1 Sarah - We need more people like your husband. Good luck to him!

2 Rosetta Stone is awesome. We use it for Russian, and because I need to brush up on the French I haven't used for 10 years. It's amazing how much you forget, even when you have forced yourself to watch those horrible French-Canadian programs on TV.

3 The day I've been waiting for is finally here! The bad news: Some of your readers might think it's possible to learn (meaning master) a language in six months, even at the rate of eight hours a day. It's not. Eight hours a day amounts to 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, and 960 hours in six months, not including homework, of course. I don't know if these figures are still valid, but here's what the Defense Language Institute expected out of its students in 1973: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wbaxter/howhard.html After 720 hours of instruction, a "a student with superior language aptitude" is supposed to be able to achieve a speaking proficiency level of 2+ or 3 (using what I presume is the ILR scale). Here's the ILR scale for speaking: http://www.govtilr.org/ILRscale2.htm Level 5 is "equivalent to that of a highly articulate well-educated native speaker". I call this the 'impersonator level'. Level 2+ and 3 are still way, way ahead of what most Americans can do with foreign languages, though. So I guess that's still good news. The good news I originally had in mind: Farsi is the English of the Iranian languages in two senses: not only is it the biggest, but AFAIK it's also the simplest. It doesn't have grammatical gender or case endings like Pashto. It's also easier to pronounce than Pashto. And Farsi is easier than Modern Standard Arabic - the DLI has the figures to prove it. (According to the chart I linked to above, after 720 hours [18 weeks?], the best students of Arabic are still at the elementary level, way behind those taking Farsi.) I look forward to reading more about your husband's progress in Farsi - and maybe even yours! PS: Counting to ten in Farsi isn't that much different from counting to ten in Sanskrit: 1 - F yek / S eka 2 - F do / S dvi (cf. duo-) 3 - F seh / S tri (cf. three) 4 - F chahaar / S chatur (cf. quarter) 5 - F panj / S pañcha (cf. penta) 6 - F shesh / S ShaSh (cf. six) 7 - F haft / S sapta (cf. sept-, hepta) 8 - F hasht / S aShTa (cf. octo-) 9 - F noh / S nava (cf. nove-) 10 - F dah / S dasha (cf. deca-) The relationship between the two languages (and between them and Greek, Latin, and English) is still apparent after millennia. For the bigger picture, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers_in_various_languages#Indo-European_languages

4 (Hi Amritas!) As Amritas says, it is much harder to learn a foreign language than most people think. However, there is a great deal of variance in language learning ability, so if you are talented it might be easy for you. More bad news: Language learning ability is not well correlated with other kinds of learning ability, meaning that people who used to being good at learning things in general often fail at this. Think of it like musical ability. In any case, good luck!