Obviously there are tremendous advantages to being multi-lingual. Not only does it widen the countries you could potentially live and work in but it can also offer you access to totally new ways of life. For example, living in a village in Sicily is going to be very different from Buffalo! It can also offer you a greater range of careers as being able to speak a foreign language will compliment many different jobs and set you apart from the competition.

There are many ways to learn a language and most agree that the best way is to actually live fully immersed in the country where you new language is spoken. For most however this is simply not a viable option and so we are resigned to CD courses, the internet or a local language school.

Among the home courses there are two which stand head and shoulders above all the rest in terms of their effectiveness. The first is Michel Thomas and the second is Pimsleur. They are more expensive than other courses but justifiably so as they really succeed in teaching you where so many others fail. Both brands cover a number of different languages with Pimsleur probably covering the most.

If I were to start to learn any new language I would begin with Michel Thomas and then move onto Pimsleur. This combination would give you an excellent understanding of how the verbs work plus all their tenses along with a working vocabulary for general conversation.

Once you have that much there are further worthwhile courses online which I can go into in another article. Through it all however the most important thing will be to keep your motivation as things can get tough going as the months go by. Learning a new language to a point where it's easy and usable is most definitely a long term commitment.