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I've wanted to learn German after hearing it's the closest thing to English. I already speak Japanese. I tried to learn Russian and I just got angry. Same with Chinese (can't remember Cantonese or Mandarin).

For German, I've tried Rocket German ("Rocket <insert language here>"). Which was decent. I get bored quickly though. The only thing I remember is.....wie gehts dir(?).

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Been experimenting over the years with several different modalities.

Pimsleur
Michel Thomas
FSI
Rosetta Stone (when it was free in the Army)
Learning Spanish Like Crazy

Started with pimsleur, learning some German in my car while enroute to work. Dabbled a bit with Mandarin (but hated it), and currently learning Russian. Those whom I have conversed with what German/Chinese/Russian I do know were extremely impressed with my accent and my command of basic questions and responses; needless to say, it is my favorite way to learn a language. Downside is that the sentence structure is extremely 'proper', and some of the courses may have some dated vocabulary.

Haven't tried Michel Thomas style yet; but from what I've heard, its a good supplement to Pimsleur. Pimsleur is more about words and proper sentence structure, while Michel Thomas style teaches you more about how to speak more commonly. Only downside I've heard was that you don't really pick up on the vocabulary. Then again, you can't learn an entire language via one course, so supplementing with other courses and having a dictionary is always a plus.

FSI is the grandfather of all learning modalities. In fact, a lot of people say pimsleur is a rip off of FSI. Best thing about it is it's still free (just google Foreign Language Institute). However, the audio quality is extremely terrible at times, thus making it hard to understand, especially with non-western languages like Russian; defeats my purpose of using it, as there are certain sounds that are not present in the English language.

Rosetta Stone was completely worthless. Unless you can get it for free, don't even bother. Complete waste of time.

Learning Spanish Like Crazy follows the model of Pimsleur and FSI. As the title suggests, you learn Spanish. However, it teaches you to speak more common Latin American Spanish vs the more proper Spanish taught by Pimsleur.

All in all, I feel its good that we start learning a 2nd/3rd/4th language if we can. After Russian, I'm planning on transitioning to Ukrainian, French, or possibly back to German. I actually started learning languages to speak to foreign girls, but now actually feel it may be useful in today's society...more so for girls though. 

Anyone ever experiment with these or know of anything else?

Afraid to open up a can of worms but I'm curious... which girls are best?

[edit] ummm.. perhaps this should be discussed at the next Pau Hana. 

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