# Which language to learn?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 28, 2003, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945 "2003-05-28T03:52:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@GrimGrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrimGrin)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/1 "2003-05-28T03:52:57Z")
I’m an American college student and have really no idea what direction my life may take me in. Currently, I have a pressing need to make up my mind and enroll in a language course at the college I will soon be attending. However, I’ve run across quite a dilemma. I don’t know which language I want to learn. Through a lot of internal debate I’ve cut the list down to the following:
Chinese
German
French
Spanish
and if anyone wants to offer their opinions on the uses of Russian or Japanese, I’m willing to listen.
I know an obvious solution would be to just learn more than one of them, but I don’t want to get in too deep. If I were to learn two, I do think that one would almost certainly be Spanish (probably the second as I already have a base in it and it seems far easier to grasp than Chinese). I just don’t know if that is what I want for certain or not. I know that my future career will have a large impact on what language would be most useful, but at this point in my life I could end up anywhere.
AGH! Please help
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/2 "2003-05-28T03:57:35Z")
Chinese. They will run the world sooner or later. Mandarin would be the best I think.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/3 "2003-05-28T04:05:49Z")
Arabic. Definitely Arabic. Want to get a job? Arabic is your iron rice bowl.
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### Author:  [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/4 "2003-05-28T04:09:31Z")
General Questions is for questions with factual answers. IMHO is for opinions and polls. I’ll move this to IMHO for you.
**DrMatrix** - GQ Moderator
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### Author:  [@Yuki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yuki)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/5 "2003-05-28T04:22:46Z")
I’ve actually taken Japanese, German, Spanish and Latin. And in my opinion, Japanese was by far the easiest language to learn. Granted, it’s a completely different writing system, but the grammatical structure is very easy to understand and apply. My favorite thing is they have only two verb tenses. Past and present. None of that past perfect and future perfect nonsense.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/6 "2003-05-28T04:23:34Z")
I’ll assume you’re a unilingual anglophone…
While I was in China, I met a Spanish woman. She had studied Mandarin for five years in university and was just starting a six month contract in Beijing. When I asked her the obvious question: “So, how do you like China?”, tears almost swelled up in her eyes and she went into this long diatribe about how she hated this “fucking filthy country” and all she wanted was to go back home, that she had wasted five years of her life learning this “fucking stupid language”, etc.
She had been in China for two weeks.
The moral of this story is that learning a language requires _considerable_ effort on your part, especially if you are unilingual. You can’t just go: oh, well, guess I’ll learn Mandarin next week.
Languages don’t exist in a vacuum. They are the expressions of certain cultures and if China doesn’t _really_ interest you, there’s no point in wasting the minimum of five years it will take to reach some decent level of fluency in Mandarin.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I think it’s a great idea to learn a foreign language, but the question you should ask yourself isn’t: which language is more useful, it’s: which culture am I most interested in?
Note, also, that there is a difference between learning and familiarizing yourself with a language. It’s one thing to learn the basic structure and useful vocabulary (i.e. “Una cerveza por favor!”) but actually speaking a language usually requires years and some sort of immersion, eventually.
That being said, I recommend Klingon. It’s great for picking up chicks.
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### Author:  [@Rabid\_Squirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rabid_Squirrel)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/7 "2003-05-28T04:39:48Z")
If you’re worried about filthy countries, perhaps you could pick up Japanese?
You’ll probably find it easier to pick up european langauges, Mandarin and Cantonese use a lot to tonal variation to distinguish words. Apparently German is easy to pick up though.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/8 "2003-05-28T04:43:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Yuki \*
> \*\*My favorite thing is they have only two verb tenses. Past and present. None of that past perfect and future perfect nonsense. \*\*
Erm… granted it’s not as convoluted as English, but…
iku (to go):
present: iku
present progressive: itte iru
past: itta
past progressive: itte ita
present potential: ikeru
past potential: iketa
passive: ikareru (present) ikareta (past)
causative: ikaseru (present) ikaseta (past)
passive-causative: ikaserareru (present) ikaserareta (past)
Plus, you need to take into consideration plain, polite (masu), honorific and humble forms, the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs (i.e. Mado wo akeru vs. Mado ga aku) as well as personal relationships (Suzuki-san ni mado wo akete moratta vs. Suzuki-san ga mado wo akete kureta vs. Suzuki-san ni mado wo akete itadaita vs. Suzuki-san ga mado wo akete kudasatta.)
In my experience, the grammatical difficulty level of Japanese is medium. IMO, Russian and Arabic are hard, whereas Mandarin is fairly easy. Where East-Asian languages (among others) really get you though is at the vocabulary level: English does share a lot of words with other West-European languages.
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### Author:  [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/9 "2003-05-28T04:57:10Z")
Depends on where you are, but if you’re in California or the SouthWest, I’d suggest Spanish. I’d suggest it anyway if you’re in the States. And I’ve heard it’s one of the easiest to learn. I’ve taken about 4 years of French and been able to use it oh, five or six times.
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### Author:  [@SnoopyFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnoopyFan)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/10 "2003-05-28T05:02:00Z")
Spanish, Spanish, Spanish!
Either that or Japanese.
