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Originally posted by sycamore
Well, my first recommendation would be to FORGET what you know about English.
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That is the biggest unknown for me at this point. What do I
know about English? I just use it to express thoughts. It (on the surface, at least) requires no extra effort on my part.
I remember from high school French that the ordering of the sentence structure was different. I think that will be the hardest thing - forming sentences that don't sound jumbled up.
As far as I know, the emphasis and inflection will be more pronounced as well. And also carry much more meaning. Just poking around the net I have seen that very different words sound similar in some languages.
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When I learned Spanish in college, we started very basic--we started using Spanish words for the things around us and learned Spanish commands.
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By that, do you mean that you learnt the nouns first by using them in your day to day English sentences? "Please hand me the [foreign word for remote]"?
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Also, another thing that helps is having a friend or people with whom you can speak the language.
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I've noticed a few bilingual chat rooms, set up specifically to help with proficiency. Pronunciation would still be an issue, but they could definately help with fluency.
Plus I like the idea that you are likely helping someone else improve their English. Good karma
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What language are you considering?
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Someone suggested Spanish as a good place to start, as it has elements of other languages in it or forms a basis for other languages. It also seems to be fairly widespread in some countries.
After that, an Asian language. But I'm not sure which one yet. I'd be more likely to get into the Indonesian areas than into Japan or China.