Well, Steve, I've learned Photoshop entirely in English and that's why I run the Eng version tho there is a Swedish version of it avaliable.
There are a number of people responsible for me learning PhS, like Orion Williams, Katrin Eismann (pity she's allready married), Scott Kelby, Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowsky, Bert Monroy (jawdropping awsome) and - of course - Deke McClelland, the Guru of them all.
If anyone want's to learn all there is to know and a good bit more about Channels and Masks I higly recommend the video titles Deke did on this for PhS CS3. A whopping 33 hours on the subject and it still stands its ground, even tho there are some new tools for masks in CS4 and CS5.