>but I can see why that political slant would make you hesitant to purchase the book. I'm glad to hear it's been of use to you, though.

Yeah, this was a big thing. My friends said they would stop talking to me if I bought it because of the politics of it, but I knew they would change their minds once I started speaking their language :-)

>I'm interested in all ancient Mesopotamian languages. I've tried to teach myself the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian from this book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Babylonian-Yourself-Martin-Worthington/dp/0340983884 but found its approach to be a lot like those old Latin primers from school: lots of rote repetition, and very little in the way of conversation or topic-based teaching. I'm sure that's a limitation of the source material, to some degree; but I still think it should be possible to teach any well-understood language in a way that emphasizes natural speech production rather than long vocabulary lists.

>Sumerian is a whole different story. I've had some success learning to read it with this book https://www.amazon.com/Sumerian-Grammar-Research-Ancient-Eastern/dp/0890031975 but its grammar is still poorly understood, and the fact that it's an agglutinative AND ergative-absolutive language makes it... well, quite the adventure for anyone used to Indo-European or Semitic languages.

This is really cool! I admit I haven't looked at many ancient languages, but they do fascinate me in some ways.

>In terms of the grammar, I got a little help from my understanding of Turkish, in which I used to be semi-fluent (I lived in Istanbul for two years) -- but most of it is utterly alien compared with any other language I've ever studied.

I've also done a tiny bit of Turkish, but haven't gone too far with it. It didn't really "click" with me for some reason, despite liking Turkish music and having Turks all around me. I think I just got a bit frustrated with the agglutination, which never seemed to work well for me. I could definitely give it another chance though.

>My knowledge of Arabic is minimal, despite the fact that I'm currently making my third attempt at studying it. I made more progress with Farsi, where I was relieved to be working with ordinary subjects, objects and verbs again. I've never studied Hebrew, aside from the writing system. But it makes sense that you'd see loanwords across all these languages, as well as Aramaic and Amharic (and Ge'ez, etc.). Traveling in Africa, I was constantly surprised by how many loanwords from Turkish, Arabic and Farsi I heard in local languages.

I love Farsi too. I've lost a lot of my abilities in that language, but I still manage to maintain basic conversations when necessary. How far did you get with it?

Hebrew and Arabic have almost the same grammar - especially Arabic dialects like Lebanese and Palestinian.

To be honest, Ethiopian Semitic languages are another world completely for a speaker of Hebrew/Arabic/Aramaic. I mean, I've met people from Eritrea who speak Tigre and Tigrinya, and they manage to point out lots of similar words to me (for some reason lots of them have knowledge of Hebrew and/or Arabic, and not just the Jewish/Muslim ones) and a little bit of grammar here and there. But honestly, the overlap between these Semitic languages is quite small compared to that of Hebrew/Arabic/Aramaic, and I can't get a grip of anything they say at all.

I guess the "good" thing about Hebrew is that it's really got only two major variants (Biblical and Modern), which are actually very similar. In Arabic you have Fus7a which differs wildly from each dialect, which differ wildly from each other, and in Aramaic you have very different dialects too. I'm actually just discovering that - Assyrian neo-Aramic is more different than I was expecting to Suryoyo, and Western neo-Aramaic is another story altogether (which sounds much more Arabised). Then there are the Jewish dialects (which are unsurprisingly closer to Hebrew). Then, all the dialects within Christian Eastern neo-Aramaic under the banner of Assyrian (Urmia/Iranian dialect, Iraqi Koine, Chaldean dialect, etc).

Nonetheless, the overlap between vocabulary and grammar is really huge within these 3 languages, particularly compared to the other Semitic languages.

Where did you go in Africa? Swahili definitely has those loans, and I'm sure others do too. There are also a lot of Arabic and Farsi words in Hindi, which is cool.

I've recently begun to do the same. I'll list off the resources I've come across, and my thoughts on them.

• Pimsleur French (Audio)
  
  Great for learning proper pronunciation alongside some basic grammar and common phrases. I am currently using this as my primary source of spoken French, while learning written aspects from:
  
  
• Easy French Step-by-Step (Book)
  
  I love this book. I looked through a number of different self-study books, and the pacing/order of this one fits me just right.
  
  
• Rosetta Stone: French (Software)
  
  This was actually my first attempt at learning French. I gave up after a while due mostly to lack of interest and a lack of perceived progress. The combination of the book and audio systems listed above have made me feel more at ease with the language than this ever did.
  
  With that said, I've found while studying now that it actually did help me build up a decent vocabulary, and aided a bit with pronunciation. If its price doesn't deter you, I'd suggest considering it as a secondary or tertiary learning tool.
  
  
• Anki (Software)
  
  This is a free, multi-platform flashcard application. As I've been reading through Easy French Step-by-Step, I've been adding the introduced vocabulary, terms, etc. to "decks" in Anki, which I then study until I have them memorized.
  
  I break up what I study based on the quizzes in the book. I.e., I add everything up until the book provides a quiz about them. Study, take quiz, continue until next quiz adding the newly learned vocab, terms, rules. It has worked well for me so far.
  
• A Frequency Dictionary of Core French Vocabulary (Book)
  
  The authors of this book analyzed a number of written and spoken sources of French to come up with the top 5,000 words used in French. In the book they're listed by order of appearance (e.g., #1 is "le").
  
  As the book is already sorted by order of appearance, you can slowly memorize larger chunks, starting from the top, and know that what you're learning is what you are most statistically likely to encounter.
  
  I program for a living, so I went a bit further and bought the ebook, then wrote a script to pull all the info out for me. I'm now able to practice all sorts of things by filtering the data -- "give me the top 50 verbs that end in -re", for example, to practice conjugation.
  
  
• English Grammar for Students of French (Book)
  
  I haven't read this book, but it's another one that was repeatedly well recommended as I did my self-study research.
  
  
• Rocket French (Audio & Software)
  
  From what I've read, this course is somewhat similar to Pimsleur French. However, unlike Pimsleur, of which I was able to find numerous legitimate reviews online, the majority of those I found for Rocket French were astroturfing. They've registered a ton of domains and set up fake reviews of their product. Whether or not it's any good, I don't know, as their decision to do so turned me off from the course.
  
  
• To save myself some writing, I highly recommend you read this blog post:
  La belle in France: Essential French Language Tools
  
  She covers a number of good resources to aid you in learning French. I'd like to single out http://www.wordreference.com (as well as its forums) though, as it has been a fantastic reference site. Easily the best online English<->French dictionary I have found.
  
  
• Another good roundup post:
  Online Classes.org: The 50 Best Blogs for French Majors & Francophiles
  
  I hope that list is of some help.

I started German about 6 weeks ago, and I've made some great headway... don't know what level I'm at or whatever obviously, but it's exciting to be able to pick up real novels and actually be able to start to tell what's going on.

