languages

anyone know a good way to learn a language in my free time? no time to take a class or travel and no money for expensive ass programs that dont work. a side question: what would be the fastest language to learn? I am interested in spanish but depending on suggestions I could swing any direction.

buy or download a couple grammar books and read them extensively, memorize a few thousand common words (you can find lists online). when you're done with that, watch tv, film, read easy books and websites in that language and keep building your vocabulary. If you can talk to someone who speaks the language, that will help a lot

or you could pirate rosetta stone or pimsleur, but they'll only teach you like 600-700 words total

oh, and yeah, Spanish is probably your best bet as an English speaker

French and Italian are also good choices

>>5
is French really easy to learn? I had been learning German for three years and it failed hard, now I wish I learned French or Japanese instead.

>>6
No language is really easy to learn.

I don't know much about German, but French shouldn't be much more difficult to learn than Spanish. What's really nice about learning French is that a lot of English words come from the language so you can guess the meaning of some of them by recognition. My biggest problem with French so far has been remembering which diacritics to use and where.

Don't strain yourself trying to learn Japanese

>>6
French grammar is pretty easy, but the vocabulary can be quite annoying.
I'm a person who relies on feeling and common sense when it comes to languages, so I've had some difficulties thanks to the vocabulary.
German is pretty much the reversed (this might just be in my case, since I'm Dutch). The vocabulary is pretty easy, but the grammar is a lot harder if you're trying to write something down.

I've had six years French during High School and I can't remember shit while I only had German for four years, and can still read German texts with some effort and a dictionary.

Start going through the Michel Thomas language tapes.

Start doing a Pimsleur lesson a day.

Start working through a self-study/grammar book.

Once you have a basic grasp of the language you can move onto reading and watching TV.

It's imporant to study EVERY DAY. You will absorb more into your long term memory by studying 30 minutes every day, rather than 3.5 hours once per week.

i am OP thanks for all the replies. main malfunction with rosetta stone is that i dont use windows anymore, otherwise i would probably still be doing it. main malfunction with audio tapes is the spelling and visual stimulation. i had a real hard time remembering accents in rosetta stone even WITH the visual portion but i guess speaking will be a gateway for writing.

especially thanks to #9 for driving the every day concept home, i needed to hear that. as a side note no one mentioned any websites so i assume they are all crummy. when i wrote this i was leaning toward a website so that i can access it whenever i wanted (laptop is always with me), but i guess i can just dump a bunch of resources on here.

Also you could try befriending french people online (that's the beauty of the internet), usually when they're nerdy and bilingual enough to browse websites like 4chan, they're probably going to be delighted to the prospect of helping an english speaker with french.

Anyone tried to learn Arabic?

I find the language strange and beautiful at the same time...

You realize we have a /lang/, right?

No, I didn't. Seriously.

>>12
I went to arabic classes in weekends for over 4 years and I can still understand jack shit.
Then again, my teacher was a complete idiot who expected you to learn the language by ONLY talking arabic to you.

>>10
Rosetta Stone sucks really. It's good for a bit of vocab building but it won't teach you grammar. 

As for language tapes, you can view transcripts for most of them (try google) so you can see how everything is written.

>>15
Your teacher was using the ONLY existing method that actually works on you, you asshat. If you never learned a thing, means you're jsut too stupid or somehting. Or weren't trying at all.

>>17
Although talking certainly helps, it's completely useless if you don't have any knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to back it up.
Really, I usually have a pretty good sense for languages, but I never understood anything of arabic.
You might be right about the "weren't trying at all"-part though. I certainly can't deny the fact that I got so fed up after a few lessons I basically gave up and started wasting time. Mind you, I was only eight when they started teaching me.

gb2 /lang/
And moving to a foreign country helps. Or chatting in foreign chatboxes. You have to find a way of forcing yourself to speak/type the language cos that's the only way to master it quickly.
Germanic languages are the easiest to learn grammar-technically (so german, dutch, danish (yeah it's scandinavian but you'd be surprised at how readable it is without having had a single lesson. Same goes for swedish and norlandic)) and pimsleur lessons make for a good "holiday level" in the language. They get boring after a couple of weeks though.
Good luck.

I liked Latin in high school. It was a puzzle. If there was a Latin course at the college I am currently attending, I would take it.
Only take Latin if you're up to memorizing lots of endings.