While some might recommend Rosetta Stone, that might help, but it simply isn't enough. There simply has to be more to fully be at least conversational. Nothing beats having that good tutor/friend/professor teaching you the language. If you have an iPod Touch/iPhone there's several good apps out there which are nice to have to practice while one is away. There's one called Lingopal and they have it for several languages and it has been useful to practice simply the basics while waiting for class or doing it while I'm bored. Right now, what I know is English and Spanish (from childhood), French (four years from high school and practice on and off) and know some basic Italian and Portuguese. I talked to a Brazilian person and he tried out some Portuguese and I understood quite a bit and was happy (and this was simply from the app and him telling me that Portugese is simply Spanish with a french accent.) There's more to it, but I got a good gist. Then there's languages I simply fool around with; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean but those are very difficult. It takes time, but with effort and dedication one can succeed.