What language would you like to learn?

I have been wanting to learn to speak Icelandic and chinese,
How about you what would you like to learn?? :slight_smile:

Well, Iā€™m in the process of learning Spanish. Russain anf Italian would be neat, though.

I took Latin for 10 years and forgot most of it. I had four different teachers and none of them ever focused on speaking and listening with the language, so learning it was not at all like with other languages. I never knew what that was like until I took Japanese and Chinese at my current university, and Iā€™m totally in love!

People have asked me how the two languages compare, and I actually enjoy Chinese more. Itā€™s easier to read a single character (as long as I know it, of course) than it is to memorize hiragana/katakana and then read each syllable one by one. In English, I probably recognize each word as a sequence of letters (so itā€™s based more on memorizing a visual, like Chinese is for me), but Japanese is not that natural for me to read right now. :frowning: Iā€™ll have to study Chinese on my own from now on, but ideally, Iā€™d like to teach English in China over the summer sometime. Thatā€™s probably my favorite language right now! I love the artistry of it and I donā€™t actually have a hard time pronouncing it.

Thereā€™s a girl Iā€™ve been friends with since we were 3 years old, and her motherā€™s from Brazil, so sheā€™s fluent in Portuguese (and lived there for quite some time). I donā€™t know how to speak the language very well, but friends and family of this girl say my accent is good. I hear itā€™s complicated, though, and my school only offers it if intermediate Spanish has been completedā€“Iā€™ve never taken a Spanish class in my life.

Iā€™d like to learn French or Japanese, but where I live, Spanish would be more practical.

I took 3 years of German in high school and I really enjoyed it. I wish that I could eventually become fluent. Itā€™s a really nice language.

I also would like to learn Sioux, Hawaiian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

All of them. Itā€™s been one of my dreams to be the ultimate polyglot. Iā€™ve always coveted the superpower known as omnilingualism.

In my life time Iā€™ve taken Russian, Japanese, French and Mandarin. I used be able to write using Cyrillic, I knew both system of Japanese writing and I could do arithmetic in Mayan.

Unfortunately, Iā€™ve forgotten all of these things.

But if I could only learn one Iā€™d like for it to be French. Itā€™s kind of a dream of mine to live in France for at least a year in the future.

EDIT: Sorry for the epic bragging.

Thatā€™s an impressive number of languages though, you shouldnā€™t feel bad about mentioning them- though I have trouble retaining languages myself, despite learning spanish from the ages of 12 to a few months shy of 17. Though if you persevere, Iā€™m sure you can learn french- I hear watching movies in the language can help as you learn too.

Iā€™ve never been great at languages, though the only one I can (barely) understand is Spanish- but Iā€™m not great at it because when things go too fast I get completely lost, and I have even delibrately learned phrases such as ā€œI am sorry, I am a very stupid person and speak very little spanish, Can you speak english?/ Slow things down?ā€.

I did also take a couple of weeks classes in Chinese (Mandarin) when I was an undergraduate. I actually personally find french to be profoundly difficult, and at school we had to take a language for GCSE and it was no contest as far as I was concerned when it came to either that language or spanish.

My subjects were always either science or the humanities (History and Geography etc.) than say foreign languages or even english. But I would like to learn and remember a bit more Chinese (Mandarin) one day, as well as Hindi and Arabic- of course the thing is, these languages are probably more difficult to learn compared to the more latin based languages. Still I donā€™t get why I seem to draw a blank on french at points (not completely but why I find it so much more difficult that spanish is kind of a mystery, but languages are the only subject Iā€™ve almost failed on- and in fact I was probably prouder of the B I got in GCSE spanish than the better grades I got in other subjects because Iā€™d found it so difficult and had really tried very hard in it after only getting a D in my practice papers. :laughing:)

Iā€™ve actually found that television shows (in some Asian countries, theyā€™re called dramas) and music helps more so than movies. The number of Chinese or Japanese films Iā€™ve seen is very high, but Iā€™m so absorbed in the story, acting, cinematography, and so on that Iā€™m not paying attention as much to what language is being spoken. Whereas with TV shows, Iā€™m not paying a lot of attention to the quality, and they use everyday words and phrases when speaking to each otherā€“and they talk a lot! Now, music, thatā€™s probably the best of all because of the memorization. I guess the only problem with that is it wonā€™t help you with tones in Mandarin Chinese and in general wonā€™t teach you how to speak naturally (which words to emphasize and such).

And flash cards are a pile of poop when it comes to learning Chinese because it hardly helps with writing. When children in American learn the alphabet, for instance, they must practice writing each letter over and over until itā€™s inscribed in their brain and their handwriting improves. I write in Chinese as fast as I do in English because of the constant practicing, only my sentences and vocabulary are quite simple. That part I should work on. :laughing:

Iā€™m talking a lot in this thread, but itā€™s mostly because I didnā€™t know what it was like to speak, read, and write in another language until a year ago. Iā€™m a late bloomer, I guess. I only wish I could learn moreā€¦

Iā€™ve always wanted to learn Russian. Iā€™m not sure why. Maybe because I kinda like Russia and it just seems like a cool language to learn.

Have you visited Russia lennonluvr9 or are you generally interested in the history/cultures both past and present? (Or both maybe?)

I should be learning Mandarin. Besides all the hype about China being the worldā€™s next superpower, it is my cultural heritage to know the language of my ancestors. But itā€™s one of the hardest languages to learn, especially with all the characters in writing!

I want to learn either Spanish or Brazilian Portugese. I already know a little French, and latin-based languages are quite similar, just like how if you know Mandarin, youā€™d find it easier to learn Japanese, Korean, and Chinese dialects like Hokkien and Cantonese.

Iā€™d advise Spanish myself out of the two. If only because a wider area of places and people use it to begin with.

They kind of say ā€˜theā€™ languages to know are English, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish in the world wide sense. But French and German are also considered useful in terms of Europe in a business sense and french is good in some African countries as well. In any case, in the EU the two languages given priority in both politics and eurovision song contests are French and English. But weā€™re fairly lucky if we have english as a first language, since so many people seem to know it as a second language. Not everyone of course and we shouldnā€™t assume that- this gives rise to the ā€˜ugly english-speaking touristā€™ issue sometimes after all.

But still, weā€™re pretty lucky in this area since english seems to be ā€˜theā€™ second (or at least third) language to know in many countries if any foreign language at all.

I am in the process of learning Japanese, which I totally love. Itā€™s by far my favorite language, although I wish they hadnā€™t imported all those Chinese characters in addition to hiragana/katakanaā€¦ :wink:

Other languages Iā€™d love to learn would be Korean, Hawaiian and Maori, but I guess that will likely never happen.

Yep! German is a good idea in business (but it would be wiser to do Chinese or Spanish, as already suggested)

Itā€™s not widley know, but if youā€™re planning to do something in the science field (as in research or scholarly) study German. Itā€™s the third most used language in scientific fields besides English, and of course Latin.

If you plan to get a Masters degree in a Science related field, German would be a wise choice.

French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and maybe Chinese.

No Iā€™ve never been there. Just interested in it I guess :slight_smile:

I would Like to Learn Japanese. :smiley:

Iā€™ve never really thought of what kind of real language I would like to speak, but I think it would be neat if I could talk like the minions in Despicable Me.

Haha, thatā€™s awesome! I never thought about un-real languages!

oh well heck, if we can include fake languages I can definitely think of a few Iā€™d love to know! To feed my inner Trekkie, itā€™d be awesome to learn Vulcan and Romulan. I have no interest in learning Klingon, but through sheer exposure I do know a few phrases :smiley: