Has anyone learned a language from Youtube?
 

Instead of dropping money on Rosey Stoner, Berlitz, evening college, etc. has anyone actually learned a language from the freebie vids on Youtube? Some appear to be fairly legite and the chalkboard read along is helpful.

As for the deaf mute street trash language, youtube has taught me well. :D

Met this young dude chatting about road bikes sitting in the waiting area in a Chinese restaurant. They ended up sitting next to us. Waiter comes by and he starts chatting with him in Chinese. Showing off in front of his date and friends (good for him). I was impress, and ask if he studied over seas. He laughed and said," You Tube man. It is the best and the price is right". He can carry on a simple conversation.

Rosetta is damn expensive, but I have to say, I have retained a lot of the Hindi I learned.

I've only used it for brushing up and working on dialects. If you're already fluent, it's great for looking up old speeches or tv shows in certain dialect regions. My wife watches hours of Chinese variety shows every night on Youtube.

A really cool thing I learned after making Facebook friends with the three teenage daughters of some friends in Austria is that they write everything in the Austrian dialect. So it's like reading the phonetic spelling, since it's not a written language. It's only barely related to German the way they write it. I could understand it for years, but when I read their posts aloud, it sounds like I can speak it too. Pretty cool.

Thanks for the very impressive feedback! Chinese language seems to be extreme challenging but one I'd like to explore. Many moon's ago I had two Chinese roomies (no, not like Kramer from Seinfeld...) but they were very fluent in english. I regret not picking up their language. Just curious if it was worth spending hours of time on youtube and whether the quality of a freebie learning is on par with pricey acclaimed programs or classroom.

Ubonics yo

You ain't gonna just pick up Chinese from two roommates. I'm around Mandarin all the time, as in sometimes hours a day at home with the wife on the phone, I took lessons, have been to China plenty. You need a basis before you can pick things up. I can understand a lot more than I can say. There are four basic tones in Mandarin, one used with every syllable and they can vastly change the whole meaning. You need to learn those and then how things are written in pinyin (Mandarin in the Roman alphabet) with tone/accent marks so you know which tone to apply. Once you're in China and surrounded by the writing all day, every day, you can figure out some characters on your own. But you need to be in the environment with the countless street and store signs always around you.

And don't forget, Mandarin has a ton of dialects. You can be an A student and then get totally lost when you're in a place with a tough dialect.

My son and I had a tutor that used this website for us to use when she was not here. It can help with some of the basics like tones. After 1 year of one on one with a tutor we barely can put out a relevant sentence or read much over a basic level. Good luck.

Learn Chinese - Free online mandarin audio courses

I've been learning Japanese.