Languages
From Wiki
I have seriously studied Latin, German, Finnish, Mandarin, Esperanto, Spanish, Polish. I've only become competent in Esperanto so far. Polish will hopefully be my next language to become competent in...
The hardest part of languages for me is understanding speech, which is frustrating since most people seem to be better at that than I am. I learn grammar more easily than average, it seems, and then because I speak more correctly than other newbies, people assume I'm more fluent than I am and they speak rapidly with complex grammar and advanced words. E.g. I've been living in Poland since December 2005 and still can't understand most people when they're speaking normal Polish, but I can converse well enough with friends who know my limits. And even with Esperanto (which is much easier than Polish and other national languages) I notice that I often don't understand speech as well as many other Esperantists, even if they've learned it more recently than I or if their grammar is crappy, etc.
- http://jmemorize.org is a nice free Java-based flashcard program
- http://www.travlang.com/wordofday/change.html is a Word of the Day list where you can select many languages
