www.CostaRicaTicas.com

It is a set of audio CDs (or you can download them as mp3s) for learning different languages. It is all audio, so you can use them in your car, etc.

People like them so much because they teach one the basics of a language pretty quickly and you develop a reasonably good accent. If you had problems learning languages before in school, I HIGHLY recomend that you give Pimsleur a try. It doesn't teach a large amount of vocabulary or grammar, but what it does teach you will learn VERY WELL.

I am a big Pimsleur fan. Over the past three years I have completed:

- 100 lessons of Spanish
- 60 lessons of Portuguese
- 37 lessons of Mandarin (and still working at it)

Highly recommended! Mandarin is tough though - you got to really want it.

Is Mandarin tonal and do you feel your ability to speak clearly is in part dependent on your ability to "carry a tune" so to speak?

Mandarin is tonal with four tones. But it is not as hard as you might think, and the Pimsleur approach is very helpful here.

There are four tones: high, high to low, low to high, and low. You distinguish high-to-low and low-to-high sounds not so much by the tone but by the general sound. High-to-low has a punch sound; low-to-high sounds like no tone (just pronunce as you would English); and high is high and low is low. Pimsleur always says the new word and then asks you to guess what tone it is. By doing it over and over again, you eventually get it.

I think having learned already one or two other languages really helps. But is still tough, mostly because there is absolutely no overlap in words between western languages and Chinese. You really have nothing to grab onto as you learn the language. On the other hand, the grammer is very easy. For example, they do not conjugate verbs.

Have any of you CRTers tried "Rocket Spanish"?

I read some positive accolades after googling it, but many were so similar in wording that I wondered if someone was "shilling" for it.

I've tried Instant Immersion Spanish, and am not real happy with it, so I'm ready to try "Round 2" with regard to software.

Thanks,

CdrTom