Some Found Challenges in Learning Another Language

The past several months I've been trying to learn Tagalog. Its one of the many dialects in the Philippines but its considered the national language so it is also known as Filipino.

I wanted to pick it up because we are expecting our first child and I figured learning my parent's language would help preserve our culture.

My progression has been conte conte unti unti (little by little). My wife gave me Rosetta Stone which I tried for a couple of weeks but got disinterested by the repetitive nature of some of the exercises. Next, I tried to read an actual grammar book but did not progress very far. Most recently, I've been spending every morning talking to my Mom in Tagalog for about an hour. This has helped the most but I think we may have hit a wall.

I guess maybe the main challenge has been that most of what I learn daily just goes into short term memory. I've been trying to brainstorm of a couple of ways to make the learning more consistent and easier.

So far this is what I've come up with:

• Record our conversations and review them later: I use Google Voice to record what our calls.
• Start using Rosetta Stone again: This focuses on associating words with images. At the very least I think this will help me expand my Tagalog vocabulary.
• Blog about what I've learned: I think this would be the coolest one as other people can come here and learn too!

Well that's all that I've come up with to expedite this learning process. Anyone else ever have to learn another language? What did you do to make it "stick"?

UPDATE: The phrase "Little by little" is actually "unti unti". Not sure where I got "conte" from.