Business speak...

[NetwkSupport]

Thinking of learning another language, was going to start with Spanish, then my ultimate goal of Mandarin (due to the emerging markets).

Anyone else thought about learning another language to open up more opportunities for the future? If so what?

[Purple Dalek]

Thinking of learning another language, was going to start with Spanish, then my ultimate goal of Mandarin (due to the emerging markets).

Anyone else thought about learning another language to open up more opportunities for the future? If so what?

Start with the Mandarin. It is a quite easy language. No irregular verbs for starters, and very logical rules.

[voodooflux]

Thinking of learning another language, was going to start with Spanish, then my ultimate goal of Mandarin (due to the emerging markets).

Anyone else thought about learning another language to open up more opportunities for the future? If so what?

I've been mulling over learning Mandarin for a while. How do you plan to go about it - audio course, college, etc?

[Francko]

Thinking of learning another language, was going to start with Spanish, then my ultimate goal of Mandarin (due to the emerging markets).

Anyone else thought about learning another language to open up more opportunities for the future? If so what?

For work???? No chance you'll learn one of these languages if you don't live in the place for at least 1 year. Surely it's a good way to start. But I'd rather see many other opportunities for training, unless your wife is chinese and you want to move to China.

[NetwkSupport]

I've been mulling over learning Mandarin for a while. How do you plan to go about it - audio course, college, etc?

Im going to learn using audio from http://www.michelthomas.co.uk/

Highly recommended

[Purple Dalek]

I've been mulling over learning Mandarin for a while. How do you plan to go about it - audio course, college, etc?

Was interested in it when at school. Got a "Teach Yourself Book". Later my parents bought me a Linguaphone course for Xmas. Later did a course in it at college with a native speaker as tutor.

[ookook]

Those tapes are pretty pointless, I learnt Spanish from working in Spain for a few years, my brother was learning from these tapes and they are useless, unless you sit down and study the grammar properly you'll have no chance.

The only thing is to go and live there, or you'll never pick up the slang, the nuances of the accents and the voice tones and you'll never get used to listening to 8 spanish people shouting away at the same time, all talking over each other

I imagine Mandarin is an absolute nightmare since it's tonal based.

[voodooflux]

Im going to learn using audio from http://www.michelthomas.co.uk/

Highly recommended

Cheers - I'll check those out.

EDIT - blimey, my 2000th non-LR post.

[NetwkSupport]

Those tapes are pretty pointless, I learnt Spanish from working in Spain for a few years, my brother was learning from these tapes and they are useless, unless you sit down and study the grammar properly you'll have no chance.

The only thing is to go and live there, or you'll never pick up the slang, the nuances of the accents and the voice tones and you'll never get used to listening to 8 spanish people shouting away at the same time, all talking over each other

I imagine Mandarin is an absolute nightmare since it's tonal based.

good point would need to live over there but for the basics mikkel thomas is very good, quite ground breaking in his approach in terms of audio learning.

[NetwkSupport]

Was interested in it when at school. Got a "Teach Yourself Book". Later my parents bought me a Linguaphone course for Xmas. Later did a course in it at college with a native speaker as tutor.

Purple Dalek - can you speak mandarin then? how well if so?