How to Learn Any Language

Farber starts this book with an engaging history of his languaphillia. He fell in love with learning Latin - until he got to the grammar. That led him to learn Chinese, which he finally got to speak with WWII soldiers. Eventually he added more and more languages to his repertoire. He went through phases of intense language acquisition, and others of specific language avoidance. In this book, he attempts to give us the help that he wished he would have known before.

His primary bit of advice is "work". He cautions that no "learn-quick" shortcuts can be used to truly grasp a language. Instead, he recommends that you avail yourself of all resources available - grammars, dictionaries, dialogs, phrase books, etc. He outlines a basic approach:
1) Start with a grammar book, and slog through the first 5 lessons.
2) Get a newspaper in the target language, and pick the top article, making flashcards for every word you don't know (whether it is in your dictionary or not)
3) Continue studying the vocabulary and grammar along with other related tools.

He also stresses working on native-level pronunciation, even if you don't fully get it.

The approach is no easy way to learn a language, however, it does provide a balance between the "fun" parts of language acquisition and the "tedium." In the end, their is no substitute for work.

Also of interest, he provides some background on various languages and how easy they are for English speakers to learn. Some seemingly exotic languages like Indonesian are among the easiest to learn. Others like Finnish are more difficult to learn. As English speakers we actually have it somewhat difficult as many people are trying to learn our language. However, people can still be impressed by the effort to truly engage in learning other languages.