Just curious, has anyone used the "Colloquial Series" to get the basic start of any language?

I am considering getting Colloquial Panjabi to help me get started in Panjabi, but I've never taught myself from a book before. I usually hear good things about the "Teach Yourself" series, but I hear the Teach Yourself Panjabi book is extremely difficult for beginners.

I studied French, German and Latin at school (although I've sadly forgotten a lot of what I learned), and Japanese at uni. Despite the fact that I graduated a few years ago, I'm actually still learning Japanese, and although I've improved greatly at reading and listening comprehension over the years, I'm still pretty terrible at the speaking and writing side!

i took french in high school for 4 years, so ive gotten a bit rusty
I took 11 months of Hebrew at DLI but Im not so confident with it...

I totally want to learn Mandarin, cantonese and perhaps also tagalog because my family speaks those languages :/

  Native language Finnish and I've studied (mandatory) English and Swedish as well as (optional) French at school.

Also been studying German on my own for a couple of years since I know a few folks living there. Still don't speak it fluent though. Maybe someday.

Russian I'd want to learn too even if it sounds soooo weird to me. would also be useful as it's right on the other side of our eastern border and we've a lot russians visiting here. It'd be so nice to be able to tell 'em directions and such with their own language.

Quote from: -Emily- on July 06, 2013, 12:29:44 PM
Estonian sounds very much like Finnish

It does and we can understand each others at the basic level. I mean, to me Estonian sounds like speaking Finnish with really weird dialect and with a couple of strange words here and there. I wouldn't be able to discuss about world politics with estonians by using Finnish but you get the point. Russian and other baltic languages I can't understand at all, they have nothing in common with our weird language.

EDIT: quote

Currently learning ASL to become an interpreter!

Quote from: Jessica M on September 26, 2012, 05:57:02 PM
Also if there any Danes reading this "kan du hjælpe mig?", I'd love to get some practice talking in Danish, both in text and speech tusind tak.
Jessie

Ja, selfølgelig kan jeg hjælpe dig =)

Im native danish speaker so if you need some help I will be willing to help you
----

I know a couple of diffrent languarge,

Danish and norwegian pretty fluent, because my parrents are danish and norwegian. (but I dont really speak norwegian)
English and swedish on understandable level.
and germany and japanese on basic level.
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Danish,Norwegian and Swedish are very simular languarge so its not so difficult to learn again,
I had to learn English and Germany by school
And japanese is because im a geek which was annoyed that alot of the interviuws,comics, and videogames I where into (who was japanese) wasnt translated, so I decided to learn japanese, it was how it started out, then I got many friends and also got into the culture and had visit from japan and everything and now my japan interest is more than just a nerdy thing.
I still would like to practice my japanese one day, But I would then have to go to japan.
I also need to practive my Swedish or german because I consider working/studing in those countrys.

I am a native English speaker. I am learning Serbian due to a lot of my friends speaking Serbian and I am relearning Spanish with the help of Rosetta Stone. I find other languages very fascinating and I want to learn them all!

I put something on Facebook that is relevant to this topic:

Quote
In order of familiarity with languages, I have:
Z80 Assembly, English, Mathematics, TI-BASIC, French, C, Python, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Physics.

I am not really sure of the order for English and Z80 Assembly, but English is much more complicated. My reading comprehension is better for C than Python, but writing is worse. I know how to ask for where my pants are located in all but Physics and Mandarin. In mathematics, there is no need to ask as the answer can be deduced from the appropriate axioms.

I thought Mandarin would be difficult to learn since I have difficulty with picturing things, but it has been surprisingly easy and it makes a lot of sense so far. (I started yesterday, so I have learned about 50 characters (.1% of them?) ). Writing is something I am still working on and it is giving me a wonderful mental workout I did a quiz on Memrise which is currently down and I missed a single question out of over 100.

I am far from fluent in French, but in some areas my French is as developed as my native English. (I am supposed to be writing a five page and three page paper in French, at the moment.)

