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Which language should I learn?

Which language?

  • Arabic

    Votes: 3 4.5%

  • German

    Votes: 22 32.8%

  • Russian

    Votes: 5 7.5%

  • Italian

    Votes: 3 4.5%

  • French

    Votes: 10 14.9%

  • Dutch

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Japanese

    Votes: 3 4.5%

  • Mandarin

    Votes: 10 14.9%

  • Greek

    Votes: 2 3.0%

  • Korean

    Votes: 3 4.5%

  • Czech

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Polish

    Votes: 3 4.5%

  • Portuguese

    Votes: 3 4.5%
  • Total voters
    67
  • Poll closed .
#81
L-A said:
They're hard to learn but from a logic and communicative standpoint, modal grammar is an incredibly smart thing to use.
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In what sense? In my opinion English has done pretty well without all the distinctions made by other languages. Speakers are (usually) bright enough to infer any missing information from context. It's like the gradual disappearance of the subjunctive mood from English - we just don't need it because people realise from the context that the sentence is subjunctive.

I can't see any benefit in using a different form of the article simply because you're, for example, using a preposition. Why bother changing "ein" to "einen" in sentences like "Ich habe einen Bruder"? It adds nothing to the sentence and is just another thing to think about.
 
#85
N.F.A. said:
You didn't really say what the purpose of learning a new language was. Someone said Mandarin is hard further up this thread. I disagree. It is actually pretty easy to learn to speak. On the other hand, writing it is extremely difficult.
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I said Mandarin was difficult to learn mainly because of the writing and reading part. However I do agree with you that it's easy to learn to speak. The fact that the verbs don't change is pretty awesome.
 
#86
HGS said:
I just created a livemocha account and these are the languages I want to learn. I can't decide which to learn first so I'm gonna let this poll decide for me. Which would you recommend?
Click to expand...

If you're in Canada, learn French
In USA, Spanish is probably a good idea, or Italian perhaps

Any language that doesn't use characters from the latin alphabet (for example Japanese, Russian, Greek, Mandarin) would be pretty hard to learn to write and read, perhaps easier to learn to speak
 
#87
Can't answer the question without knowing what you want to learn the language FOR.

Latin is not on your list, but that would be my top recommendation for someone who was ambitious to learn multiple languages; it will pave the way to picking up all the Romance languages quickly, not to mention being able to read thousands of years of ancient and medieval writing in the original.

If you're academically minded, Germans invented the research university and a large proportion of scholarly writing in many fields is still produced in German, so that's my second choice.

If this is to talk to your neighbors in the US, immigrants and so forth, then I'd say Spanish or Chinese.

If you want to learn a language to function as an international businessman, or diplomat, or something like that, probably Arabic or Chinese.

On languages with different alphabets and the reading right-to-left issue; these things are really only barriers for the first couple of weeks learning the language. It becomes second nature once you've drilled yourself on it for a little while. Don't let it discourage you from any of your choices. I've studied Greek, Russian, and Georgian at various times and while I haven't kept any of them up, the alphabet was the least of the difficulties in learning any of them.
 
#88
Speaking other languages is fun and makes travel more pleasurable and easier.

Unless you plan on practicing a lunguage frequently, you will lose a lot of what you have learned. Accordingly, if you have learned a language, you might want to seize opportunities to practice it.

If any of that makes sense and is a consideration in what choice you make, it might be worth considering travelling to the countries that speak the language. I see German is a popular recommendation. I can only think of three German speaking countries, all close to each other and all of them quite beautiful. Alternatively, french or spanish speaking countries are numerous and give more choices to practice.

Just my $.02
 
#90
Komakino said:
I can't see any benefit in using a different form of the article simply because you're, for example, using a preposition. Why bother changing "ein" to "einen" in sentences like "Ich habe einen Bruder"? It adds nothing to the sentence and is just another thing to think about.
Click to expand...

I can think of reformulating a long sentence with several complements and having your prepositions specify the role of each element in the sentence, no matter what order you put them in?

I'm not an very good German speaker, but I recall situations where it was a sentence in German, and a story in English.

And in the sentence you posted, "Einen" allows to confirm that "Ich" is the subject. You could have written "Einen Bruder ich habe" and it would have meant the same thing, but focusing on the fact that it's a brother that you have.

"I have a brother"
"A brother I have" doesn't mean the same as "It's a brother that I have". In german, it's a case away.
 
#91
People don't sit down and make up language rules that make sense to non-speakers. That just lands you with Esperanto -- how useful is that to learn? Languages evolve in societies in ways that allow people to communicate. Saying "einen Bruder" rather than "ein Bruder" just made sense and sounded right to people speaking. The grammar rules are made up AFTER the language has already taken shape among its speakers.
 
#93
L-A said:
I can think of reformulating a long sentence with several complements and having your prepositions specify the role of each element in the sentence, no matter what order you put them in?

I'm not an very good German speaker, but I recall situations where it was a sentence in German, and a story in English.

And in the sentence you posted, "Einen" allows to confirm that "Ich" is the subject. You could have written "Einen Bruder ich habe" and it would have meant the same thing, but focusing on the fact that it's a brother that you have.

"I have a brother"
"A brother I have" doesn't mean the same as "It's a brother that I have". In german, it's a case away.
Click to expand...

But as you've just shown, you can make all the same distinctions just by changing your word order or, if speaking, placing the intonation or stress in a different place. Just the fact that English copes perfectly well without making distinction between cases shows how redundant *some* of the concepts involved have become. On a personal level I'd go for verbosity over language complexity every time!
 
#94
Well, Germanic languages were originally synthetic languages (like latin, using cases to denote function in a sentence), and have been evolving towards being an 'isolating' language (like English is to a high degree).

But the Germanic languages haven't been doing this at the same speed. Generally speaking, I'd say English is the most 'isolating' language, with Germanic still being the most 'synthetic' language (with the cases and all) .

Anyway, it's just a different way of saying things, and if your mother tongue contains a case system, it's as natural as the strict word order is for a native English speaker.
 
#95
petersenbass said:
They speak Hongul in Korea. They prefer you call it that than "Korean". It's like saying "I speak American". :)

South Korea is a beautiful country. I'm there now playing a two month tour of the militray bases. I've met at least a couple bassist-soldiers at each base.
It's been a real blessing to give back to these guys and gals.
There's a level of respect here that you don't always get in the states. The food rocks!
They have a sake like drink called Soju. It hits hard and quick. So drink with caution.

There's a building called Nakwon Arcade. It has over 300 music stores in it. It's 5 or 6 stories tall.

Check out Link Removed
Click to expand...

Actually Hangul is the name of the writing system in South Korea.

They speak Korean.
 

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