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Originally posted by Hoista!:
Mandarin probably the best choice of language to learn due to the booming chinese economy, and their continued expected growth and influence.
Couldn't give a toss about the economy tbh being a copper!
My girlfriend learned some Arabic using Rosetta Stone before she came with me to Kuwait.
Really impressed some of my family there with it and they loved her. She still remembers a lot of the basics so it must've done it's job. Only got the temporary license for it though (cheaper), but she's planning on buying it again to get to a higher level.
Considering she only did the first few levels she learned quite a lot.
In terms of actually learning Arabic, it's true that reading can be difficult. Not in terms of actually figuring out what's written, but in understanding it. It's an alphabet so learning to read the words won't take more than a week or two. But written arabic (in the papers) is usually Classical Arabic, which is very different to what is spoken colloquially. The same goes for what you'd hear on the news for example.
For spoken arabic, there are many different dialects; you have the Gulf Arabic (harshest), Iraqi, Levant (poofs) and N. African, and subdivisions between those. Quite hard for me, for example, to understand the N. Africans, although not impossible.
I'm not sure why Arabic is meant to be so hard to learn. It's alphabet based, and extremely structured. Only problem is the harsh sounds. I think it's just a case of really bad teachers in the Arab world.
Originally posted by Walrus:
<BLOCKQUOTE>Originally posted by Hoista!:
Mandarin probably the best choice of language to learn due to the booming chinese economy, and their continued expected growth and influence.
Couldn't give a toss about the economy tbh being a copper! </BLOCKQUOTE>
In which case, pick a language you think you would find useful.
I know its not what you want now, but i borrowed some rosetta stone CDs from the library and they were good if you are going to learn a language that you know the alphabet from (latin letters), but completely useless if you are going to learn japanese or arabic.
Arabic is easy if you know someone who can teach you.
if you know what I mean 
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