I have been learning German in both English and French. In other words, I have been learning German by doing online lessons intended for native French speakers. There are some conflicts with translations. Some words that I have learned via French will use "die" "das" or "der" and it will be different as I learn them in English, which is confusing. I have just learned to use my gut instinct for that stuff

I probably know less Spanish than German, but I probably know Spanish grammar better than German grammar.

I have read Russian before, though I never formally learned any Russian (I used my knowledge of the alphabet being brought by the Byzantines to figure out the sounds of the letters and that it should be similar to the romance languages and it worked).

I have not learned Arabic, Hebrew, or Japanese for the same reasons that I didn't try Mandarin-- I thought the symbols would be too complicated for me, but I want to give it a try now!

I imagine Portuguese and Italian shouldn't be too difficult once I get French and Spanish fixed in my brain

Language I had passion for would be French and Vietnamese. French when I was a bit younger and as a side I tried to learn Vietnamese but never found the resources as easily.

I know a few words of quite a bit of languages. I bought a CD called 32 languages of the world around 2003 or 2004. I tried to see if I could learn them all, but the languages with characters I eventually turned away. If I can't see the words I won't be able to form a way to pronounce them. Only last year did I start seriously studying Vietnamese on my own from a website called L-lingo. The way it was setup I could catch on fast, but memorizing was something I continue to work on. Eventually I watched cooking videos in tiếng Việt (the way to my heart) and used that as a tool to listen. It's fun to heart familiar words, then to try and figure out what they are saying, what mood they are in, etc.

I started doing language exchange with a few people and learn quite a lot and made some friends in the process. I don't know if I'll ever get to the level where I can use it on the job, but nothings's impossible.


[edit] Wanted to add that over time I plan to learn Chinese. I'm not sure which I'm learning, but I started collecting all my fortune cookies and will write down the word at the bottom. I've collected about 10 or 12 new words from my fortunes. It's pretty cool.

I'm going to take German as an elective, as it's something I don't already kniw, and won't be bored to death in. I already know French and Spanish, and have a grasp on Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Romanian. Not really enough to speak those, but I understand very well. I thibk I should be able to pick up on Dutch after pearning some German. Portuguese and Italian shpuld be pretty easy as well. Romanian is not very useful, IMO, but if I want another language I think I can pick up quickly, I'll try it out.
For now, looking forward to having German as my first class I go to as a woman,  in the fall, if all goes well and I'm full time by then.

I am learning german in school and I love it. I cNt really focus on learning another language at the same time though.

I've been using the Teach Yourself book, and I can now read Punjabi script.  All those alien-like symbols make perfect sense now.

In highschool I took 4 years of German and Latin, 2 years of ancient Greek and one year of French (could have skipped into French 3 if it fit my schedule the next year so more like 1.5 years)
I considered my German fluent for about 2 years before it got rusty in college.

I keep trying to teach myself Japanese but I think I need the structure of a classroom setting.

Also I have surprisingly good reading comprehension for dutch Swedish Norwegian and danish for some reason (80+% for dutch, 65-80% for the others) I guess it is from the German? That or watching too many danish movies.

I would love to formally learn one of the Scandinavian languages some time. That and Welsh.

I love languages, studied quite a few of them - Then I got in an accident and most of that got blown out as well

I do remember somethings though, and as I hear and/or interact in some languages some of it comes back to me, sometimes in floods

Eh, I don't want to list them all, but I've been learning 23 different languages at relatively the same time. I am most fluent in Japanese, ASL, and D'ni and I've recently started Armenian, Russian, and Klingon. I'm looking to become completely fluent in all 23 and more eventually.

I'm fluent in three Japanese phrases. Plus I can count to ten in Italian. And I can say "We are friends" in Mandarin. That's about it. Does that make me multilingual?

Reminds me of a bad joke.

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? 

Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks one language?

An American.

(And most of us barely so...)

I had a pretty good grip on French and Spanish at one time or another myself.

There were quite a few foreigners in my neighborhood when I was a kid and so that's what sparked my interest    Mostly I just wanted to know what the hecks they were talking about 

I've decided Hindi/Urdu is my next language, which should tie in nicely with Farsi/Dari/Tajik nicely.

I learned German in High school and Japanese on my own. Though I'm far from fluent in both.