haha wow customer service sucks these days

[kawajiri]

ive called dell n got some indian guy named chuck who i couldnt understand.... n just tried to call rosetta stone to see if they offered military any deals for their product n the guy was worst at speaking english then the dell guy.....

on a side note anyone know a good software/product that can teach me say french and arabic? kinda wanting to learn em for my deployment XD

[Phaetonix]

Every once in a while when I try to teach myself a language, I've reached for Byki. (http://www.byki.com/) You can download Byki Express for free, and some free flashcard type training exercises, as well as download unlimited free community made exercises. There are paid exercises as well as a "deluxe" paid version if you feel the urge to throw your money at them. The website even boasts that it is better then Rosetta Stone. I've only tried one so I couldn't tell ya for sure though.

I'm sure you'll have no problem finding free downloadable content for french and arabic. I used it when I wanted to start learning Finnish on my own, and just picked it up the other day, I'm starting Korean soon! Usually my willpower fades before I get very far in any given language that I havent been speaking natively for 21 years, so don't expect me to start speaking anything other then english on air

Oooh that reminds me. I've been out of practice in french for a few years, I used to be half decent. I'd love to be bilingual (or halfway there again)

You also may want to run google searches for things like accent pronunciations for french, and learning how to read arabic script. I remember I looked up how to pronounce letters in Finnish before I started the training, and I feel it helped me a lot. You might not need to, as the program uses the correct pronunciations anyways, you'll pick it up. I just liked knowing what I was getting into before-hand.

*edit* the DLC packs are just flashcard based words, usually thematically grouped. ex: "asking for directions", "general phrases", "questions" etc. You'll pick up the words quickly if you practice often. The great part about it is that it doesn't take much time to go through one pack usually, and you can go at your own pace.

[kawajiri]

hmmm i think i will check it out n see, worst that can happen is i dont learn anything from it lol but anything that helps is awesome ^_^

[Cheese]

Language is 100% dicipline.
I reccomend 3 things:

#1 any kind of language book with a CD
#2 some TV show in the language you want to learn you can watch more than once with English subtitles
#3 A shitload of paper and internet connection

Learning just from a book is boring and not very practical, but if you can study for a while then listen to a TV show and hear something like what you learned it sticks.
Most importantly take lots and lots of notes. Everything you learn or want to learn write down and use as often as you can. If you dont use it it just flies away.