I mainly learned by starting with Duolingo, and reading through this. The Graded reader was actually the most helpful thing I did... it makes it really, really painless and easy to pick up new vocab, and you can literally start on page one with zero knowledge of German, read a few (or 10 or whatever) pages every day, and hit the end with a really comfortable full overview of basic German Grammar and maybe 1,000 vocab words. It went along really well with Duolingo, but for me personally, learning by reading in that format was more fun and easier over-all. The only catch is the book is like $35 used (I managed to find a copy for $20) but you might be able to find a pdf of it somewhere if you hunt.

For what it's worth... Duolingo was really helpful up until about halfway through the tree. I'll probably finish it just for shits and giggles, but there's an increasingly huge amount of words I don't expect will be useful, given what I actually like talking and reading about. (I hear over the next year Duolingo is going to start making custom trees given what you're actually interested in, but for now you're stuck with a lot of business vocab and verbs whose use isn't immediately apparent just from Duolingo's sample sentences). Also... Duolingo has an interesting philosophy on introducing more complicated grammar... basically they expose you to it a number of times, and then decide it's time to explain it. That's not how I work, so I had to use a number of outside resources. Adjectives for example (first encountered with the colors section) it makes no fucking sense, so just go read the wikipedia article and save yourself some trouble.

Beyond that, make a lang-8 account after the first week or two and start writing using what you know. You'll feel really limited at first of course, but half the trick starting out I think is figuring out how to express what you're looking to say using the tools you have available. Plus it gives you a chance to practice new grammar and vocab in a setting that's a little more natural than duolingo's canned sentences.

viel glück!

Yes! As for books these one's have really helped me:

• Everything Learning German This one is super great for grammar. It has exercises at the end of each lesson so you can practice too :)
  
• Collins Complete German This one is probbbbably my favorite. I love it, it has a guide for pretty much everything you need to know in the grammar, it explains everything well, and it has verb tables so you can study the conjugation. It has some vocabulary in the back too.
  
• Graded German Reader This one is also really awesome. You can find a used one for 10 bucks on amazon, just the new ones are really expensive because I don't think they are made anymore. This starts with simple reading passages and gradually gets more difficult while adding new words- but it's at a perfect pace so you don't get overwhelmed, and you will probably be able to completely understand.
  
• Cafe in Berlin Another german short story book. This one is great too.
  
• German Pre-Intermediate Reader Another reader- this one incorporates the top 1000 words in German.
  
  I know I have more but these are my favorites! As for movies/shows.. when I watch like youtube videos (try 'easy german') or kids shows I tend to watch them without subtitles. If I'm watching an adult movie/show I pretty much have to use subtitles otherwise I can't pick up anything. I usually put the subtitles in German though, because I read better than I listen!
  
  Let me know if I can help you with anything else :)

For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:

Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus

You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.

I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.

I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.

Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs

Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs

Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.

That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.

The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.

Athenaze: Book 1

Athenaze: Book 2

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube

Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.

Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.

Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:

*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)

Plato: A Transitional Reader

Kaegi’s Greek Grammar

Smyth’s Greek Grammar

Plato Apology

Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners

Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader

Basics of Biblical Greek

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES

My life would be amazing if I wasn't a huge pedant, but I'm going to go another round on this. Hopefully we can close this discussion afterwards.

Let's start at the beginning. You say:

>The present day surfice forms are actually identical in Slavic and proto- Dravidian/Tamil 'kur-u' and 'kur-va' "voice" resp. "voice-less".

Right. But the other examples you've cited aren't at all identical, and so my previous description of your phonetic basis for these relationships is more or less correct, right? Or are we down to just these Slavic examples now?

If so, you should realize that most languages share at least a few sounds (the /k/ and /u/ sound being present in the vast majority of the world's languages, and some sort of rhotic r-like sound in a fair share as well). Given the enormous number of words needed in most languages, and the limited set of phonetically possible words in most languages, there's going to be many unrelated languages that have a few similar or identical words. I believe it's John McWhorter, in some recent editions of his book The Power of Babel, who provides a lengthy list of words which have similar form and meaning but which come from demonstrably unrelated languages, or which can be shown to have formed recently, by coincidence. He does this specifically to explain why this isn't a reliable way of showing that languages are related.

>I don't have a theory, it's a sound and meaning comparison with some analogies.

Then what have we been discussing for the past few days? You've been fairly intensely debating with me (and now a few other people, it seems) to prove that there's a relationship between a very specific set of languages, based on a very specific set of words which appear similar. You started this thread by saying that people should more commonly acknowledge that Tamil influenced PIE. Both of these would be theories. That's why we're having this discussion. If you have no opinion on this matter, why have you been defending it?

For what it's worth, my understanding of your most recent theory is that it's this:

• You believe that Indo-European languages, some Uralic languages, and the Dravidian languages share a relatively recent common ancestor. This ancestor is recent enough that the relationship can be demonstrated by a number of words in European languages and Sanskrit which resemble the Tamil word kuru in meaning and shape. Across these languages, this root has been realized in numerous different ways, often with meanings relating to bird, voice or a derogatory term.
  
  If I'm wrong on the details, correct me, but regardless, that's a theory, and a big one. This discussion has been going on for quite a while and it's all here on this thread if you want to review. It really doesn't look like you're just presenting a collection of comparisons, but that you're trying to argue for a specific thesis about the reason for these comparisons.
  
  On the other hand, if you're trying to say that you don't support those points I've listed above anymore, that's fine. But if you've backed away from your hypothesis in light of what's been said here, it would behoove you to graciously admit your evidence isn't as strong as you'd initially assumed. Pretending that you've not actually been promoting this theory is a pretty weak way out.
  
  Now, let's get back to the discussion.
  
  >The historical reconstruction of 'guru' to PIE heavy is a formal reconstruction and there is no meaningful semantic link behind it while this is not the case if we accept there was a common shared Eurasian ancestor between IE and Dravidian languages claimed by the study.
  
  I believe I've provided evidence here that guru was understood to be an ordinary word for "heavy" in Sanskrit, even at the time in which its other, better-known, meaning was coined.
  
  >However the study does not by default acknowledge linguistic historical reconstruction (often contradictory and highly hypothetical for a variety of reasons) to be 100% precise but does provide for and give green light for searching cross-family references no matter what some linguists think.
  
  First of all, no one thinks that we shouldn't be searching for cross-family references. Linguists are constantly trying to prove that languages are related in larger and larger families. The proposed Dene-Yeniseian family is one of the more interesting larger families to be well-received recently, though it's not yet consistently regarded as having been proven. The problem is that linguists require really, really solid scientific proof. And since you're on /r/linguistics, it might suit you to get less defensive when people ask for it from you (though I apologize about the people who are just acting like assholes instead of contributing actual points - they weren't my doing).
  
  Second, even if we do accept the study as valid (which I don't) it makes very specific claims about what sort of words are habitually "ultraconserved" and should be used as evidence for "deep language ancestry". It doesn't even remotely suggest that any pair of similar sounding words would constitute this kind of evidence. Frankly, your examples don't seem to fall within the scope of its very narrow claims.
  
