What language would you like to learn?

The Common Room Off-Topic
#81

I want to learn sign language actually :smiley: My family and I were at Friendly’s and they had a little kids paper that had all the letters in sign language on them, and I learned them, and I love using them. I only know those 26, and who knows if Friendly’s is even trustworthy, but I love what I know so far!

#82

I would like to learn sign language too. I never took it in college because i thought it looked complicated, but my friends tell me that it’s easy with practice.

#83

Yay, another member who took German in high school. I almost took French also, but at last moment I switched to Culinary Arts.

#84

I might want to learn German since I’m part German and always founded that language interesting.

#85

Do you know a little bit of it?

#86

Yeah, that’s why I took German in high school. Because my ancestry is more than half German.

I found an article on the 10 most spoken languages in the World.

listverse.com/2008/06/26/top-10- … the-world/

First, here’s the list:

  1. French (129 million speakers)
  2. Malay-Indonesian
  3. Portuguese
  4. Bengali
  5. Arabic
  6. Russian
  7. Spanish
  8. Hindustani
  9. English
  10. Mandarin (1 billion + speakers)

For fun, we can list the languages from most want to learn, to least! Here’s mine:

  1. Portuugese
  2. Spanish
  3. French
  4. Russian
  5. Malay-Indonesian
  6. Arabic
  7. Hindustani
  8. Mandarin
  9. Bengali
#87

If I had the time I would want to learn Spanish, French.

#88

Good languages. Any particular reason why they interest you? I know spanish, from what I hear, is easy to learn.

#89

Spanish (and other latin languages) are way more complex than English, but less than some Nordic and Asian languages.

#90

I’ve never heard that! Everyone with a second language I’ve talked to say English is the most complex language there is to learn.

#91

I must sound like an idiot, contradicting everybody, but that’s simply not true.

English words don’t change each time according to the gender, nor do the verbs have to conjugate in a different form in every instance, like in some Latin languages. There’s subjunctive and conditianal mood, and all those tenses.

There are Nordic languages that are practically made from consonants and have very a few vowels, making not only the grammar, but the pronunciation, very difficult to achieve.

And of course, there are other Germanic languages that are far more difficult than English. German itself is much more complex, withe several forms for most words.

This isn’t something I’m making up. Ask a linguist (and not people who speak two languages, or think they do) and you’ll see. Modern English is one of the easiest languages to learn cause it was made that way. Why do you think so many people around the world are capable of quickly learning it?

#92

I think the reason why people think english might be complex to learn is because that they have strict rules when it comes to grammar and vocabulary.

#93

It may not be the hardest, but it defintely isn’t the easiest.

English is such a large language. It is extremely complex. It is easy to learn the basics of it, yes. And Spirit made excellent points for that. But becoming Fluent is extremely difficult and takes years.

*The average language has about 50,000 words in its vocabulary compared to English at a million.

*The spelling system is a mess and makes no sense. There are countless English words that don’t sound like they’re spelt

*There are many words that sound the same but have three or more different meanings (they’re, their, there)

*English is stuff fulled with irregular verbs.

*Many letters are pointless. Why have an ‘x’ when you could combine c and s?

*Most languages have the verb come first before the subject where in English the first follows the subject

*There are many weird rules, and just as many exceptions to these rules.

*There’s very little in the way of signals to tell you what kind of word a word is. For example, in Japanese and Spanish, most verbs have similar endings. Not so in English.

Just look at this!
the_english_dept.tripod.com/eng.html

#94

No, of course it’s not the easiest. There are far more simple languages out there.

But among mainstream ones, it’s one of the easiest, if at least to learn the basics. I mean, I learned what I learned reading four Harry Potter books, and I know I’m not really fluent, but at least I can communicate in case of need. People struggle a lot learning Latin languages.

#95

Parseltounge

#96

I did French all the way up to AS level, but I’ve forgotten most of it. It was mostly writing and reading anyway, so I couldn’t speak very well at all.

I’d love to pick it up again though, and I’d love to learn Cyrillic languages too. My uncles learning Russian, and apparantly it’s very difficult.

#97

Heehee Spirit, pick also has another meaning… I made the same error when I used "cbron" in one of my sigs earlier this year. :stuck_out_tongue:

Funny Sealy should mention Parseltongue, there’s a translator online - parseltonguetranslator.warnerbro … tongue.php :slight_smile:

I’m borrowed ‘Portuguese for Dummies’ and ‘Spanish for Dummies’ from the public library. I already know French, and since they’re all romance languages like Italian and to an extent, English (although the latter also has Germanic influence), I recognise a few of the words and grammar structure already!

And of course, I want to learn conversational Mandarin for the sake of my heritage and all that. It’s just that I had a painful experience learning my ‘mother tongue’ from Chinese tuition as a kid and being left out of my circle of friends in high school because they preferred to speak Mandarin or dialect over English. To an extent, I still experience that with my friends from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan in Australia, but I’m trying to be more open-minded and understanding. I psyche myself by thinking, “If they don’t want to learn English, then I’ll learn Chinese instead and impress them with a fourth language!”

If all goes well and I can keep my head together, I should be able to (rudimentarily) understand five languages within the next few years (English, Malay, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese). I don’t consider Cantonese or Hokkien as a separate language since they’re basically regional dialects descended from the motherland language (Mandarin or Putonghua). Some Taiwanese pals of mine like to think of their language as ‘Taiwanese’.

It’s just like Brazilians like to think of their language as ‘Brasiliero’ or the Mexicans as ‘Latin American Spanish’, but really, ‘Taiwanese’ is a combination of Standard Mandarin and Hokkien. :unamused: If I wanted to show off, I can technically count Malay as ‘Bahasa Malaysia’ and ‘Bahasa Indonesia’ since the two countries have differences in vocabulary. “Bisa” for example, means ‘can’ or ‘able to’ in Indonesia, but in Malaysia, it means ‘poison’! If I wanted to be really cheeky, I can consider ‘Singlish’ (which is a variety of pidgin English in Singapore) as a fifth language. Or ‘Strine’, which is Australian English, which is really a derivative of Cockney slang and British expressions.

But no, I’ll keep it at a modest three. :slight_smile:

#98

Sorry, I’ve seen that word everywhere and never tough it meant anything but “stupid”. I’ll change it.

#99

I love Portuguese too! And that’s great how knowledgable you are with languages!

It’s great you know French, and it can help you with learning Spanish and Portuguese.

I’m doing the same thign with Spanish. I can understand a some of it when I hear people speak it or when I see signs, just because where I live. Spanish is basically a second language here because it’s California. But I want to become fluent, so I’m taking a Spanish class at my college. After I master that I hope I can self teach my self Portuguese. They have books and videos for that, and coming across a Portuguese class is hard.

#100

My cousins and I decided were all learning french so we can talk to each other… in french. :smiley: