and translate the lyrics
* Read news


For the record, I speak 5 foreign languages at different levels of fluency, I've had the most success with just watching movies/listening to songs. The main advantage is that it doesn't actually seem like that much work and becuase you're learning intuitively (instead of manually memorizing 20 words per day), you won't forget as easily.

yeh i remember learning a bit of japanese a while ago by watching death note over and over and over again with the subtitles because i loved it so much. i think i'll try that eventually once i get the basics down. this might prove most useful for mandarin actually, since from what i gather from Dird's posts, phonetics are integral to the language and remembering HOW actors say something in film and song is easier than just hearing a random person say it in my opinion.

out of interest, what languages do you speak? the only one i can get by with confidently is german and some basic french and very basic japanese :)

English at a near-native level, I can easily understand Finnish (I have not really spoken it in like 10-15 years so writing/speech is a bit shit), I speak casual Russian, plus I know some basic French (3 years in high school) and Swedish.

All I remember from animes

1) BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA BAKA

2) KONO YAROU!!!!

3) Oni

and the san and chan things

I speak all languages at different levels of fluency

Mandarin is supposed to be the most complicated language to learn of the popular languages, unfortunately its the one I too would like to learn.

Rosetta Stone and watching chines movies with english sub.

awesome!

that's my advice :)

My advice would be to find a school which has a very dynamic teaching method.

When I had to learn french, 2 weeks in this school in Paris was enough to start understanding the news on TV. Of course in TV they articulate better than in real life.