  I do want to acknowledge that it is absolutely true that we "might as well explore the hypothesis of [a] Eurasian common linguistic superfamily". Linguists have been debating many hypotheses for what this - or other, non-Eurasian superfamilies - could look like for years. That's not an issue. The issue is that I don't think that the evidence you're presenting demonstrates any linguistic superfamily. I think it's better explained by the current etymologies we already have, not the ones your propose. I also think there's no Tamil influence on PIE, and that Proto-Dravidian and PIE, if related, are removed by too much time and history to demonstrate a linkage by pointing to a tiny set of similar words. Those are points that I've been trying to make for some time now, and it seems like I'm getting a lot of agreement on them from others - no surprise, as they're what pretty much any linguist would think.
  
  As for the "contradictory and highly hypothetical" nature of linguistic reconstruction, that's not really the case either. While there's debate about the validity of certain proposed families (e.g. Altaic), the debate stems from issues around insufficient data, or proposals that suggest relationships across very long periods of time, to a degree in which we can no longer accurately trace the sound changes which must have occurred. No one doubts the accuracy of reconstruction as a method, just its applicability to certain cases.
  
  Over appropriate periods of time, and with enough data, linguistic reconstruction is remarkably accurate. I've referenced this briefly before, but the PIE laryngeals are a great example. Saussure, one of the fathers of modern linguistics, suggested in 1879 that PIE had a certain set of sounds which hadn't survived into any descendant language, based on evidence from sound correspondences across modern Indo-European languages (this is the kind of data standard reconstruction methods use). Sure enough, when we discovered a previously unknown ancient Indo-European language, Hittite, decades later, we found direct evidence that PIE had sounds in the positions predicted by Saussure based on evidence from one of the oldest Indo-European languages we'd ever seen. Essentially, rather than being "hypothetical" or "speculative", the present understanding is that linguistic reconstruction is demonstrably accurate enough to predict how data from languages we've never seen will look.
  
  Unfortunately for your theory, it's your evidence that's "highly speculative". The only third party evidence is a forum posting which even you have discredited now, and a study which doesn't really have all that much to do with your theory. Basically, you have no real scientific evidence to support your point. The current reconstructions for these words have a much greater weight of real, scientific evidence behind them.
  
  This is a forum about a science called linguistics. I certainly don't think anyone needs to be interested in linguistics. But if you're posting on this forum, there's a reasonable expectation that everyone else is interested in linguistics and knowledgeable of the field. Getting annoyed because people with knowledge of the field disagree with you based on this science is basically the definition of "butt hurt".
  
  TL;DR No tl;dr. Read it.

How much study time do you have available per day? Have you ever learned a foreign language successfully before? Do you speak any other Romance languages fluently?

Assuming you can study at least two hours per day, I would recommend:

1. Get Assimil's New French with Ease with the CD, and do two lessons per day. Spend 30 minutes on each lesson, following whatever variation of the Assimil Dutch instructions pleases you. In 25 days, this will give you a good, basic intuition for how French works, and teach you some useful vocabulary. The nice thing about Assimil is that if you follow the instructions, it works well for almost everybody, and it produces solid results. If you want a grammar overview to go with Assimil, get Essential French Grammar, which is dirt cheap, focused only on the essentials, and an excellent complement to Assimil.
   
2. Since you need to speak very soon, get Benny Lewis's book, which has some good advice on efficiently mastering survival stuff and polite conversation starting very early on.
   
3. A week or two before you leave, skim How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately, which is the bible of dirty tricks for faking a better level than you have. Definitely do his "islands" exercise, and prepare 10 or so islands, getting them corrected on lang-8.
   
   If you think of yourself as a hardcore geek, and you're generally good with languages, there are also a couple of ways to boost your listening comprehension substantially in 30–100 hours.
   
   Total cost: Less than $100, plus some money for iTalki tutors if you follow Benny's advice. But expect to work really, really hard—faking intermediate French after 30 days is a bit like sprinting straight up a steep mountain with a heavy pack. You're trying to compress 350 classroom hours into a month, which means working very hard and efficiently.
   
   Anyway, if you can spend an hour a day on Assimil, and an hour a day on Benny's speaking advice, then you'll get some pretty useful survival French under your belt by the end of the month. Going further than that will probably require studying obsessively.

Namaste.

I don't particularly like the Linganaut sites but they're probably a good start. Yes, a male would happily say मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ mai tumse pyar karta hu to say "I love you" (A female would say करती karti instead) in a normal casual environment, exactly how we say "I love you" in English.

You might find Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation helpful. In the UK (where I live) it's a little hard to get hold of, but not impossible. Get the copy with the accompanying CDs for audio. The book has loads of conversations that you can follow with the audio and translations.

Teach Yourself Hindi Conversation is the sister of the main book Teach Yourself Hindi. Teach Yourself Hindi is a great book which again has accompanying audio and plenty of conversational examples. This main course book is mostly focused on the grammar and rules of the language which may not be that helpful for your purposes.

I do find the site Learning Hindi quite useful, though there is a lack of audio for a lot of the lessons. Perhaps their conversational section will be of most help to you.

Note that trying to speak in a new language for the first time can feel like you are trying to juggle, ride a unicycle and sing an opera all at the same time. Very little of skills you need are yet automatic, so you have to consciously think about each of them.
As everyone has said directly or indirectly, to get good at speaking, you must practice speaking. But there are sub-skills to it that you can try to practice on their own:

1. Pronunciation
   
2. Grammar (e.g. conjugations in many languages)
   
3. Word choice / collocations / idioms / stock phrases
   
   Initially just the physical act of moving your mouth differently to pronounce the language takes concentration. Depending on the distance of your TL from your L1, this can be VERY significant on its own.
   
   When someone says they can't speak well, my response: how many full sentences have you spoken in your TL? Even just reading out loud?
   
   One way to easy your way into speaking:
   Find a list of non-trivial, but not too long sentences (say 4-7 words each) and say them out loud. Make sure a) you know what they mean and b) you know how to pronounce them... even better if you can get a native to help you early on with pronunciation.
   
   Say each one over and over until you are satisfied with your "fluency" with each sentence. Practice the flow of speaking the language for a bit without worrying about "remembering" the content. (Actually, just speaking canned sentences a bunch of times will likely cause you to remember words and phrases from them.)
   
   Once you have some comfort speaking material provided for you, you can work on altering it or just generating your own sentences. You will find a lot of sentences can be usefully reused with simple noun/adjective swaps, e.g. "Where is the ?", "Can I have more ?" This is the beginning of simple conversations.
   
   A very effective way to start this is to create your own language islands (with the help of a native or lang-8), see:
   https://www.amazon.com/Improve-Your-Foreign-Language-Immediately/dp/0989387003
   (No affiliation, I'm just a fan of this book.)

