A bit unorthodox, but I'm willing to entertain this as an option.

Then the first sentence you can understand from him/her is "I have this (name of an STD), are you okay with that?"

Well, I'm german and I learned French and English in school, though I have to say - unfortunately I didn't appreciate that at that time.

French was my first foreign language and I had some bad luck with my first teacher - she was always absent because of sickness and the german school system had nothing better to do than to let us do our homeworks, respectively do some math with a substitute teacher in the hours, that were meant for French classes - which didn't really help with learning French.

My next french teacher (whom I had til end of school) was a real prick, that disliked me (and vice versa) - so I ended school without great knowledge of French.

A fact that I deeply regret nowadays.

English was my second foreign language and that was easier for me to learn - because the teacher was nicer and because I had hobbies that made me interested in the english language, like (Text-) Adventure games and music (where I started to translate the lyrics, because I wanted to know what my favorite songs are about)...and of course - the english language is not so far from german (well, at least not so far as french). :)

Much later (at the age of 29) I started to read books in english (the first was "Lord of the Rings"(!)) and I have kept that habit until today.

More than that - Today (aged 41) I'm often surprised to find myself on the internet watching TV-shows and movies on british or american stations - And I even can follow the plot! In english! It's just great. ;)

So, yeah - speaking foreign languages is absolutely great and I'd like to learn even some more (french, italian, spanish, portugese, polish, russian,...heck, even japanese)...if only I could overcome my inner "Schweinehund".

Or better tools. If you want to learn that many languages you'll need a USB 3.0 connection to your head with a dictionary, grammar rules and voice records. :p

Ah, see...I knew I was missing some important bit. ;)

I don't know about that, I've been to rural parts of the midwest, if there weren't hispanic folks helping out on the farms, you'd never see anybody that wasn't completely white.

As for the OP, that's what italki and online fora are for. They're not as good as having a native right there, but you can certainly learn like that.

I personally recommend The Third Ear by Chris Lonsdale as he talks a ton about how to learn a language without classes. The main downside is that without being in an immersion environment it's likely to take ages.
It will, but not much. There's four or five domains of language and TV only hits one of them. To have solid knowledge of a language you really need ot be reading, writing, speaking, listening and representing the language. TV is however a great way to pick up on the phonology of the language. Any listening to native speakers will do that. Which isn't always good, my Chinese accent is composed of four or five different accents that I accidentally picked up from god only knows which Chinese languages.

I'd recommend people go oever to http://fluentin3months.com/ or unilang.org as they have some really good resources collected there and tons of people that really know their stuff. People familiar with four or more languages are relatively common over there.

Filipino and English are the the official languages here, so pretty much everyone here knows at least one of those.

For foreign languages, I can read some Japanese (I still have to consult the dictionary for vocabulary from time to time), but I can't speak or make a composition with it, save for the basics, due to lack of practice. It's easier to find reading material than other people to practice with. I never attended a formal class but I plan to do so in the future because I busy with other things now.

This is one of the online resources I've used. I started about 5 years ago and progress has been slow, but it's better than nothing. I just take it at my own pace and do it because it's fun, not because it's necessary for me to learn it.

motherlanguage is english, but second tongue is Chinese cantonese (lot harder than mandarin)

4 years of german in high school - french is arguably easier

1 year of japanese at uni - probably the easiest asian language imho

I only remember a few words of german, few phrases in japanese and actually more in tagalog (i have a good number of filo friends.. and i have a lot of interest in culture). To me its use it or lose it. If its not your mothertongue u need to keep practicing with other speakers or u just...forget things. Or is that due to old age? hahaha.
I actually think submersing yourself in a culture - sink or swim is best way if u really want to be fluent in another language as others have mentioned....

Also, theres a few websites which offer language exchange buddies (never used them) - find people online who teach each other and practice languages with each other. Certainly a good option.

People chiming in with the resources. Excellent.

This. And I would add that, of course, one doesn't learn the language from movies and games. But they catch your interest. being able to access games, and in my case books and information, that I would otherwise not have had access to, is quite a strong incentive. Moreover, the wealth of available cultural mediathat become available to you makes it so much easier to maintain your language skills.

The best english teachers ever Zack Macracken, Monkey Island and rest of the old skool adventure games.

My mom would write me the verbs "open", "close" etch in notebook in english and finnish and id just play away. I was maybe first or second grade? Anyways - got familiar with lot of words although i ofcourse didnt -really- know what was going on, but it kept me interested in the language.

