Self-learning a language

yeah i find rlling R is a bitch too, im starting to get the hang of it, but not very well .. i know the cyrillic alphabet and a few russian phrases... a few of my friends think im a dickhead for wanting to learn russian, but i dont care.. i think im cool

I'd love to self learn Italian and french. There is a list of links on my blog:
http://crafterholic.blogspot.com/search?q=languages

Ah, now as simple as it is to say "I can learn a language", there are things you're not going to get without a teacher, and most of it will be to do with whether you can truly grasp the concepts. With the three you've decided to pick, it's a case of whether you can get over adjectival agreements; each one comes with them in different levels of difficulty.

If you take Spanish, you get it nice and simple as far as they go; and it's also a simple language pronunciation-wise.
If you take French, I suppose (for me at least) it' an intermediary language as far as adjectival agreements and pronunciation go. It's nice, but I prefer Spanish over it.
Italian, is brilliant. Personally, take it. If you think you can master the multitudes of adjectival agreements, it's really simple. I love this language more than I love Spanish. In fact, I love it more than any language I've looked at.

However, I think it's quite hard to learn a language on your own. I tried to teach my ex-girlfriend Italian via Facebook, and while she sort of got it, she didn't. It's the same as learning it from a book, because both ways are reading. Still, if you really concentrate, and learn it every day, and go over everything hundreds of times until you understand it...you can learn.

I think Chinese is very difficult to learn,isn't it?

By the way, on an interesting but pedantic point about the English language -- one cannot help but self-learn a language, however, one has a choice whether to self-teach a language or not.

Yes, it's possible if you're motivated and willing to keep working at it. Ploughing through grammar books can be a bit tough at times, but you can get there. I did Romanian and it proved to be a good decision for the work I'm doing now.

As for recommending a language, I think you should simply go for whichever one you like the idea of learning. You may also find that you have more of a flair for some languages than others. I seem to be able to pick up Romance languages (French/Italian/Romanian etc.) without too much difficulty, but found German very difficult. So maybe you could learn the basics of a few and see which one you get on with the best.

Of course it's possible, I've done it plenty of times.

French, Spanish and Italian? It probably doesn't make a bloody difference which you choose - for the first few months they'll all look identical to you anyway.

How long did it take you to learn what language?
And did you ever travel to the country?

Chinese is a great language!!

I've learnt some Chinese through this way, and have talked to people online in Chinese. Next year I'm also going to university to do Chinese too

How long did it take you to learn Romanian?

OP I'm trying to self-teach Spanish as well, I'm sure we could help each other or something. Are you starting from scratch?
So far I've started listening to Spanish songs and speaking with Spanish pen pals by email has helped me learn lots of little words like "it" or "there". But its much better to have speaking practice-if you don't get that you'll never learn.