I suggest you take a look at the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In my opinion, two and a half months may be enough to get to A2 if you have the time to spend in learning the language. Don't forget to check the Wiki out, there's a lot of good (and free) resources there.
First: Duolingo and Memrise are good for getting to know new words. Alone, they won't be much help in understanding how to actually speak the language. It's a good start, but it won't take you much further.
Second: you will have to learn the grammar. I spent months on Duolingo without a proper grammar lesson and I got to the point where I was only trying to guess the answers. You can watch Deutsch Für Euch and German with Jenny videos. I used this grammar to learn and I think it is good enough.
Third: you can use the first month to focus on A1 and the second month to focus on A2. I'm saying this because it can be ridiculously easy to feel overwhelmed with German. It will seems like you learned nothing and that you still have a ton of things to study, this is normal. It is very hard to go further than A2 in only two months, so it is better to focus on what A1 and A2 levels need to know and study it hard. If you feel that you know it already and you still have a couple weeks left, you can adventure on B1 lessons. Plan it wisely.
Fourth: listen to a lot of German. You'll be surrounded by the language very soon, and you seriously need to get used to the sound of it. There are youtube channels like Easy German and podcasts like Slow German that can help you with that. You probably won't understand what is being said, but it is good to get used to it. Deutsch Welle has a few podcasts and interactive courses that will help you.

I've read a bunch of sci-fi/fantasy that have made me think deeply, but I don't think they've enlightened me in any specific way, so the three here are the ones that have had the most effect on how I think.

• The Discoverers, The Creators, and [The Seekers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seekers_(book) by Daniel Boorstin. A Western viewpoint on the development of society, ideas, and technology (but not too Western-centric as to be ignorant). My dad turned me onto these when I was 10 or so (and I've read them more recently too), and to this day they remain the most personally influential academic works I've ever read.
  
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and what I consider to be its companion (although slightly drier), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, both by Jared Diamond. A lot of people have already mentioned/talked about GG&S, but Collapse is an analysis of how societies have failed and the main reasons for those failures from cultural ans geographical perspectives.
  
  
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I have no idea why I read this, and parts of this book are exceedingly dry, but (especially with the annotated version) ideas are laid out clearly, and it is important as essentially the foundation work in the study of economics.
  
  Along with these, I could mention A Short History of Nearly Everything, [The Mother Tongue](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue_(book), and [Made in America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_America_(book), all by Bill Bryson, The Power of Babel by John McWhorter, The Prince by Machiavelli, The Art of War by Sun Tzu and a dozen classical discourses and histories. A Short History should really be grouped with the top three, but I feel like I chose the most enlightening ones for me, at least (my family is filled with scientists, so a lot of A Short History of Nearly Everything was more of a well written piece containing a lot of facts I already had some idea about, rather than truly enlightening).
  
  As an aside, if you really enjoyed learning about the eccentricities of many scientists from A Short History of Nearly Everything (along with some of the facts), I would really recommend buying The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by John Gribbin. It's a fantastic anthology of a bunch of biographies of scientists, from the Enlightenment in Europe almost up to modern times, containing some of the wierdest bits of information about well-known and less well-known (but very important) scientists, mathematicians, and engineers and their most famous and not-so-famous work.
  
  Edit: Formatting. Sorry if some of the links don't work (just add a closed paranthesis to the end of the link in the address bar to make it work). Check out the Amazon pages for the books that I've given Wikipedia links for to get reader reviews (and not analysis) if you plan on buying them.

I’m currently teaching myself French for a translation exam as well, and I’ve found this book to be super helpful in teaching me grammar basics, common expressions, and fairly useful vocab. I also like it because it starts giving you reading exercises really early on so it’s good practice for a translation style exam. Once I have a better grasp on the basics I’ll move up to reading like a high-school level book in my research area, and then to academic articles from there.

Also: don’t let German intimidate you!! The hardest thing with German for me was that it was my first language that used cases, but since you know Latin you’ve already got that down. Also if you happen to be a history student once you know some German you should get Deutsche Geschichte by Manfred Mai, it introduces a lot of common history/culture vocab in context and was super useful to me when I was learning. Good luck! :)

I am in the exact same boat. Except I still live in the states.

Here are some things my german gf and I have been working on:

• If I want to learn more vocab in a certain area we find news articles about these things and discuss them. I memorize new vocabulary in the news article.
  
  
• I keep a free account on dict.leo.org and try to add 30-50 new vocab words every week. It is a couples-activity for my gf and I to go over the word list together a few times a week.
  
  
• Make yourself read. It sounds like reading is hard for you so far, but push through! Read childrens' books like The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte) or a translation of Harry Potter, or whatever you are into. If you like more serious things, there is a lot German literature from the 30's and 40's that is written in a very simple style - I'm thinking of stuff by Wolfgang Borchert or Remarque and it is possible to find readers that have a bunch of german stories together with vocab. Something maybe like this. A good online resource for simple news article material is bild.de, if you can wade through the silly, insipid news articles. Hell, they even bold-text the important parts of news articles because they assume their readership doesn't want to read the whole thing... ;) You can pick up some good vocab, though.
  
  
• Learn to ask your wife about what you want to say. If you don't know the word for "transmission" ask her about "The part that makes the wheels go" or something similar and let her tell you what the word is...and try to remember it!
  
  Hope that helps and that I didn't write too much... Good luck!

I would combine Duolingo with Lernu: https://lernu.net/en

You don't have to spend money, but if you want to, I've heard good things about the Teach Yourself Esperanto book (it's a pricey though): https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189/ref=sr_1_1?crid=L17CYNEAZJ1E&keywords=teach+yourself+esperanto&qid=1573258720&sprefix=teach+yourself+esper%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-1

There's also the textbook by David Richardson, which is available as a very inexpensive ebook; the reader near the end of the book is valuable: https://www.amazon.com/Esperanto-Learning-Using-International-Language-ebook/dp/B06X96ZDZ1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C83DAZAWX3V1&keywords=esperanto+richardson&qid=1573258790&sprefix=esperanto+rich%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1#customerReviews

After you've made it to the end of a course and have a bit of a grasp of the language, you can do ekparolu, which is a program that matches learners up with fluent Esperanto speakers for 10 free skype sessions: https://edukado.net/ekparolu/prezento

If you live in or close to a city with an Esperanto club I would go to that too; they're usually pretty easy to find online with a bit of googling and it's important to start trying to speak the language out loud as soon as you can even if it's hard or you can only really say "saluton" and "ĝis".

Amuziĝu :)

Good! French is pretty easy since most of the vocab is similar, and the grammar is really easy to comprehend. I just quickly skimmed and found these two, Grammar and Vocab. I also recommend trying to think in the language. Set your phone and computer's basic language as french and try to incorporate it into your daily life. Frenchify everything you can to create an immersion environment.


I also recommend watching french tv shows, and movies. Also try to visit there sometime! Once you have a foundation in the language, visiting the country and using it an immersible setting will greatly improve your grasp of the language. Check youtube as well for some good tutorials. Make sure to practice writing in french once you grasp the grammar, and speak it out loud. This will help you cement the grammar into your head as well as practice pronunciation.

