Foreign Languages

Online Resources

Books

Find yourself a dictionary that translates both to and from English. There are many, you'll need one.
If you aren't quite fluent in a language but plan to travel somewhere it's spoken anyway, get at least one phrasebook. There are many; pick one. It'll never be enough but it's better than nothing. Lonely Planet guides tend to be somewhat helpful.

Tips

Remember that there are very good reasons for learning a language. Number one is the enormous amount of doors it opens to you. It can improve your circumstances dramatically to have other people actually understand you. In the US, this doesn't seem like a big deal until you realize a lot of people have immigrated here and still can't speak English - and yes, they're contributing a heck of a lot to the country (good holy moly they work hard). And I don't like to travel without knowing as much of the place's language as possible. It's honestly not safe. Second reason? It can enrich your life by understanding the culture of another place instead of just having a surface glance at it. Yeah, there are things like online translation, but even when they get good, things like nuance, meaning, and the background behind words and phrases can add a lot of complication to what seems like just words. Language is about way more than just conveying meaning. It contains history, culture, philosophy, and an entire way of life. In a lot of cases it can contain even more information than that, such as fairy tales and legends referenced by just a couple of words, or even one word. Sometimes it takes linguists decades to even find such things. Yep, language has easter eggs.
If computers learn languages for you and you rely on automated translators, that sounds nice, right? Well, wrong. What's lost in translation is the entire history and culture and context of each and every word, phrase, sentence, poem, epic. An excellent example is actually the Bible. The original Bible (the Old Testament) is in Ancient Hebrew, which itself came from a mix of Aramaic and Akkadian. Modern Hebrew is a simplified language, and Biblical Hebrew is difficult even for native Hebrew speakers to decipher. So if you want to understand the sacred text much of the world relies on as "the truth," knock your own socks off by seeing how different it truly is in the original version. The original New Testament is in Greek, so you'd have to learn that, and discuss the vagaries of the language with someone from Greece, most likely a Greek Orthodox clergyperson. Another good example is Engrish and Chinglish. Often the translations are technically quite correct, but oh, the way it comes across. Have I made my point? (come to think of it, ever wonder if China and Japan make fun of native English speakers for botching their languages?)
Learning a new language is just as difficult as learning new stuff in math. Allow yourself just as much time to learn it and plan for it to take more effort than you expect. It is likely to take around three years per language to become fluent if you work consistently. If you ever wonder if it's really worth the effort, remember that translation jobs might just take off in the next ten years due to increased globalization. Also good luck getting around in any country without knowing the language.
Foreign languages must always be learned in tandem with a thorough education in the culture that language belongs to. Otherwise, you will run into such serious translation errors and misunderstandings that disasters and tragedies could become a matter of course. Don't repeat the colonialist's mistakes of arrogance. That's just asking for trouble.
Slap post-its or homemade labels on stuff around your house that label each item in the language you're learning
Speak in the language you're learning as much as you can, preferably 2 to 3 times a week. If you're able, try corresponding via writing or typing as well, again, 2 to 3 times a week. Also read it, yep, 2-3x/week. Once a week at minimum for all these should really help.
Generally speaking, paying a tutor for language lessons pays off. I believe you can find some at TakeLessons.com
Try to find as much to immerse you in the language as possible. The first step is learning to understand TV, cartoons, and children's or comic books from the place you're trying to learn the language of. Start with subtitles, but after a while turn them off. Listen to music in that language, look up the lyrics and translate them. By the time you're slowly reading books in that language, you're well on your way. It's when you're reading books in that language as if they were in English that you know you're gonna be fine.
Once you have the chops, start reading social media posts in the language you're learning. Download or install that language's keyboard, and respond.
Once you're almost to total fluency, switch your computer's language to the one you're trying to learn, and/or do the same with international websites you visit (i.e. Reddit, Wikipedia). This is incredibly annoying and frustrating, just warning you.
The easiest/hardest way to ensure you truly are fluent in a language is to set yourself loose in the country where that language is the norm and see how you manage. It's like being thrown in at the deep end. Expect to be kind of good at said language in around two years, provided you don't keep yourself in an English-speaking bubble.

How Learning A Foreign Language Can Help You, section added 10/11/24

Translator softwares can do what they do. But they can't visit a foreign country in your place and fully immerse in the culture. Only you can do that. It's been my experience that if you don't know the language you literally and figuratively do not have doors open for you in other countries, and for good reason. Those folks don't know who you are or what you're like if you can't literally speak the same language. All they have to go on is stereotypes. It is admittedly a huge hassle to learn a language but it also is something I can pretty much guarantee that you won't regret.
Many, many books and other pieces of written media have not been translated into English. And some of them are really cool.
You don't know what you don't know. And if you want to change your life, there's nothing quite like taking one step towards it. This is one good first step.
Ultimately, enough people learning more than one language and making a serious effort to learn the culture and traditions of any given place will create a change on an international level towards better understanding, less wars, and less bullshit overall. I don't believe world peace is possible given human nature but war is hell and there could be less of it. On a more personal level, I guess you have to ask yourself how much of this kind of stuff you are curious enough about to try. You could dip your big toe in and dabble if you aren't sure.
Some of these if not all of them are keys to libraries' worth of information that was never translated into English and therefore unavailable without speaking that language fluently, and if you read a lot of what I've said you understand why that's such a big deal. Take for instance Latin. Without knowing at least a little of it your understanding of medicine, gardening, botany, farming, and law is probably toast. The inverse is true too, the more Latin you know the better you can understand all of these things and that's a lot of potential problems avoided in daily life. It's not actually a dead language. Mandarin Chinese is another one as useful as this because Chinese culture has had centuries upon centuries of breakthroughs in pretty much every possible field of endeavor, only some of which people outside China have even heard of. I'm talking about the civilization that probably invented pasta, successfully farmed the same land for thousands of years, and definitely invented gunpowder; it is not inconsequential. So where do you think you can find the information that helps you most? From what culture? Maybe learn some of the language if not all of it. - added 12/11/24

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