Ok - I am ready to learn a new language - so which should I pick? Your humble opinion is needed. Keep in mind the following - I already speak English and Spanish, so rule those out. Also I studied French for years and when I went to Paris everybody insisted that I speak English (the steriotype is wrong – I was a tourist and most of the people I spoke with wanted to practice thier English or they wanted me to stop butchering thier language) - so rule French out because I can already read it well enough and I don’t ever plan on being in France again except as a tourist.
If it helps here is some info on me – I live in Texas and most likely I will forever – although my wife is from Austrailia and we might some day end up there. I am also an avid reader of literature so keep that in mind too.
I know that most people will suggest for me to learn the languages that they speak but please if you have spent the years it takes to learn a language and you feel you haven’t gotten a good return out of it then say so. Or if you speak a language and you know that it is impossible for non-native speakers to master it then say so. Right now I am thinking maybe Dutch? or Russian? or Japanese?
Forgot to mention I can read biblical Hebrew and Anglo-Saxon (Old English) so forget them too. Thanks
The difficulty is absolutely overrated and learning material and possibilities for application are easily available. Although this is certainly true for most languages, there is more high-quality literature (both classic and contemporary) available than you can ever read.
If pure linguistic interest is more important than application, you might want to try something non-indo-european like Japanese or Mandarin.
I’d suggest Italian. You already know Spanish and French and it’s heavily related to both those so it seems only natural. Maybe after that, if you’re still wanting to learn another, I’d go with Russian.
Or maybe Mandarin, just out of its sheer number of speakers.
I’d say German, too. The problem with Italian is that it is JUST enough like Spanish to be confusing.
I grew up hearing Italian (although not speaking it) so when I started taking Spanish I was amazed at how quickly I was able to pick it up. I haven’t really used it in years, but I’m at least comprehensible by Spanish speakers (as long as they don’t mind listening slowly). However, when I tried to learn Italian, I found that I was translating the Italian into Spanish before re-translating into English.
I’m taking a refresher course in Spanish this summer, but French is next on my list.
What do you want to gain from this? If you want to broaden your horizons in general, choose a language that is most dissimilar to those you know that you can still find teachers for. Otherwise, pick a language associated with something else you enjoy/like/love, then you’ll have a great incentive to keep at it.
Japanese. It’s hard so it will keep you occupied for years, it’s totally different from what you already speak (variety, yay) and it would come in handy in the business world.
If you must go with a spoken language, I say Finnish or Japanese, because once you’ve done that, all the others will seem easy.* I’d imagine Japanese would be a useful langauge to learn, although I guess it depends where your interests lie.
~ Isaac (who hopes one day to master the above languages)
I can’t back this up at all, but I’ve heard from a number of people that these languages are very hard for native English speakers to learn. Is English your first language?
I’d go for german or russian. German, because it’s a classic and wide spread language with great litterature bound to it.
Russian, because of the fun in mastering a new alphabet, and that it to an extent opens up a big part of eastern europe. Travelling in Bulgaria, it was a relief to be able to read and translate the street signs, in a country where you can’t take for granted people can converse in english.
My advice is to learn a language that you learn. When you find that language, it doesn’t matter how closely related it is to your native tongue, or how useful it is, or how many millions speak it. If you love it, you’ll learn it.
I tried to learn Spanish a few years ago, and it was like beating my head against a wall. There was simply nothing that captivated me about the language. It didn’t matter how useful it was – I didn’t want to speak it. When I learned French, it was a joy precisely because I fell in love with it.
Since you know two Romance languages (French & Spanish), I’d recommend a Germanic one: German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. All closely related.
On the other hand, if you learn modern day Icelandic, you can actually undertand the old sags written in the 1000’s. The language has remained unchanged, which I think is really cool (try reading Shakespeare as a comparison with modern English).
Well, since you already know French and Spanish, I recommend Latin. There is a TON of literature written in Latin, and you don’t really have to learn how to speak it.
That said, a computer language would also be useful.
I’ll put my 2 cents in about Japanese: It’s hard because it’s so different from English. The grammar is actually pretty easy, but picking up vocabulary is hard because there are many homonyms, and reading it is extremely difficult because of the Chinese characters (kanji). I’ve been studying it off and on for ~6 years, and my reading ability is probably about 1st grade.
I really enjoy it though…
I recommend learning Old English. You’ll get all kinds of insight into modern English.
Or maybe one of the indigenous languages from the Americas or Australia? Maya is a very interesting-sounding language. They have sounds that you have to breathe in to make, rather than pushing air out all the time, as is done in all the languages you know.
Zapotec seems neat to me, too, and I’ve read some interesting things about Jocaltec. How about Tupi or Guarani?