Definitely find a pen pal once you feel you're proficient enough, and write and skype with each other. Random people work as well if you don't feel comfortable with a pen pal. This will give you the opportunity to refine the pronunciation as well as have real life practice with it.

You don't have to apply all of these methods, but the more you use the easier the language will come to you. I hope this helps!

I'm afraid I don't know about The Kite Runner but equivalent books in French would probably push you quite hard. It's normally best with reading not to have to look too much up because it can be a drag. It's also why I'd recommend sticking to shorter works.

You might like to look into some parallel texts (ie French on one page with the corresponding translation on the opposite side). They really help when you come across difficult idioms and mean you can read easily out and about when you don't have a dictionary to hand. Here's a collection of short stories in French. There are more in this series. They will be harder than Le Petit Prince but it seems you might enjoy more literary writing.

If you're worried about difficulty you might like to look at this Easy French Reader which gets progressively harder. In fact, this might be the best stepping stone for you.

I liked "Graded German Reader: Erste Stufe"(for example, here - but, buy it used. It's out of print, so the new versions are super expensive).

I also like "German Easy Reader" (can be found here). I found the stories in here less varied and interesting than in the Graded Reader, but they have a lot of repetition. You'll find certain phrases repeated a lot, and this actually helped me pick up which case follows certain prepositions in what scenarios. The author also has a pre-intermediate, and I think 3 intermediate readers to follow up on this. They're all pretty cheap too.

I taught myself French mainly with Duolingo, but I also found Easy French Step-by-Step helpful. Also, Fluent in 3 Months has lots of great tips for general language learning.

If you practice daily, becoming conversational in French by summer end is perfectly doable. What I did is, learn a few new words on weekdays (around 5-10), and then review them all on weekends. Focus on the more common words and phrases, basically what you'd need to know if you were going on a short trip to France. Listen to radio/music too, so your brain gets used to the language.

​

Good luck on your endeavor!

Gunch is right, Koine is much easier, but it's also much less satisfying and less useful if you want to read anything besides the New Testament. There is actually a sub-reddit devoted to this, /r/IntroAncientGreek, that you might want to check out, and /r/AncientGreek will be a better place to crowd-source an answer for this. If you want hardcore grammar learning, I would suggest Hansen and Quinn but I also recommend Cecilia Luschnig's book Intro to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach which will have you reading actual Ancient Greek texts MUCH sooner than Hansen and Quinn. It's a rather difficult language that will be difficult to learn without supervision and someone to answer your questions, so maybe get an answer key? Best of luck, and Χαῖρε!

My time has come!!

Websites:

YiddishPop - http://yiddishpop.com Requires Flash. This is a great resource. You should use it.

Yiddish Word of the Week Tumblr Archive http://yiddishwordoftheweek.tumblr.com/archive

Both Der Arbeterring and YIVO offer (paid) online classes.

Yiddish online dictionary lookup: http://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/dictionary.cgi

1000 Most Common Yiddish Words (haven't checked this list, can't vouch for its full accuracy) https://1000mostcommonwords.com/1000-most-common-yiddish-words/

Yiddish.biz http://yiddish.biz/ - This is a decent beginner resources but the learning material does have a few errors in it, so be careful.

http://www.yiddishculture.org/basiclesson/html1.htm

Another online Yiddish dictionary: http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/

Mango Languages has a Yiddish course that should be free to access through your local library.

Books:

The (Updated) Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-English-Yiddish-Dictionary-Gitl-Schaechter-Viswanath/dp/0253022827/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=yiddish+dictionary&qid=1557276655&s=gateway&sr=8-4 Ever wonder how to say "e-mail" in Yiddish? How about "transgender"? It's all in here.

Born to Kvetch - Michael Wex https://www.amazon.com/Born-Kvetch-Yiddish-Language-Culture-ebook/dp/B003J4VE0O/ref=sr_1_1?crid=MI2RSWY63K7S&keywords=born+to+kvetch+by+michael+wex&qid=1557275929&s=gateway&sprefix=born+to+kvet%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1 Wex is one of the greats in the field

Yiddish: An Introduction - Sheva Zucker https://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Introduction-Language-Literature-Culture/dp/1877909661/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sheva+zucker+yiddish&qid=1557275966&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spell

College Yiddish - Uriel Weinrich https://www.amazon.com/College-Yiddish-Introduction-Language-Culture/dp/0914512269/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=college+yiddish&qid=1557275955&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Podcasts:

Vaybertaytsh - a feminist Yiddish podcast http://www.vaybertaytsh.com/

The Yiddish Book Center's The Schmooze https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/the-shmooze

Music:

Yiddish Princess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thlOVsY-2TM&list=PL2CqZe779Hv8HDTb9633P9d9Q7qPXGwr1

Daniel Kahn (has a huge collection of songs both solo and with his band, including this Yiddish cover of Hallelujah: https://youtu.be/XH1fERC_504 )

Amalia Rubin's performance of Der Rebbe Elimelech on a Mongolian TV talent show: https://youtu.be/ANVa-Jh1dMg

More if I think of any later.

EDIT BECAUSE I SOMEHOW FORGOT the online comedy duo YidLife Crisis, including the Greatest Episode Ever guest starring Mayim Bialik: https://youtu.be/A2QlWFSakaM

I would start with a beginner Spanish book that explains basic grammar and pronunciation. Maybe something like this

Learn what sounds certain letters make. e.g.

• 'll' sounds like a 'y' so llama sounds like yama
  
  
• ñ sounds like a "ny" so Español sounds like Espanyol
  
  
• etc.
  
  Then keep slowly adding new vocab/translating through Duolingo, while discovering new stuff like ser vs. estar and how to conjugate verbs
  
  Other resources I've been using include
  
  
• Pimsleur (expensive but your library might have or sail the seven seas) It's all audio so I listen to it in the car, doing dishes or at the gym
  
  
• Coffee Break Spanish - Audio only podcasts
  
  
• Memrise - attaining new vocab
  
  
• Some work books from Amazon like Spanish Conversation & Spanish Verb Tenses.
  
  After this you enter the intermediate category
  
  
• read some easy Spanish books
  
  
• start writing 100 words a day like random thoughts, what you're going to do today, etc. don't be afraid to make mistakes
  
  
• start watching shows or movies in spanish, first with subtitles and then without. I've been really liking Extr@ Spanish. It's like a 2002 Friends style sitcom aimed at high school students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pggZV0ETjI&list=PL-wlhjBlJMB9Hlva6V5Fd_1NWUeJ3IkCX
  
  
  
  
  
  

i’m not sure about everyone, especially by march of next year, but i do think that there’s a good chance the community may increase to 3mil-4mil (from its current ~2mil) speakers by 2025-2035. the introduction of the internet is doing esperanto well. duolingo including esperanto and the introduction of that book that came out in february 2019 is a great push forward for the language. i do have faith that this language will continue to grow, if not to a global level, than to maybe an official status in europe.

One thing you can try is googling "intro modern hebrew syllabus" and see what texts those introductory courses are using (I know the UofA only has courses on biblical hebrew, but many other institutions teach modern hebrew). Here's a few books on Amazon that I found off of those syllabi .

