Language learning - general tips
Study every day
Try to set aside some time every day for your studies, ideally when your brain is at its most receptive. It's better to study for 30 minutes every day than for 3 hours once a week. If you can spare an hour a day, break it up into two or three sessions to avoid brain overload.
If you decide to study for half an hour a day for example, try to stick to that time. It's often easier to get started on an activity if you know you'll finish it after a certain time. Don't worry about completing the lesson or whatever you're working on, just try and do as much as you in the time available, and maybe you could reward yourself afterwards.
Revise/review regularly
Go over each lesson several times, perhaps once in the morning, once in the evening and once several days later. Give your brain time to digest the material, but make sure the gaps between periods of study are not too long, i.e. more than a few weeks, or you will forget most of what you're trying to learn. Make sure you have got to grips with the contents of one lesson before moving on to the next.
Build on solid foundations
Make sure you're comfortable with the fundamentals of the language before tackling the more advanced stuff. It will take you a while to get used to the pronunciation and orthography of a new language, but without a solid understanding of these, you'll find it very difficult to learn more.
Set yourself targets
Setting reasonable targets is a good way to motivate yourself. You could set yourself a time limit or aim for a certain level of proficiency.
Focus on your interests
Once you have got to grips with the basics of the language, learn to talk/write/read about the things that interest you. In this way you are more likely to remember to the words, phrases and grammatical constructions you encounter.
Don't be discouraged by apparent lack of progress
You will find that at times you're making fairly rapid progress, while at other times you seem to standing still or even going backwards. This is normal when learning a language, so don't be discouraged. If you feel like you are making little or no progress, try going over earlier lessons/exercises to see if they're easier now than when you first tried them.
Don't worry about making mistakes
You probably make the occasional mistake when speaking your native language, so making mistakes in a foreign language is nothing to worry about. What matters is getting your message across, not whether you use all the right words, inflexions, tenses, cases, etc. If you cannot think of the exact words, try using other ones. For example, say you were talking about your office and didn't know the word for photocopier - you could try describing its function: "a machine for making copies" instead. You could also try drawing pictures and/or miming if you can't think of the words.
Learn how to say things like "How do you say X in your language", "What's the word for Y?", "What's that called?", "What are they doing?", etc.
If you have a teacher or native speaker to help with your studies, ask him or her to point out your mistakes and to correct them. When you first start learning a new language, having every single mistake pointed out to you will be very demoralising so ask your for only the more serious errors to be highlighted. When you've acquired more confidence and a degree of fluency in the language, ask for all your errors to be commented on.
If you inadvertently offend people with your mistakes it's useful to have a few stock phrases up your sleeve, such as "Forgive me, I don't speak your language very well but am trying hard to learn it." or "Why are you laughing so much?" or "What's so funny?" or "What did I say wrong?".
Have fun
Find ways to make language learning fun. This could involve games, songs, stories, tongue twisters, jokes and anything else you can think of.
Which language should I learn?
If you're not sure which language to study, here are some factors to consider:
Availability
Are materials and other resources available for the language you want to learn? Are there classes in your area? For the popular languages, like French, Spanish and German, this shouldn't be a issue, but it may be difficult to find resources and/or classes for the lesser-studied languages.
Usefulness
If you want to learn a language with a large number of speakers and which is spoken in many countries, the ones to choose in order of 'usefulness' are: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu.
This list is based on the number of speakers, the number and population of countries where the languages are spoken, the number of major fields using the languages internationally, the economic power of countries using the languages, and their socio-literary prestige.
For a breakdown of these factors see:
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
The languages with the most speakers are:
This list includes first and second language speakers. The totals are all estimates and each source gives a different figure. If you include people who speak them as foreign languages, the total for English would increase significantly.
Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the USA after English, with around 28 million speakers. The third most spoken language is Chinese - mainly Cantonese, with over 2 million speakers. Other languages with over a million speakers include French, German, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Italian.
For more details see: http://www.mla.org
Here's an illustration showing where the most spoken languages are spoken.
Difficulty
Each language presents you with a different set of challenges. Some languages have numerous verb conjugations, noun declensions and/or genders. Others might have irregular spelling systems, a variety of plural forms and/or uncommon phonemes or combinations of phonemes. Generally the more a language differs from your L1 or other languages you know, the harder it is to learn.
For English speakers the least difficult languages are probably: Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.
The most difficult languages for English speakers, and indeed speakers of most other languages, are Arabic, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.
Language Learning Difficulty for English speakers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers
Languages in demand by employers
If you want to learn a language in order to improve your employment/promotion prospects then choose one that is in demand by employers. The list below gives you an idea of which languages are in demand and is based on job ads posted on recruitment sites. You can find links to the recruitment sites on the Careers using languages page.
Note: languages are shown more or less in order of popularity with employers.
Africa
English, French, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese
Americas
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese
Asia-Pacific
English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese
Western Europe
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish, Greek, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic