I’ve been talking about improving my Chinese Mandarin abilities for years now, but just haven’t really buckled down and gotten it done. Well, now is the time for me to invest in myself – and that investing usually means $$$.
I found a tutor to give me one-on-one private lessons at $800 per 12 hours of instruction, which evens out to ~$67 per hour. That seems like a fair price. Right now, we have tentatively set up tutoring for 3 hours a week, but if all goes well I may increase the lessons to 6 hours a week.
After Mandarin I really want to improve my Spanish, although the two languages are different enough that I can study them simultaneously. I briefly studied German in college, but decided to focus on Spanish instead.
With English, Mandarin, and Spanish under my belt, I can probably talk to most of the world’s population. Once, when I was in Prague, I got lost looking for a supermarket. A nice couple tried to help me – but I didn’t speak Czech and they didn’t speak English. So I tried speaking Spanish and they understood me. And pointed me towards el mercado. Oh the power of languages in an interconnected world! 
And besides, it’d be pretty cool to be trilingual. What languages do you speak or want to learn?
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I speak Tagalog & English fluently. I can understand Spanish & could probably converse in it too but I definitely need some lessons, it’s just that most Tagalog words are Spanish anyway. I did take Arabic in a community class but it was just too hard. I really want to learn French & Italian.
I can understand German and speak/write some Japanese. I’d like to master those languages, and learn French, Chinese and Spanish. I love languages!
So does my mom (she’s a foreign languages professor) – she’s fluent in English, German, French, and Russian.
I am fluent in English and Spanish. I studied both Italian and Mandarin Chinese for a year in college. I teach immigrants, so the language I want to learn varies with my student population. My student group now is mainly from Burma, so I would love to learn Chin.
I have Spanish and English under my belt but, my fiance past me. He has Spanish, English, his native language (?sp) Equary, and Japanese (gotta love those japanese cartoons and being in the navy helped)
I speak Flemish (my native language), French (as a 2nd language), English (3rd) and German (4th). I’m Belgian (Flanders) and we have 3 official languages (Flemish, French and German) of wich Flemish and French are part of the majority spoken; as a result these languages are taught in school. I would love, love, love to learn Spanish and Italian. Chinese is also on my wish list.
P.S. Flemish is basically the same as Dutch. Just as there are different kinds of English (American, British, Australian, etc), there are different kinds of Dutch (Flemish, Netherlands, Pennsylvania)
I’ve never taken one-on-one language tutoring before, but $67/hour seems pretty steep. That’s equivalent to an annual salary of about $103k ($123k for a consultant working 230 days a year, but about 20% less when you account for them paying their own benefits). I know several professional ESL/EFL teachers who make only a third of that!
I speak English (native), French (fluent), Spanish (formerly fluent but now rusty), and a West African language called Zarma (conversational). I’d like to brush up on my Spanish, but my next real linguistic pursuit will be either Mandarin or Arabic.
Congrats to you for using this time to your advantage!
Just English for me
My native tongue is English but I speak Tagalog pretty well. I took 3.5 years of French in high school and college but only remember a few words now. And I took 2 years of Mandarin for fun but can only remember phrases like, “Ni hao ma?” and “Wo jiao Kathleen.”
Mandarin is so difficult! I plan on taking Spanish classes next.
My first language was Cantonese growing up, but when my grandparents passed away and I started in school, I stopped speaking it (was so afraid of being put in an ESL class). Now I can just speak fragments and I can understand a little bit. Hopefully I can take lessons and get back up to conversation ability. But it’s hard to find tutors since most are Mandarin.
Only English and French (which helps with a lot of countries in Europe), and very little words or sentences in Cantonese, Japanese and Spanish.
We’re talking like one or two.
Would like to learn more Cantonese, but like Krystal said, most are Mandarin tutors.
I think Mandarin would be the next language of business to learn because many find it difficult to learn.
Kudos!
I used to be fluent in the following, until I moved to the US and since nobody here speaks anything but English and Spanish, I don’t have anybody to practice with: Dutch, German, French, Indonesian.
I’m pretty sure if I take a few lessons here and there, it will all come back to me, since I still have the accents, and I can still understand, I just have issues expressing myself in those languages.
