For the love of Christ, don’t learn Japanese just for anime. There are several reasons for this.
It will take at -least- two years before you even have any remote idea what’s going on in whatever you’re watching. Classroom Japanese is very different from ‘modern’ Japanese, and you’ll have to learn those nuances as well.
So say assuming you progress at a steady pace and don’t flunk out, you’ll be able to understand anime pretty well in about, say, four, five years. Will you still be into anime by then? Will you consider all that hard work to have been worth it, despite the fact that most of the anime worth watching seems to be getting fansubbed within weeks anyway? Think about it.
That said, I think Japanese is a lovely language and, compared to many other languages, not too terribly difficult to learn. Then again, I’m a native speaker, so what do I know ^^;;
Moving on, I’m trying to teach myself Latin (at a very, very, very slow pace)… I find it a very interesting language and not too difficult, especially because of all the roots. If you’re good at English and breaking down words, you might like Latin. It sounds cool, looks cool, and you can understand all those weird scientific names that you see in Popular Science and stuff.
When I say “learning a bit of Japanese for amine”, I mean, “learning to read kana so I can pick up the sound effects in manga”. And who cares if it takes five years or ten to achieve a very basic ability in Japanese? Japan isn’t going away, and neither am I.
Then again, all plans could be derailed if I met an SO whose birth language was Czech, Quechua, or Brazilian…
i second quenya! i’m trying to learn it now…and yes i am a giant dork. but actually it is beautiful to write and speak.
latin is beneficial for learning romance languages, as well as improving english vocabulary. i took it in middle school and while i dont remember much of it, i know it has helped.
if you know spanish, italian would be a breeze. they are extremely similar, and i speak it (i try at least). e’ una lingua bellissima.
but i do think esperanto is a great language to learn because it’s such a neat idea.
icelandic i think would be awesome because while i’ve never heard it, i love the accents of icelandians (is that right?) and i can imagine that the language itself is beautiful. the same goes for welsh.
i’ve always had a fancy for russian. but the whole cyrillic alphabet thing would be difficult.
and sign language could definitely have benefits, as could any arabic language in these times.
it all depends on why you want to learn another language. good luck, let us know what you pick!
Think about it.
And who cares if it takes five years or ten to achieve a very basic ability in Japanese? Japan isn’t going away, and neither am I.
but actually it is beautiful to write and speak.