Text 1 and Text 2

The UofA libraries also gives you free access to some ebooks like this one if you want to save costs.

If you look around I'm sure you can find a text that suits you.

Your best option is to start with a textbook like Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish and a dictionary . Also another good dictionary . and then move on to simple books which you can find here . Eventually you'll get to some speakers, local groups, or Yugntruf or find some local Chasidim. There are a lot of people speaking Yiddish, you just gotta know where to look!

EDIT: there's also good places online to hear Yiddish being spoken, like the Yiddish Forward Youtube channel (they have a nice series of someone literally sitting in a chair and reading Sholom Aleykhem stories to the camera if you dig in the uploads) or the myriad recordings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe speaking in his distinctive Litvish dialect.

Practice translating? Three months into learning a language is way too early to be worried about translating. Your goal should be to immerse yourself in the language as much as possible -- that means avoiding English when you study French. Speak French, listen to French, write French, and read French (and when you read, try to turn off the voice in your head that murmurs a running English translation).

Consider downloading some free French-language podcasts (try the iTunes store). This book might be worthwhile. I haven't used it, but the same publisher's Spanish readers are good. Since you said translating, though, I'm wondering if your primary goal is reading French. Even so, I would still say to speak, listen, and write as much as you can -- it will help your reading. But if your primary goal is reading, this book is fantastic. I started using it after two semesters of college French (which were indispensable for helping me internalize the basic structures of the language) and it took me the rest of the way to doing research and reading literature in French (with a dictionary, of course).

Thank you for such a detailed response!

http://myanimelist.net/animelist/nrkid9

Manga is actually what got me into the whole thing, and during my junior year of high school a friend convinced me to watch Angel Beats. Everything on that MAL is what happened afterwards. I must say that anime did change my life and it's probably the driving factor in why I want to learn Japanese.

I have been reading this book on language learning to pick up some tips and it has been an interesting read so far.

Living in the states, immersion isn't easy to achieve. I'm currently taking my first semester of Japanese at a community college I'm attending and the teacher has made the whole experience fun and exciting.

Yes, this book specifically is a fantastic resource for grammar and linguistics. My only warning is that while it says it's written for instructors with minimal understanding of linguistics, it's also written for people with a pretty good understanding of ASL. Having a strong understanding of the fundamentals will really help make this book as effective as possible.

I have read over 350 books on language learning.

That having been said, this very short book is definitely the best (even after 40 years of reading and learning about languages, I still learned a lot from this short book):
How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately
https://www.amazon.com/Improve-Your-Foreign-Language-Immediately/dp/0989387003

The second "must-read" is The Third Ear: https://www.amazon.com/Third-Ear-Chris-Lonsdale/dp/988988870X

These books are also terrific:
Art and Science of Learning Languages
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Learning-Languages-Amorey-Gethin/dp/187151648X

Language Logic: Practical and Effective Techniques to Learn Any Foreign Language
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978064100

I purchased this book and a sanskrit dictionary. I work through every exercise in every chapter. After chapter 5 it takes me around 5-8 hours of work to complete a chapter. I can read devanagari pretty easily, there are a few symbols that I need to look up but mostly comfortable sounding out words. In the book I linked sandhi rules get really introduced in ch.11 (there are a couple common rules introduced and used earlier.) There are no answers for the exercises so I mostly use my dictionary + this site to check my work.

I've been told there are better books out there but until I finish this I'll keep using it. I'm finished with chapter 11, and I estimate I've put around 60 hours of dedicated study to sanskrit. My fluency is next to nil, but I can suss out simple sentences and word forms. I have an understanding of passive past and present for class I,II,IV,X verbs, and eight or so nominal cases.

I highly recommend the textbook Easy French Step by Step:

https://www.amazon.com/French-Step-Step-Myrna-Rochester/dp/0071453873

Very affordable, friendly, easy to use, modern and covers pretty much all the essentials.

Your friend is partially right. Although without learning the Hindi syntax, you cannot learn Hinglish directly. The Hindi taught in the book Teach Yourself Hindi is pretty useful because it uses a good mixture of Perso-Arabic (most frequently used, colloquial) and Sanskrit (less frequently used, formal) equivalents of words. As you progress in Hindi, you'll begin to understand how English parts of speeches (nouns, verbs, adjectives..) are infused into the language.

For a grammar book, I would suggest either the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish series, since they have a lot of different workbooks on different subjects. They have one called Basic Spanish which targets beginners: link

Also, there's the Easy Spanish Step by Step series: link

Both have exercises, vocabulary and answer keys to everything so for written practice, they can be pretty helpful!

ASL is a visual language that has no written form. It can be described in written notation (transcribed), but it needs to be understood that it does not have a written form.

That said there ARE accepted methods in use by linguists who have studied ASL. The following books contain this information.

You might be interested in “The Green Books” and Linguistics of American Sign Language

The Green Books (a teachers resource) goes over the traditional method of transcription of ASL. The second (Linguistics of American Sign Language) goes over a few different methods. The Stokoe method, glossing (which most students will use), and finally the Liddell and Johnson system (movement-hold model).

Why you need to write down what is being signed will determine what the best method for you is. For most cases, glossing is enough. If you need a written transcript of what was said that you can use for more formal linguistic/educational reasons (like research), the Liddell and Johnson system is your go to.

I really enjoyed Latin Alive. It's very readable and entertaining, with lots of interesting etymological connections. It follows the evolution of Latin up through early forms of French, Spanish, and Italian, but not all the way up to the modern languages.

You could start there, and if you wanted to go into more detail, you could try Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction, which is more of a textbook, so less storytelling, but it's still pretty engaging and accessible (at least the parts I've read).

Im currently going through Easy Spanish Step-by Step by Barbara Bregstein. It has pretty decent explanations with exercises that follow. They are decently priced on amazon.

I would also suggest the library. Mine has a lot of audio books including pimsleur, subscription to Mango languages free for members and tons of other resources.

This is the first one:
https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step-Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524764568&sr=8-3&keywords=easy+spanish

I also bought the second book but have not started it:
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Spanish-Step-Step-Accelerated/dp/0071768734/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0071768734&pd_rd_r=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42&pd_rd_w=lSsan&pd_rd_wg=HDnwj&psc=1&refRID=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42

I also bought this book to help with verbs because verbs are a huge part of spanish
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Review-Practice-Second/dp/0071797831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524764647&sr=1-1&keywords=The+ultimate+spanish+verb

Oh this is perfect timing!

I studied Hindi on-off for two years. It's a bit rusty now but I'm still totally enamored with it all.

A great book, universally acclaimed, is Teach Yourself Hindi! which can get you from beginner to intermediate pretty singlehandedly.

Google Translate is notoriously unreliable -- using it to "check" your writing is going to be more trouble than help.

​

Lernu.net is probably your best bet for organized, online learning.

Duolingo is a useful, game-ified supplement.

​

There's some actual books worth checking out. Richardson's

Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language

is highly recommended.

