Kimchi

[Beermonger]

Didn't like Rosetta stone myself. I'm more old school when it comes to languages. I like a good no-nonsense grammar book (nothing with cartoons or speech bubbles, please). I do use Duolingo casually, but the only must-have software for me is a good spaced-repetition program for vocab: Supermemo, or something similar like Mnemosyne or Anke. SM isn't free (~$16) and is encumbered with the worst interface ever, but by Zeus is it effective when you get it working. The other two are free and better presented, and are probably just as good.

I was kind of learning Turkish for no particular reason (I like umlauts: görültülü means 'noisy', IIRC), but I got distracted. Must get back into it.

With you on the food. I got into Chinese when I came back to Dublin and discovered all the Chinese food shops....

[Eoin]

I speak fluent German, bad French and a few bits and pieces of a good few languages. I find Rosetta Stone to be brilliant and hate the old rote learning systems.

[Beermonger]

Oh, yeah, I don't like rote learning as such, but SM helps me really remember large amounts of vocab, so it's a good addition to some other study method. You can't learn to speak a language just by rote memorization, after all. I lived in Poland for a few years, so I speak Polish well, but that's more or less the only other language I can make practical use of. I tend to dabble rather and apply myself. Living where the language is spoken makes it much, much easier to make real progress.