I believe the best way to learn is a language is the way children learn a language. They surround themselves with the language. You want to learn German? Move to Germany. You want to learn French? Move to France.

I can only echo the sentiments of most other scandinavian posters and some others in this thread. Sure, English is part of the compulsory education in Sweden but the thing that motivated me and kept me "surrounded" by the language was subtitled films and TV and my trusty old Amiga 500 and the massive catalogue of pirated games donated by my uncle. No, it doesn't actually teach you word for word, nor does it teach grammar, but it gives you a massive head start. Not all translations are good, but most of the time you get exposed to expressions and sentence structures that eventually stick with you. You hear it and you remember roughly what it means because you read the subtitles. You know what the characters are talking about and from that you can guess what they are saying.

I was four or five years old when I started playing 'King of Chicago' by Cinemaware. This was before I even understood the idea of there being more than one language in the world, and certainly before I could read. At that point I started memorising dialogue options by length, and once I learned how read individual letters I could start memorising complete words. Eventually I would learn the context of the words and understand that if I make my character say "Bomb them", it will start the mini game where you do a drive-by with molotov cocktails. And they say violent games are bad for children!

I studied French as a third language during compulsory school. The national curriculum requires that every student studies either French, German or in some cases a language that is relevant to the individual (a student with foreign born parents may be allowed to learn their language as a third language). Unfortunately my class was plagued with an ever changing roster of French teachers with varying degrees of skill and enthusiasm which also killed my own enthusiasm. I can understand the context of some spoken and written French, but can not write or converse myself.

I also studied Spanish at the same time because my first French teacher was confident in my ability to learn new languages and encouraged me to study both. It was a complete disaster. Studying two romance languages at the same time only meant I confused the two for eachother.

I only ever claim to be fluent in Swedish and English. I feel a strong need to learn Arabic but have not truly gotten around to it yet. It is one of the tougher languages to learn for a number of reasons, but as you can imagine, needing to transliterate from one alphabet to another is a difficulty multiplier. The hardest part about Arabic however is that the grammar is very simple at first glance ("You Girl Pretty") but with using few words comes many modifiers and syntaxes to create context! If you are adressing one, two or more people of varying gender, every single factor influences how the words are shaped. A three word sentence probably has more than 10 different ways to bend the words depending on the subjects (objects, persons, time) within it AND the context (is it a statement or a question?).

While I haven't found the time and motivation to study Arabic in class yet, I am often surrounded by it because of congregational prayer in the mosque. The one who leads the prayer will read verses from the Qur'an out loud as part of the prayer and by having learned some words I can understand roughly what the verse is about. Some recurring phrases are starting to stick somewhere in my brain and I feel like I'm 5 years old againlistening to syndicated American TV. I hope the end result will be the same.

The best way to learn a language is to actually be a child. The critical age is generally believed to be somewhere around the 12-year-old mark; after this, the capacity to acquire new languages, and grammatical systems in particular, dwindles greatly.

By the by, if anyone is interested in language and linguistics, I suggest you find a copy of Language: The Basics by R. L. Trask. It's well-structured, clearly written, and assumes no previous knowledge of the field from its reader, so I think that it's an excellent read for people completely unfamiliar with the subject. No, I'm not associated with Trask in any way nor do I directly benefit from advertising his work.

I speak fluent Finnish and English (British), although I am seriously introverted and hence not very articulate in either language. I learnt English at school (third grade onwards, or about age nine I guess) and from video games: I remember playing Final Fantasy IX at a friend's place with a collection of dictionaries sprawled all over the floor so that we could decipher what was going on. Today, I study English at university, and I hope to become a professional translator eventually, so I guess that my hobby indirectly decided the vague direction of the rest of my life. Kind of cool, I suppose.

I also understand Russian quite well because of my bilingual background, but due to lack of use I cannot speak it to any reasonable degree, and reading the language is a slow and challenging process even for the simplest of texts. A shame, really.

Also, Finland has a ridiculous language policy that dictates that everyone must take Swedish at school (or Finnish, if Swedish is their first language). Like most of my friends, I know hardly any Swedish at all because of severe motivational issues related to both the language policy itself and our succession of terrible teachers. This is unfortunate, because there's a mandatory Swedish test at university level as well, and I can only quake with fear at the mere notion of it.

E: Typo hell!