Availability of the hard-copy can be inconsistent, but it's also available as a free PDF download from Esperanto-USA, as is an 12-lesson audio-course by William Auld.

A quite recent, but already well-recommend, book from Britain is supposed to be available in North America in early January (can be pre-ordered from Amazon, now):

Complete Esperanto: Learn to read, write, speak and understand Esperanto

​

Mine is This Able Veteran which is a service dog organization benefitting United States military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The service dog program is proven to help veterans with PTSD cope successfully with the symptoms of PTSD, including depression, nightmares and social anxiety. I look at their page all the time to watch new videos and such so I can cry like a baby! 😂

I would like this item please Easy French Step-by-Step https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071453873/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bVOdBbXH7DPM3 and Thank You for the contest!

Most people have responded to your desire to know more about how Greek evolved. However, if you want to learn Classical Ancient Greek, I strongly recommend Luschnig, Attic Greek. It's a great book. I learned Greek from it, and have taught Greek from it. https://smile.amazon.com/Introduction-Ancient-Greek-Literary-Approach/dp/0872208893/

I guess that I'd like the Portuguese version of this instead. However, it did recommend this one, whose description seems to fit my bill a bit better. I'll have to look into it to see if it's worth paying this much.

I recommend the step by step series.

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step-Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380

There's an easy and advanced one. Both really cheap. I finished the easy one right before I went to a language school and it gave me a really good base.

They might generalize some things, but still give a good run down of grammar topics and any need-to-know exceptions. The book also introduces the subjunctive relatively early, which I think helped with my understanding of it.

That is precisely how languages evolve. Here's an interesting read about it.

Wow. My other posts really hit a nerve. I didnt sling any downvotes. Guess butthurt only comes in grammar theist flavor. LOL.

I would recommend you start by buying this book. It's been of great help to me! Give it a try! It'll change the way you think about learning a language.
https://www.amazon.es/Fluent-Months-Anyone-Language-Anywhere-ebook/dp/B00DB3D352

In addition, there's the much more recent Graded German Reader: Erste Stufe. Out of print but still in copyright, but there's a PDF floating around.

Studien und Plaudereien is very cute but obviously pretty outdated / old fashioned.

i torrented a copy years ago when i first learned. Its no better than any other electronic resource, including free ones.

Rosetta were one of the earlier decent language softwares around in the 90s. that justified a high price at the time. its really not worth it nowadays. I think the only way they are still making money is by historical reputation.

Start with Duolingo, listen to lists of french music, and get a text book like this one which excellent and save your money.

​

My personal favourites are (German Grammar Drills by Ed Swick) and (Grammar Workbooks by Heiner Schenke and Karen Seago), not to forget (Intermediate German: A Grammar and Workbook by Heiner Schenke and Anna Miel). All are great book for practice and really fun exercises to do.

​

​

If you're looking for a starting point, there's a decent transitional reader by Bolchazy that walks you through progressively more difficult passages from the Republic. After that, the Apology and other short dialogues are good, the Geoffrey Steadman readers are enormously useful for helping you figure things out, and he has readers for Republic 1, Crito, and other dialogues. I would pick one of those, and there are free pdfs on his personal website if you aren't sure which one to choose: geoffreysteadman.com

Transitional Reader:
https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Transitional-Reader-Ancient-English/dp/0865167214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520535060&sr=8-1&keywords=transitional+reader+plato

go for it if you really want. I took it in undergrad cause I had previously learned german. Know that it is a dying language, and outside of wooing some grandparents it really hasn't been all that useful. This book is gonna be your best bet: https://www.amazon.com/College-Yiddish-Introduction-Language-Culture/dp/0914512269

I really like Easy Spanish: Step by Step. There's a lot of great vocabulary and exercises (if you're into that), and short stories to read that if you're following along you should be able to comprehend entirely. Oh! and it's cheap!

>increase my likelihood of getting hired abroad

Getting hired doing what? Where abroad?

Why do you want a minor in French? There are at least a few million other Haitians who are bilingual in French, so how are you bringing extra value to the marketplace with that minor? Wouldn't a Spanish/German/Russian/Chinese/etc. - Haitian bilingual be a rarer commodity?

This all really depends on where you want to go and what you want to do.

As for books:
My intro to ling. class used the book Language Files.
The Language Instinct is pretty good.
I really liked The Unfolding of Language.
The Power of Babel doesn't get too technical, but is an introduction to language change.

Just a correction to the title: אני רוצה ללמוד את השפה העברית. Direct objects that are definite should be preceded by the preposition את (et).

This is a good beginner's textbook. You could study it on your own. That combined with the Duolingo you are doing should be a great starting point and last you a little while.

www.duolingo.com to get started on some structured Spanish lessons (free)

www.fluentin3months.com for general guidelines and tips on how to gain oral communication skills quickly (free, and the book is worth it if you become genuinely interested in learning languages)

Despite what many people will tell you, books like Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger are in no way easy to read if you are a true beginner. You are probably nowhere near ready to read authentic French novels if all you've done is a third of Duolingo, but if you want to try reading something anyway, I would suggest starting with something that was written specifically for beginning French students. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Easy-French-Reader-Roussy-Sales/dp/0071428488

For listening, subscribe to Yabla.com and also listen to Francais Authentique (search for it on Youtube or a podcast app).

look on amazon, i'm pretty sure they have kindle versions for languages besides french

http://www.amazon.com/Easy-French-Reader-Roussy-Sales/dp/0071428488

-dftm

There won't be anything specific. This is because language learning depends on multiple factors that vary greatly between learners:

• language goals
  
• time available to study
  
• materials [being] used
  
• fluency in related languages
  
• target areas of difficulty (i.e., some people memorize words easier than they learn grammar, some people understand grammar faster than they learn vocab, etc)
  
  Essentially, though, any amount of time you spend productively learning your language will be beneficial. So with French, you can try:
  
  
• spend 30 minutes a day going through an online course, such as OLI
  
• spend 15 minutes reviewing vocabulary you learned the day before
  
• spend 15 minutes listening to French music, videos, etc or reading easy French passages
  
  Then after a month or so, adjust according to how far you've progressed. Or you could try Duolingo in the beginning and then moving onto different methods. Just try to be fluid and don't stress out :)

Right now I'm using Easy Spanish Step by Step and Pimsleur mostly. I will sometimes listen to Language transfer or watch youtube teachers and lastly I will use duolingo during my train ride in the morning or when I just want a short break from work.

So far Pimsleur helps a ton with actually listening to and speaking the language, while the book gives me a more robust understanding of the actual grammar and empowers me to form my own thoughts. All the sources help expose me to common grammar.

The last thing I do is when I think things I'll often try to see if I can figure out how to say it in spanish just in my head.

