Have any of you more or less tought yourself a new language? Specifically, I'm trying to brush up on my french by this summer. Are there any programs/books you recommend?

I've used Pimsleur audiobooks from time to time to try french and mandarin, and while they are pretty fun and good for just lying in bed with, I never got past the basic levels and I've forgotten most of it by now. If I started again I'm sure it would all come back to me but it's really vague in my head right now. I couldn't speak a word of mandarin right now, xie xie you very much.

I recently got the french lessons back, and I was thinking of making a go of it with that. I think french is the best bet since I've got a lot of latent vocabulary from school and self-teaching and I have a decent grasp on the grammar. It'd be great for learning other european languages cos the vocabulary can be really similar. Also, I hear that after you have learned one language it's much more likely you'll learn a second and while I'm probably more interested in learning mandarin it's probably out of my reach to begin with. French feels like a good beginner language, I guess. Maybe that's stupid, though.

I'm currently teaching myself Mandarin before I officially take classes at uni in August.  I just started really so I only know the basics.  I didn't how to do it so I just bought a shit load of books/cds.

Mandarin is pretty easy btw.

I taught myself english
It doesn't count but I learnt (kind of) some of Cyrillic alphabet by myself and I'm going to have russian classes during the first half of this year, and intend on learning the rest of it from internet forums and youtube videos

i took up to french 3 in high school, so i have the foundations, i just need some practice.

downloading rosetta stone right now, looks like it should be perfect. thanks all.

didn't like rosetta stone at all when I tried it several years ago. it's useless for learning anything that doesn't use the roman alphabet btw, or at least it used to be

I liked pimsleur a lot. it attempts to teach you conversational language. I still know a lot of the japanese I learned over the summer and I still remember some turkish when I hear it but not off the top of my head

rosetta stone might be better tho if you already learned the basics in highschool, it does more with vocab than pimsleur. or use both

How good are you at the moment though is the real question? Si t'es déjà un locuteur indépendant: regardes des films en version française. Je crois que j'ai regardé tous les films Disney en vf il y a 2 ans. C'est cool aussi de savoir comment chanter Hakuna Matata en deux langues. Moi j'peux le faire en 3. :-)

I can pretty much get the gist of this paragraph because its written down... Gives me time to think it over a bit. If it were actually spoken by a frenchman I doubt Id pick up too much.
Ill try to hunt down some fellow french speakers so I can practice, this is a really good idea!!

How good are you at the moment though is the real question? Si t'es déjà un locuteur indépendant: regardes des films en version française. Je crois que j'ai regardé tous les films Disney en vf il y a 2 ans. C'est cool aussi de savoir comment chanter Hakuna Matata en deux langues. Moi j'peux le faire en 3. :-)

this is what i think youre saying... "If you're learning by yourself, you should watch versions of films in French. I have been watching Disney films in another language for 2 years (?). It is cool to be able to sing Hakuna Matata in two languages. I can sing it in 3"

i think thats close, but i doubt i could reply competently. so well see how it goes!

didn't like rosetta stone at all when I tried it several years ago. it's useless for learning anything that doesn't use the roman alphabet btw, or at least it used to be

this. i tried the arabic rosetta stone and it completely forgoes the alphabet (good luck retaining any of the vocab you learn!), the definite article and sun and moon letters, among other things. it's pretty much an interactive flash card system. i didn't get far enough to know how it teaches conjugation but i'm betting it doesn't explain that, either.

also http://forum.wordreference.com/ is an excellent resource to get in touch with native speakers of pretty much any language.

Currently learning Japanese by playing games in Japanese.

Works wonders.

I've found that just immersing myself in an environment of the target language is the best way to learn it. It's not just games either. Reading blogs and such is an amazing resource for casual talk. This has done much more for me than grinding and memorization has ever done.

The biggest things you get from taking a course that you don't get from doing it yourself is you have a) someone MAKING you do it whether you want to or not and b) someone who can answer your questions and keep an eye on you making sure you aren't making some mistake over and over

Isn't it supposed to be especially difficult with all the very precise phonological stuff I don't understand? Or is that Cantonese or something?

The only hard thing I would think (because I haven't started learning these yet) is memorizing all the characters.  Aside from that it is easy.  The grammar is basically identical to English, nouns don't take genders like most European languages, you don't conjugate verbs and there are no verb tenses.  The only other confusing thing for some could be the tones because one word pronounce almost the same can mean different things depending on the tone.

I like the C programming language by K&R >​

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I tried studying Swahili but didn't reached too far.