my goals:

listen to japanese (dont need to speak, read, or write) for anime
listen/read/write to vietnamese (don't need to speak) so i can chat with friends and eavesdrop
listen/speak spanish (don't need to read/write) so i can communicate with hispanics here when needed
listen/read/speak korean (don't need to write) so i won't be useless when i visit korea with mom

i'm sure i'll learn the basics for the other aspects as well, but i won't be using them. i dont need fluency; i'm thinking perhaps a 1st grader's level?

would it be best to buy the textbooks used in high school / college? or something like live mocha / rosetta stone? or is there another alternative i'm not aware of? i'm planning on spending about 2 hrs per weekday and 4 hours per weekend-day for my studies. once i get far enough in my studies, i'll be practicing via friends/tv

also, is it best to learn them all concurrently? eg: 30 min/day for each language? or should i learn them one at a time?

/edit:
i took 2 high school years + 1 college semester of spanish, 1 semester of french. i tried using livemocha for korean, but i thought the site was horribly done for beginners. it didnt even teach me the alphabet, so i just learned it via an android app instead. i already graduated so it's not easy to go back to school just for that.

This post was edited by carteblanche on May 27 2013 10:42pm

I imagine learning languages that share origin (latin, slavic, etc) simultaneously is the way to go. I also imagine mixing learing languages with different sentence structures and new and unfamiliar word classes can be confusing. Check e-books, they're everywhere on the webs for free or very cheap. They come with the extra tone of voice, trumping learning from books.

better get some fluency in one and then move on to another
once you got the basics right it's okay do to several at the same time

whatever you do, the key is to study vocabulary (leitner method for long-term memory)

A friend of mine tells me watching TV series or music helps improve their learning on the language they trying to learn. Obviously diligence is important as well but I lack that so I haven't started on any myself.

If you're asking for the best way... moving to the country where it is spoken as the primary language and making a patient friend that is bilingual (ESL) greatly surpasses every other method. Just ask your friend, "What'd that guy just say?" 8,000 times a day until you know it.

1. Textbooks, language learning programs, and college classes all have one thing in common. They all teach how to speak properly and with proper annunciation. About 4% of the population are grammar Nazis; the rest use slang and dialect that will be gibberish if you learned from books.

2. The beginner courses for EVERY language SUCK. They're designed for tourists. They will not teach you the language beyond such universal gems as, "Where is the bathroom?" and, "What time is it?" Apparently, foreign people really hate it when tourists just take a crap anywhere... in public, in the street somewhere. Especially without knowing the exact time of day. One semester of ANY language is mostly just for helping people conjugate verbs and learn all the weird symbols on letters that cause different sounds than English doesn't even use.



These are all very valid points as well, and I agree that the spoken word is important if you wish to learn how to speak. If you learn via text, your memories are stored and accessed in the part of your brain that processes visual information. Learning by hearing will allow your brain to learn and process the information in a way that will be more readily activated with speech.

Of course I realize that unless you're in the military or a trust-fund kid, trips to Asia or to most Spanish-speaking countries are out of the question. Luckily for you, there are plenty of people in the US that speak all of the languages you've listed. Make a friend that's bilingual.

There's a book that's called "How To Learn Any Language". The whole book is common sense up until you hit that magical chapter where he gives you a memory trick for vocabulary that works amazingly well.

In addition, spaced repetition software is usually damned good. Supermemo or anki (sp?) both work on android or on a computer, you can just study for an hour a day and learn ~2000 vocab words inside of two or three months.

Really if you just want to 'hear' people and pick up just a few words, get a list of the 5000 most frequently used words in all the languages you mentioned (or 1000 most frequent, doesn't matter really), and type them all into a spaced repetition software program. Then all you have to do is study it diligently. Once you decide to learn grammar and syntax and shit, it will be hella easier, and you can pick up on it anyway by watching anime.
Conjugations and declensions might be more trouble but seriously, you'll figure it out if you have subtitles. After like two months of speaking garbage you can buy a grammar book and hit it hard.

This post was edited by general_patton on Jun 1 2013 10:23am