I took French as a kid and forgot most of it since I did not use it. There are many Spanish speakers here but I don’t think I want to learn Spanish.
What about Russian? I know their alphabet is different from ours. Any other ideas? We have a lot of Hindi speakers here as well so that might be my pick.
What’s your idea of fun? There was a recent thread about Middle Egyptian.
I would prefer a non obscure language that is still used somewhere in the world today so no Latin, ancient languages, etc. I’m Irish and Italian so I might learn one of those.
It depends on what you like, what feels good in your mouth, what sort of people and places and things it opens up for you. I enjoyed Brazilian Portuguese a lot.
Brazilian Portuguese is a beeeaaauuutiful language. Came in to recommend that one.
Plus hey, plan a vacation around it!
That’s what I learned. Then they sent me to Lisbon where I could barely understand what they were saying. 
:smack:
I think if I was to tackle another language, it would be Italian.
I think that would be fun too, another fun Romance language.
I also think a lot about endangered languages like Manx or Nahuatl or something like that.
looked up Manx , the last guy it was the first language for died in 1974. Estimate now is 1500 people use it as 2nd language.
Well if you want to talk to 10 million sexy brazilian girls instead of a few crusty barflies on the Isle of Man, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Russian is written with the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s not really all that different.
If you put the Latin and Greek alphabets side-by-side, you can see that they are substantially the same alphabet, with just a little evolutionary divergence. You can even put the Hebrew alphabet next to Greek and Latin and see that they are all very similar.
Cyrillic is just the Greek alphabet with a few variations and a few extra letters added.
Are there any foreign language songs or movies you enjoy? Translations are never, ever 100% accurate and it will probably transform your entire listening/viewing experience.
I have friends who grew up in Ireland, and who learned Irish in school. They tell me that it is very difficult to learn, in part because the pronunciation rules are extremely complex.
Not just the visual of the alphabet; the entire way you form the sounds. A lot of back-of-the throat and tongue stuff that pretty makes it near-impossible for a non-native to ever sound really good at it. If I was doing it for fun I would go one of the Church Slavonic versions. Not quite as difficult physically to speak well and you have the advantage of being able to hook into a local Orthodox Church possibly for help or the odd conversation now and then.
For fun I would say German. Not that tough outside of gender (which you will have with many foreign languages) and plenty of resources to listen to and read.
And while it may be too obscure and more like work — some of the Native American languages can be a kick. I am light/polite in both Lenape and Seneca and would love someday to learn some conversational Crow but mostly I worked through some friends and the Jesuit Papers and I just don’t know any Absaroka and not much on their early language has been published that I’ve found.
I recommend Thai! Extremely simple language, extremely easy to learn (at least if you ignore tones and the written language). The differences between Thai and a language like English are delightful — don’t just learn yet another Indo-European language.
Don’t even buy a lesson tape; just hop on an airplane! Thais will be happy to help you learn.
In fact, if you put the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets end to end they will reach to the Moon and back* three and a half times.
The font size of the alphabets is x points. There is zero space between any and all of the alphabetical characters.
Solve for x.
*When Earth and the Moon are at their closest.
Basque. A language with no cousins. Maybe arrived with aliens?
There is a lot of help on the internet.
There are a lot of reasons to learn a language: it helps prevent Alzheimer’s, it can be fun, it can enhance culture, it makes travel easier, it can help you professionally… you’d have to decide which is important to you.
Most languages are much easier to learn if you forget about reading and writing and focus on conversation. You can always pick up writing later, but it is a major commitment for some Asian languages, and a moderate commitment for many others.
Might be worth brushing up your French. In terms of usefulness, more people speak Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese. Romance languages are easier if you speak French. Spanish is a beautiful language. Italian and Portuguese are different but clear cousins. Chinese is very interesting and quite different. Irish and Icelandic are not easy.
Lots of people speak Arabic as well. In India and China, I didn’t include Urdu, Punjabi or many Chinese dialects since learning Hindi or Mandarin may be more accessible.
Icelandic and Inuit are cool languages of limited utility.
Some languages have much cooler slang than others.
Does anyone learn Esperanto anymore?
But for fun, why not Icelandic? It must be really, really easy to learn. This guy learned it in a week.
The key to learning anything new is motivation. For that reason, I recommend a language that’s relatively easy to pick up; if it’s really hard, you’ll be less motivated to learn it over time unless you are passionate about learning it – like hours a day passionate. I’d also recommend a language that’s useful, as in widely used. If it’s widely used, that gives you a chance to practice with real speakers. That’s also likely to offer a psychological reward, and thus, motivate you.
If you stick with these criteria then the obvious choice is Spanish. Sorry. That said, if you are really passionate about Italian, go for it. Book a trip to Rome next year.