GeorgeUK

I agree about them being a pain but heres a pretty good link explaining how you can tell a noun's gender.

http://german.about.com/library/blgen_das.htm

As mentioned before, China is becoming more or a marketplace as it continues it's economic boom so I'm just curious as to which would be the more useful dialect to learn? Most Chinese in the Uk speak Cantonese but Mandarin is the official language so any hints/tips appreciated.

I think that despite the economic naysayers, China's economy will be a world leader for many years to come. With this in mind and knowing how Chinese people appreciate attempts to respect their language and culture, a few words of Chinese will do nobody any harm.

When I was at school I became quite fluent in French and German and it's one of my biggest regrets that once I passed my exams that I let them drop away to the point where when I was in Paris I could barely order a beer. Hopefully, the grounding I had then will help as I try to learn again.

I'm aware that there are 5 different versions of Spanish but when in Spain, what is the more versatile and most understood? I'm guessing that Madrid would be more Castillian Spanish but other big cities/regions such as Barcelona and Andorra speak Catalan. It would also be useful to know which is the easier to study.

The apostrophe and its use when describing possession of nouns is one of the most misunderstood parts of written English so I thought I would set down two simple rules for any scholars out there.

when possessing a singlular noun (or one object)

- the dog's tail

this is when describing one dog and his tail.

for plurals:-

the dogs' tails

this is when describing tails  belonging to more than one dog

There are many instances when the rule is changed but as a rule of thumb, follow this and you won't go too far wrong.

Well I've read few reviews and it seems the method has been around for along time so it must work. I've never used it but it seems to use the repetition method of getting a language to stick in your head. This to me is the most natural way of learning as this is how we do it as children when learning to speak so I would guess that its successful if you stick to it. Whether the 'quick fix' generation of today who prefer to buy into the "speak a new language in 24 hours" hype would cope with it is a different matter.

The big advantage that books like dictionaries and published encyclopedias hold is that they have been through a checking and verifying process before they are published. You can guarantee that 99.9% of content is factually correct. As mentioned above, though the internet is a great free resource, who is actually checking the accuracy?

Online tutorials are fine in that you get the bedrock of solid grammar and the chance to hear the pronunciation of words too. It still boils down top the fact that learning a new language is 30% teaching and 70% practising speaking and writing it yourself.

I'm from the UK and I'm looking for hints and tips on conversational German and Italian. I often look at training videos and tapes and find them rather stilted so hopefully, I can get tips on the real language used spoken by locals.

Thanks in advance.