German and French are basically useless, you’d never use them unless you’re gonna actually live in Europe. Chinese is too damn hard, ditto for Russian.
Arabic MIGHT be useful but only if you’re gonna work for some bigass corporation or for Uncle Sam.
Go for Spanish.
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### Author:  [@Yuki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yuki)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/11 "2003-05-28T05:11:21Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jovan \*
> \*\*Erm… granted it’s not as convoluted as English, but…
>
> In my experience, the grammatical difficulty level of Japanese is medium. IMO, Russian and Arabic are hard, whereas Mandarin is fairly easy. Where East-Asian languages (among others) really get you though is at the vocabulary level: English does share a lot of words with other West-European languages. \*\*
Actually I’d have to say the hardest I’ve come across is Latin. If merely for the fact that you have to conjugate everything! Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, even names. I hated it. I have no idea what even possessed me to take that language.
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### Author:  [@ChrystinP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrystinP)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/12 "2003-05-28T05:27:02Z")
Spanish. If you speak Spanish and English you can speak to 70% of the world’s population (I forget where I learned that statistic so don’t flame me if you think I don’t have it right.) There are many places and people in the US who speak spanish, so you have plenty of opportunity to practice which is pretty integral to true mastery. Most major US cities have at least one spanish language station and several spanish radio stations. Look at all the countries that speak spanish either as a primary language (due to colonization) or a secondary language, for instance, the Phillippines. Good advice, to also be interested in the country and culture of the language, and with spanish there are tons of options.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/13 "2003-05-28T05:29:59Z")
**Reeder** , interesting that in 1964 Malcolm X predicted the two most important languages in the future would be Arabic and Chinese.
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### Author:  [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/14 "2003-05-28T05:41:58Z")
Way back when, as an undergraduate, I had some elective credits to dispose of so I thought I’d take Chinese for fun. I was going to translate poetry, learn calligraphy and impress the hell out of Mr. 'Addi at our favorite restaurant. Well, it _was_ interesting, but difficult. I mean head pounding, up past 3 a.m., eye bleeding, oath swearing, existence questioning kind of hard.
Now, some 20 years later I doubt I can remember how to count to ten, let alone negotiate a menu. You may be much quicker at languages than I was, but I still agree with **jovan** , if you don’t have years to commit, go with the Klingon.
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/15 "2003-05-28T05:43:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Yuki \*
> \*\*Actually I’d have to say the hardest I’ve come across is Latin. If merely for the fact that you have to conjugate everything! Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, even names. I hated it. I have no idea what even possessed me to take that language. \*\*
Yeah, declensions are probably what lead me to stop studying Russian and put it on my “difficult language” list. That’s why I think Mandarin grammar is fairly easy: words never change forms.
Latin also highlights a big issue: access to native speakers (in this case, there being none.) I might decide that I really, really want to learn Inuktituk, but that’s going to be a hard thing to do around here. (That was another reason why I gave up on Russian.)
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### Author:  [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/16 "2003-05-28T05:50:49Z")
A former teacher advised me to take Latin, because everything in it has always been translated, so all you have to do is find a good translation and copy.
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### Author:  [@Optihut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Optihut)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/17 "2003-05-28T07:55:49Z")
I’d vote for French, as it’s one of the most important languages in Europe and in light of your Canadian neighbours to the north. Spanish is a close second.
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/18 "2003-05-28T10:17:44Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jovan \*
> Don’t get me wrong, though, I think it’s a great idea to learn a foreign language, but the question you should ask yourself isn’t: **which language is more useful, it’s: which culture am I most interested in?**
>
> Note, also, that there is a difference between learning and familiarizing yourself with a language. It’s one thing to learn the basic structure and useful vocabulary (i.e. “Una cerveza por favor!”) but actually speaking a language usually requires years and some sort of immersion, eventually.
Emphasis added.
Let me agree with jovan here.
I speak Arabic, several dialects as well as the MSA. That took no small degree of commitment, a long fucking time, and also a large degree of persistance.
It has paid off, professionally obviously, but nota bene, knowing the language itself gets you only part way. Other skills are necessary as well.
Obviously it is easiest to pick up close relatives of English, like French, German, Spanish. Tackling a “hard” language as your first foreign language requires more persistance than others. I might advise first learning one of these, depending on what region and so forth pushes your buttons in the end. Learning a language and then finding out you can’t stand the culture(s) is fairly useless.
Once upon a time I started learning Russian (simul with German in a fit of stupidity), then I went to the then East Bloc and discovered that however cool it was to see the Red Army on maneuvers, I was not really all that thrilled with the culture. Aborted that right quick.
Esp. for the hard languages you need to not only be okay with the grammar, the mechanics, but you need to be comfortable with the people and the differences. Else, you will be fucking miserable.
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### Author:  [@elfje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfje)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/19 "2003-05-28T10:39:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Reeder \*
> \*\*Chinese. They will run the world sooner or later. Mandarin would be the best I think. \*\*
concur with both points.
Chinese, and Mandarin in particular.
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### Author:  [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2003, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-language-to-learn/177945/20 "2003-05-28T10:52:44Z")
Mandarin is great, but easy it ain’t.
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