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I definitely agree with what most of the posters have suggested and that is reading is by far the best way to expand your vocabulary. With reading you get a better feel of the words and find them used in a lot of good examples in terms of where the story line takes you that way you can get the words embedded in your memory. In terms of getting an app, I honestly don't see it helping you much because in a sense you are looking for an easy and quick solution. You might find that the app will end up frustrating you more that helping you. With all that said if you still insist on getting an app, take a look at the Dictionary.com website and see what you are most comfortable with there.

Oh my, this sounds absolutely awesome :grin:, I love the idea and the concept behind it! I would surely love to try it out. Well done to everyone working on the concept. I've already told a friend about it and she's also super ecstatic. Learning languages has never sounded this fun .

Duolingo is a fantastic on to be honest, it is easy to use and also fun! I started using it to polish up my French and I just can't stop ranting and raving about it. All the best with your quest.

Yes I have and for me it really is embarrassing. I studied French all through out my schooling days right through to university but can't for the life of me hold a proper conversation in the language. At least not a conversation that makes much sense. I always wonder what could have happened because I was pretty good at French in school and passed it very well. I suppose it boils down to the fact that after my studies I never really practiced what I had learned to begin with. Like the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect". I am currently trying to learn French again and this time actually speak it.

I think that proximity is a big factor in learning a neighboring countries language more so if the countries are separated by boarders. In my personal experience, I found it fairly easy being from Botswana to learn most of the South African languages especially since some of the cultural aspects of these two countries overlap and also because I interacted a lot with South African native speakers. On the other hand I find it difficult to learn say a language from Zambia even though it's in close proximity to my country of origin. So it all basically boils down to interactions, interest and obviously having the passion to learn the particular language or languages.

Oh my "immersion" really is important when it comes to language skills or properly being able to converse in a newly learned language with native speakers indeed. In my experience I found that whenever I am in the midst of native speakers no matter how confident I may feel or how much of the language I think I know I always get tongue tied and never really understand what is being said to me mostly because the natives speak at a terrible fast pace and seem to also mince most of their words. I experienced this when I visited one of the rural areas in South Africa called Kwa-Zulu Natal. I had to really take time and listen intently and attentively otherwise I would miss the whole point of the conversation and go off on a tangent. Even though I believe that I have a great grasp of the Zulu language. This as you can imagine becomes highly embarrassing and you might also get weird looks as though to say, hey we thought you were fluent at this particular language but seem to know nothing about it. So I would say that it is always better to have practice with a native speaker of the language you just learned so as to polish up the dialect and catch a few of their common terms and phrases.

I am not very sure what language would be considered as a "rare" language but yes I think that I do speak a few "rare" languages. I am from Gaborone, Botswana but have lived in Johannesburg, South Africa most of my life so I speak languages such as Setswana, Zulu and Xhosa to mention but a few. Xhosa would probably classify more as a "rare" language because it has a lot of clicks and funny sounds that feel like your vocal chords are screeching and sometimes even popping :confused:. Do any of you know of any of the languages I have mentioned above? I find them rather intriguing and lovely to know, they may also sound very funny to someone who has never heard of them before!

I think that it depends on the passion each individual has for learning languages so it really is up to each person to decide how many languages they want to learn and most importantly how many languages they can handle. Personally I would love to know at least 5 languages fluently that way I will have the opportunity to interact and build relations with ease and precision. At the moment I speak quite a number of African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans to name a few. Learning these languages was fairly easy for me to do as most African languages are really very similar. I would love to polish up my French and learn Portuguese, Italian and maybe Mandarin.