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Of all the genres of audio books to download, perhaps the most advantageous and uniquely useful are the language courses. There really is nothing better than to actually have the opportunity to hear how the words sound when you attempt to learn a new language.

Fortunately, just about every language on Earth can be learned through one of these language courses. Some of them are just the basics and are great if you’re planning on vacationing to a different country. But you can also get complete courses if you’re looking to become fluent.

To highlight the importance of being able to hear how each language sounds as you learn it, I once had a Thai friend who attempted to teach me how to communicate with him. His English was broken at best, and my Thai was non-existent. So we exchanged languages to some extent in order to converse.

One day his wife had made some sticky rice while I was visiting. Naturally I knew it to be rice, but I wanted to know what they called it. He said it was called, “gow” with the “g” sound coming through his nose.

I repeated, but my ‘”g” came from my English speaking throat.

He laughed and told me I had just insulted him. Apparently, the word “gow” had different meanings depending on how it was pronounced, and the way I had said it, was probably the worst thing you could say to someone. He told me if I ever repeated it like that to someone else I didn’t know, I would get beaten up.

So a word to the wise . . .

If you ever contemplate learning how to speak Thai, don’t learn it through a book. Get the audio version because your life could depend on it!

While we’re on the subject of Asian languages, did you know that many schools in the US are now teaching Japanese? That’s correct! So soon your child could be coming home spouting off Japanese to you. If you owned an audio book on Japanese, you could at least keep up with them and maybe even help them with their homework.

Of course, if you knew Japanese too, they couldn’t use it to convey those teen age secrets they often do behind your back.

Reminds me of my French speaking mother who used to talk about us kids to her friends in French so we didn’t know what she was saying. It made me pay more attention in French class and I did manage to learn enough to know when she was talking about me and what she was saying.

Sorry Mom, the jig is up.

And there is a wide range of French and Spanish courses available as audio books you can download too.

In fact you can learn just about any language through audio books downloaded from the Internet. And like I said before, you can get just the basics, or if you’re ambitious, you can get full blown courses to become fluent. The choice is yours.