Spanish is a great language. I don’t know why people consider it to be easy, though. I never found it to be so.[/QUOTE]
I think folks consider it relatively ‘easy’ because first of all, there are a lot of cognates in English (a lot of false ones, too!) and also because, like Japanese, it is pronounced exactly how it looks, which I am sure English speakers at least appreciate. I think a lot of the grammar is pretty hard, though (preterite vs. imperfect, anyone?). Italian was much easier for me, but I had the Spanish background when I learned it, so that helped.
The whole friggin world is racing to learn English, so why bother with a non-English language.
I agree that a programming lanuage would be an excellent choice. You can write simple progams in Basic with a couple hours study.
If you go on to learn enough to understand logical programming structures – modules, looops, etc., you will find that it actually affects your critical thinking acros a whole range of analytical tasks. I found it a truly mind-expanding experience, far more useful in many areas than I ever would have imagined.
There are any number of programming languages that will provide very similar experiences. Proably the most useful (for a non-compter-professional) is Visual Basic (VB). You can use to to automate many office computer tasks, and programs like Excel and Word are designed for procedures written in VB.
Yes, but WTF does it matter? Facts are facts, and I can’t say I appreciate the snarky commeent based on, as far as I can tell, no information at all.
English is the world’smost popular second language. According to this site, it is now tied with Mandarin as the most spoken language in absolute terms. I can’t find the site now, but I’ve read that there are now more English speakers in China than there are in the US.
English has been the international language of commerce for some time, and the Internet is driving people to learn it at a faster pace than ever. Google “most popular second language” and browse. English is the most polular second language in most non-English speaking countries.
I’ve been here for a year and this is almost my second year of having learned the language. Its surely not as hard as Russian or Japanese or Finnish, but on the other hand its not as easy as Spanish or French. Sure, Spanish has 14 different verb forms to memorize, but after that it doesn’t seem too dificult. German also has the same problem with declinations too, but there are only 4 cases. But 4 cases is enough to throw you off. I can’t tell you how many times you’ll get Dative and Akusative mixed up, but the other two are pretty easy. I think that if a language has some kind of feature that your native language(s) don’t have then you’ll have trouble learning it after you have hit puberty. In Spanish the difference between ser and estar isn’t easy for english speakers to handle. In German there is only one word for “to be” so there isn’t a problem there. Compound that with the fact that most of the time you can’t predict the gender (one of three) of a word. Each gender has a different declination in each case (they aren’t all unique, but there is enough variation).
There are some cool things about German though. I would venture a guess that a very small percentage of Americans actually speak German very well. With Spanish and French this is certainly not true as there are many people who are bilingual in two languages since birth. How many people do you know that were bilingual German-English since birth?
Personally I would like to learn dutch. I have always been a little jealous of my friends that could lean a foreign language easily based on their mother language. The dutch learning German for instance, or French or Itialians learning Spanish. I suppose that the closest thing we’ll get as English speakers is Dutch. Plus you’ll get to talk really funny.
Also I don’t see how a discussion of whether it is worth the time or not to study a foreign language is relavent here. Obviously the OP assumes that it is worth the time.
Based on personal experience of travelling in places where there are far more non-English speakers than English speakers. If you honestly believe that there is no need to learn a second language because everyone else out there is learning English, then your travel experience must have been pretty limited.
This is not about travelling. If it is the answer would be easy, learn the most popular language where you plan to go. This is about learning as an intellectual exercise, and I suggest a computer language would be at least as intellectually stimulating, and likely to be of more actual utility, than any single spoken language one could choose.
I’ve already posted one cite claiming it is the world’s most popular second language. You want more? Here,here, here, here.
How do you think it got there without being the second language in more places than anywhere else?
I will take one step back… English is spoken as a second language in MORE countries than any others, rather than MOST countries in absolute terms.
According to this site, English is an official laguage in more countries than any other language in the world, by a factor of nearly 2 (49 to 26 – French the next most frequent occurrence). And that’s not even counting England and the United States, which do not have official languages.
If you call that a fact, I am very sorry.
Btw. I don’t doubt that English is the most popular second language, that not the point.
Little Bo Peep, Ok, it is not very imaginative, but German might not be the worst choice. It should relatively easy for you, has practical applications and learning material is easily available.
Okay you don’t need to learn a foreign language other than English. I’ll give you that for the sake of argument. But you don’t also need to have hobbies either. You don’t need to have a garden to have food to eat, but it is fun. The OP likes learning languages. And its true that in foreign languages people have a different way of expressing things. If you can read poetry in a foreign language its a little different.
Look pal, you are the one who brought up the link between learning a language and interacting with people in other parts of the world.
A link to an unsubstantiated allegation on a random web page doesn’t really count as a “cite” IMHO, but it was the statement that English is “most popular second language in most non-English speaking countries” that I was really objecting to. On a worldwide basis multilingualism is the rule rather than the exception (cite: Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics, p. 119) and it seems likely to me that “the most popular second language” in most of these countries would be one of the other languages commonly spoken in those countries. In some countries, sure, this would be English, but most of them? This is what I was seeking a cite for.
And that’s an entirely different thing too. “Spoken as a second language in this country” is not the same as “The most popular second language in this country”.
Nor was I asking for a cite for how many countries English is an official language in.
It is not my responsibility to disprove your assertions.
