Best language to learn

theleg · 22 Jul 2006 at 03:29

fini said:
Someone suggested arabic, which I'd also have to disagree with because arabic in one country is quite different from arabic in another - I know people who speak it fluently and yet struggle to have a proper conversation with each other because they learnt it in different countries.

I would recommend Spanish. I think all the reasons for learning spanish have already been gone through - though they are very good reasons - so I wont repeat them.

fini

There are lots of regional dialects but pure arabic is understood pretty widely...

I dont know why someone would want to learn spanish unless they were going on holiday there often :dunno:

shifty_uk · 22 Jul 2006 at 03:53

If you like chinese chicks, learn chinese. If you like spanish chicks, learn spanish......and so on

semi-pro waster · 22 Jul 2006 at 04:28

Balddog said:
I dont know why someone would want to learn spanish unless they were going on holiday there often :dunno:

Spanish opens up quite a lot of South America as well if you are talking about purely native speakers or at least a lot of Latin America has languages that are closely related to Spanish. The roots of Spanish, Italian and French are all quite similar as they are all Romance Languages(as are Romanian and Portuguese also) so by learning one well you can usually understand a fair portion of the remainder even if you can't converse particularly well. If you like it gives you a bit of a headstart on the way to learning another similar language.

For me personally I'd probably learn French if I had the time and inclination to start learning a language again purely because I'd be most likely to spend time there than any of the other countries with significant portions of the worldwide language market. It might also make it easier for me to understand Italian, Spanish or even Portuguese but I wouldn't be totally counting on that.

theleg · 22 Jul 2006 at 04:35

semi-pro waster said:
Spanish opens up quite a lot of South America as well if you are talking about purely native speakers or at least a lot of Latin America has languages that are closely related to Spanish. The roots of Spanish, Italian and French are all quite similar as they are all Romance Languages(as are Romanian and Portuguese also) so by learning one well you can usually understand a fair portion of the remainder even if you can't converse particularly well. If you like it gives you a bit of a headstart on the way to learning another similar language.

The only decent part of south america speaks portugese....

and it opens up parts of south america for what?

BillytheImpaler · 22 Jul 2006 at 04:38

Balddog said:
The only decent part of south america speaks portugese.... and it opens up parts of south america for what?

Gosh, how do you expect him to deal in cocaine with his Colombian buddies if they can't even converse? Sheesh.

semi-pro waster · 22 Jul 2006 at 04:48

Balddog said:
The only decent part of south america speaks portugese.... and it opens up parts of south america for what?

My bad, I didn't realise there had to be a purpose to learning the language

Actually I was thinking Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina as the first ones to mind which were Spanish speaking or at least with Spanish roots but Colombia works too

It opens up parts of South America for travelling if that is what you want, I'm fairly sure that trading could easily be worthwhile there and not just in the way BillytheImpaler wants

There are a heck of a lot of South Americans coming to learn English in North America as well(and an awful lot of Koreans, Taiwanese and Japanese but that is bye the bye) so presumably there may still be a purpose in going the other way.

theleg · 22 Jul 2006 at 05:04

semi-pro waster said:
My bad, I didn't realise there had to be a purpose to learning the language

Actually I was thinking Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina as the first ones to mind which were Spanish speaking or at least with Spanish roots but Colombia works too It opens up parts of South America for travelling if that is what you want, I'm fairly sure that trading could easily be worthwhile there and not just in the way BillytheImpaler wants There are a heck of a lot of South Americans coming to learn English in North America as well(and an awful lot of Koreans, Taiwanese and Japanese but that is bye the bye) so presumably there may still be a purpose in going the other way.

Well there doesnt have to be a purpose but when youre trying to choose one over the others, it helps if there are things you want to do with it..otherwise he may as well just pick names out of a hat or something.

Pumpkinstew · 22 Jul 2006 at 10:16

maranello168 said:
learn mandarin, then jump on the economical bandwagon in China to earn some serious ££££

Would the band wagon be a Prius then?

I'd go along with Spanish. It's easier to jump on a quick flight to Alicante and get some practise in then a longhaul to Beijing.
As a bonus Portugues and Italian are quite similar so you could probably get quite comfortable with either of those with very little extra effort.

Mandarin is a very tough language to learn. If you were learning it for business you would have to be pretty close to fluent and that means many years of study. A friend who was a VSO lived in China for a year and she said her mandarin was still "******* awful".

I used to be taught Latin at school, and although back then I didn't really see the point to it, the teachers I had both spoke more than a dozen languages. :eek:

Polyglots the both of 'em!

Sputnik II · 22 Jul 2006 at 10:22

I'd say learn a widely spoken language such as Spanish or French. Then if you not learning the language for a specific reason, you might actually get some use out of it.
If you choose to learn something that is exclusive to one country it probably won't benefit you much unless you plan to live there.

~J~ · 22 Jul 2006 at 11:00

I'm learning Russian and finding it surprisingly easier than I thought.

singist · 22 Jul 2006 at 11:55

I'd say English; given the standard of your original post.

(Couldn't resist)

Cyber-Mav · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:07

its more wiser to learn an asian language, cuz you know that they are swearing at you and you just can;t understand it

Raikiri · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:10

^ Gero-gero Gaijinn baka!

(not swearing btw, just an example

)

momentimori · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:18

Raikiri said:
^ Gero-gero Gaijinn baka!

(not swearing btw, just an example )

It roughly translates as

"Foreign idiots are gross"

Raikiri · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:27

momentimori said:
It roughly translates as

"Foreign idiots are gross"

Or, "A gross foreign idiot"

SexyGreyFox · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:32

benjo said:
Nigerian then

Thats English (unless you go deep into the jungle and then they all still speak English).

Didn't someone on here say that their dad is an expert in Latin and once you've mastered Latin all other languages are simple pimple?

Alchemy · 22 Jul 2006 at 13:54

Well I'm learning Portuguese at the moment, my mother is teaching me.

Borris · 22 Jul 2006 at 14:05

naffa said:
My other half is French

We feel your pain.

~J~ said:
I'm learning Russian and finding it surprisingly easier than I thought.

Too many declensions for my liking. It's like German squared.

And cyrillic keyboards are impossible.

dmpoole said:
Didn't someone on here say that their dad is an expert in Latin and once you've mastered Latin all other languages are simple pimple?

It depends what the language root is - Spanish, French, Italian etc. are all latin based.

Then there's the germanic (English, German), slavic (Russian etc...).

And that's only the European languages.

Spuderoony · 22 Jul 2006 at 14:25

Aye. There was a point in history when the romance languages were considered to have been just variations on or dialects of Latin. A splitting off which I believe we'll see mirrored in some forms of English eventually, as it becomes so great a linguistic monolith that the opposite ends of its spectrum are too distant to be anything other than distinct languages.

Spyhop · 22 Jul 2006 at 14:28

Don't be a *** and try to learn Japanese because you likes games and/or anime.

Best language to learn

Man of Honour