One tip for using duolingo though that's helped my learning, for the statements in spanish, try not to look at the phone and listen first and try to understand in your head before you look at the phone at all. If you can't make out the words with just listening (or when a new word is introduced) look only at the statement, not the answer portion and try understanding again. Generally try to avoid looking at the answer portion because usually I've found the answer to be obvious which is unhelpful. Translate in your head first, then select an answer. But always remember that it's not a primary resource. I try to get at least a half hour of spanish every day and I don't include duolingo time in that.

I used the Richardson book. It’s grammar and vocabulary lessons, followed by a section of reading texts that get more advanced and introduce more words. It’s a free PDF now from Esperanto-USA (https://retbutiko.esperanto-usa.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=19232) or you can buy the book on Amazon (Kindle here: Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X96ZDZ1/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_v4iADb27HYR0P). The paperback is for some reason currently not available (it’s too expensive from third-party sellers), so don’t bother with that. You could print the free PDF if you really wanted to.

Disclaimer: the Richardson book was written in the 90’s and doesn’t know about the Internet. I was involved in the minor edits to the current version, which came from a scan of the paper book, since we didn’t have the digital files anymore. The text is just a tiny bit less-than-clear because it’s a scan, and that’s unfortunate. It could use a full OCR and actual editable text. I also cleaned up a few of the images from earlier editions that were questionable (there was a “parts of the body” image of a woman that was cartoonish and “too anatomically correct,” and a few others).

Lots of people won't pay, that's true. But it's also true that many will. Learning a language involves a huge time commitment and for many people accelerating that has a lot of value. Benny Lewis talks about ways to learn for free, but people can and do pay him for some of his products:

• "Fluent in 3 Months" book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062282697/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0062282697&linkCode=as2&tag=fluein3mont-20
  
  
• $97 "Plus" package: http://fi3mplus.com/premium/
  
  So it's tough but not impossible.

From what I understand, I think you're going to need to start with Sanskrit proper before diving into BHS particularly.

http://learnsanskrit.org

This is a very recent textbook, and is supposed to be a very good one. It's not too pricey.

There are some other resources linked to on the official site.

These primers also come recommended to me:

https://www.amazon.com/Devavanipravesika-Introduction-Sanskrit-Robert-Goldman/dp/0944613403

https://www.amazon.com/Samskrta-Subodhini-Sanskrit-Primer-Michigan-Southeast/dp/089148079X

For those of you interested in regional dialects and colloquialisms (and also for those of you who get irritated by such things) I highly recommend The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter

I read this one so many times I could practically recite it word for word. It's pretty good - starts out at a fairly simple level and gradually gets harder as you go. My only complaint is that it's a bit short.

FYI advanced gloss is far more detailed than you may realize. For example, see http://theinterpretersfriend.org/tech/cl.html and http://www.start-american-sign-language.com/sign-language-symbols.html

It can get more complicated. For more information, also see the American Sign Language "Green Books" Teacher's Resource Text on Grammar and Culture http://www.amazon.com/American-Language-Teachers-Resource-Grammar/dp/093032384X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420357361&sr=1-1&keywords=American+Sign+Language+teacher+cokely#reader_093032384X

Here is a good example for learning French. The first chapters barely assume any knowledge of French, and by the end of the book you're reading (simplified) stories about French history.

Another example would be the Lingua Latina series for learning Latin. Starts off super simple, but by the end of the third book, you're reading unedited classics.

I'm using "hebrew from scratch" and I'm very satisfied. I started with no knowledge about the language and it worked well. https://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-Scratch-Part-1/dp/9653501127

The Power of Babel by John McWhorter is a good standby

I assume "no one speaks Esperanto" is hyperbole - there are thousands of fluent speakers, and over 2 million "active learners" on Duolingo. There are many languages in the world that don't have as active a speaker base.

"There is no Esperanto culture" is also an invalid criticism - there are thousands of Esperanto books as well as translations of popular books like The Hobbit or Alice in Wonderland. There is plenty of music and videos to be found on YouTube. There are several subreddits in Esperanto. You can learn it for free on lernu.net and duolingo, or go further with any of a number of courses available in book form or in person.

The valid criticism that people make is that "no one speaks it as a first language" and therefore there is nowhere in the world where you can "go" to use the language the same way you would French, Chinese, or Russian. Many people think it's not worth learning because of that. But here's the thing... THAT WAS THE POINT. Esperanto was designed to be the world's second language. It was never meant to supplant anyone's mother tongue. It was meant to be everyone's second language, so that no matter what your first language was, you could speak to anyone in the world. To me, that's pretty cool.

Unfortunately, because there was no native speaker base to spread its use, it never attained its goal. It would require a push from a large group of world governments to make that happen. And because of that, it probably will never become a world second language the way it was intended. For now, speakers of Esperanto will have to be content with Pasporta Servo

Duolingo is good but I still think you'd need additional resources to rank reasonably well on the CEFR scale. It's my understanding that Complete Esperanto is intended to get a student somewhere near B2 / upper intermediate.

• Teach Yourself Spanish (Latin or España)
  
• Colloquial Spanish (Latin or España)
  
• Easy Spanish Step by Step (I think it's Latin American only)
  
• Assimil Spanish with Ease (España only)

You might like [this one] (https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Languages-Historical-Introduction-Alkire/dp/0521717841)

I'm skeptical that it's "almost the same as when the island was settled."

I'm no expert, but in reading The Power of Babel The author notes that even in isolated cultures, the language still changes to the point that 2 or 3 generations later natives can tell the difference. That is, they'll say things like "That's Old Tangier, like my grandma used to speak."

'Complete Esperanto' is an excellent, modern textbook:

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189

If you want a free PDF of an older textbook, 'Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language' is available from Esperanto USA:

https://retbutiko.esperanto-usa.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1029_1033&products_id=19232

You'll see PDFs of Ivy Kellerman's textbook floating around, but it's from 1915, and not the best for learning modern Esperanto.

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step--Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8


you can get this used on amazon

Fluent in 3 months is another way of basically doing what /u/ixian_probe is suggesting.

There's also one for french.

Is this the book Easy French Reader?

Have you read this book yet?

https://www.amazon.com/American-Language-Teachers-Resource-Grammar/dp/093032384X

It's available online https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189

I read it in The Power of Babel.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Babel-Natural-History-Language/dp/006052085X

I'm hearing this too.
Additionally, such was pointed out to me in the first few pages of this textbook

Laŭ la video, oni povas aĉeti ĝin ĉi-tie, ĉe Amazon. Ankaŭ, ŝajne, ĉe Esperanto-USA.

Duolingo is pretty bad at explaining things unfortunately. If you are on the desktop website, you can get a bit more information if you click the little light-bulb symbol that appears next to some of the lessons.

However I’d recommend doing another course alongside or instead of Duolingo. For example, you can try the course at Lernu.net or buy the book Complete Esperanto.

The -n ending marks the accusative. You add it to the thing that is being acted on by a verb. In English this is the thing that usually appears after the verb. For example “mi manĝas la pomon” (I am eating the apple). The apple is being eaten, ie, it is the thing being acted upon by the verb, so it needs the -n ending.

If you're not very advanced https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071463380/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_image_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I use this, it's ok, has helped me so far.