My first language was English, and not too long after, I learned Hebrew and Spanish, though I’ve pretty much forgotten most of both. In addition to refreshing my Hebrew and Spanish skills, I’d like to learn Turkish (….and Russian, and French, and German), though I’m not sure I can shell out any money to do so.
English and (nearly) fluent in French. I go back and forth on what language #3 will be. I’m a language nut, so I’d love to learn them all!
It will probably be Arabic, although I’d like to learn Spanish and Mandarin as well. My French gets me by a little ways with Spanish…I can usually get the “gist” of a conversation, but obviously cannot respond!
I can read French and Spanish very well, but as far as speaking each, I’m stuck at what I’d call “travel proficiency.” I can get around any Spanish or French speaking country with no problem, but I certainly can’t sit down and have a conversation about current affairs, or anything more complicated than the weather.
I could have helped you out in Prague though, because I can read, write, speak and understand Czech quite well (a little rusty at the moment due to absolute non-use). I’d really love to achieve fluency though, more for myself than anything else, as it’s not exactly the most marketable language. But, as a 2nd generation American of Czech descent, it’s important to me.
I’d love to be able to speak Spanish, Chinese or Arabic for professional reasons though.
English (native) German (fluent; lived in D during childhood and mother is from Wiesbaden) Russian (conversational) and Czech (conversational). I studied Slavic linguistics/Russian at Karlova in Prague as an undergrad. Not exactly marketable linguistic skills, however, if I were to join the Peace Corps, I’d had my pick of the Central Asian republics!
I took German in high school and French in college, which I jokingly say makes me illiterate in three languages!
I debate between French, Spanish, and German (and then all sorts of odd languages like Finnish, Dutch, Greek, Latin, etc.). I’m the least interested in Spanish, but it would also be the most useful language to learn, so I keep debating about it.
Other than English (obviously), I speak French fluently. I used to be proficient in Wolof but I’ve pretty much lost that entirely by now. Now I’m working on learning German so I can communicate with my husband’s family.
I have a master’s in linguistics, but most of my actual languages are so rusty that I’m embarrassed to admit to having such a high falutin’ degree. Italian and French are the strongest, Spanish is tolerable, German is better than I think it is (been there several times in the last 10 years and am always surprised at what I come out with), and I’ve lost most of my survival-level Japanese and Thai. I can sing most of the Philippine national anthem in Tagalog
I would love to take language classes again, but not one-on-one. I grasp things very quickly, move on without a lot of repetition, and then it doesn’t sink in. So private tutoring doesn’t work well for me.
Here in NYC, state certified teachers make on average $50-60/hr for private tutoring. If your tutor isn’t a fully trained language teacher (as a former EFL teacher, I promise you, the methodology is different) and simply an expert because it’s her native tongue, you are paying about 3x what she’s worth. I’ve used both kinds of private tutors, and the difference is enormous.
@MoneyMateKate
My instructor has a Masters in Education, is a native speaker, and has taught at the Monterey Institute of International Studies as well as a few other private language institutes. She also has good references and experience teaching business Mandarin to professioanals (very important to me). I don’t know if $67/hour is *too* high, I think it’s certainly high compared to some other tutors I can get, but we’ll see if it’s worth it.
Good Luck! My daughter’s school requires Mandarin classes from 1st grade through 8th grade with it being optional in the high school. They have 2 hours of instruction a week. The kids seem to love it, I know my daughter and her friends are up to no good when they speak in Mandarin to each other.
I can understand Spanish but I have a harder time speaking it.
Holy mother. Everyone is freaking amazing at languages.
Also just English. I took some German and can say some phrases and might be able to learn it. I took some cantonese when i was on study abroad, but I only took 3 hrs a week — not much to do anything with.
Languages are \difficult for me. Honestly, most things that I did in school came pretty easily to me (or I enjoyed the challenge once at the college level), but languages were never easy or enjoyable to learn. But I bet it would be very enjoyable to know!
I want to take conversational french or Italian for fun — just a community group class or something. I’m hoping to go next summer!
I speak both English & Spanish fluently. When I was in high school I took French all 4 years but didn’t really retain anything. Ideally, I would like to take up that language again.
I speak Mandarin and Taiwanese and took French in HS. However, I don’t know if that counts since I was too embarrassed to actually speak much French when I visited France (and Belgium). I also really need to learn how to read more than 500 Chinese words (why is there no alphabet?)