Which language are you most knowledgeable about and how do you recommend a beginner to learn it?

[victorhart]

Brazilian Portuguese and English (and Mandarin)

I'll make recommendations for "second semester" students. I'm a native speaker of English and Portuguese and have experience with beginners of both languages.

Once you have a 500 word vocabulary and understand the basic grammatical structures you need to immerse yourself as much as possible. I think there's no better way to do this than to dive into children's material.

In that vein, I'll give you an unusual recommendation for Brazilian Portuguese: Galinha Pintadinha. Just put that into YouTube and you'll see what I'm talking about. Very easy lyrics, catchy tunes.

For English, there is so much amazing children's literature that a beginning student (second semester) can digest and that is delightful. I've developed a whole course based on it. You can access the books online and you hear "audiobooks" on YouTube. I'll be happy to provide more information to anyone who is interested.

For Mandarin (which I've only dabbled in), a very good source (though not necessarily delightful for adults) is Qiao Hu.