Advice on learning languages?

French is widely used...me personally I would pick Japanese...but that's a personal thing

I'd go French

Foxface

 

Right now i'm learning German. I'm starting off on basic words and greetings. Counting numbers and proper arrangement of words. Then i'm planning to get a tutor afterwards.

 

French, i will help if needed mon ami !

 

Spanish and Italian are very similar. If you have a good grasp of Spanish, you should ace Italian. But French would be immensely helpful to know if you are adding it to Spanish and English.

 

I was a foreign language major in college. The best advice is this: Pick the language that makes your heart pound just a bit more. Which language do you fantasize about being able to speak? Follow your passion and everything else will follow.

 

This is all from my point of view.

French: If you want to work with the developing world and Africa and working in France (I'm learning french, but I'm horrendous ) If you're down with the feminine and masculine words and phrases you should be okay I guess.

German: If you are planning to work in Germany and in countries like Austria, Switzerland, it's not very widely spoken because Germany didn't have a massive empire like Britain and France but it's spoken in Germany, Austria, in areas of the Netherlands, Eastern France near the border, in parts of Switzerland I think, etc...

Italian: Less widely spoken than German but ties really well onto Spanish, so if you want an easy ride, go for Italian.

Japanese: You want to go into stuff like manga anime, etc... if you want to work with Japan in the future in terms of electronics. From what my friends tell me, Japan doesn't have very many proficient english speakers so translators are always good there. The grammar is also confusing at times because there are many honourrifics and the sentence structure is Subject, Object, Verb most of the time. You also have to learn 3 writing scripts, Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

Mandarin: An excellent choice considering that the China is growing fast and so is it's influence, plus with the Chinese diaspora still continuing it's a good choice for communications, the only thing worrying is that you've gotta remember characters well.

Korean: It's similar to Japanese but you only have to learn way of writing, the hangul, it's not as hard as Japanese in that essence, but it's not easy. As plenty of honourrifics and the sentence structure is subject, object, verb. It can be difficult for beginners at time because most korean speakers and their dramatic ways of talking at times. It's the least used in all the options above but go with it if you like.

Good luck.

 

Well, I'd say it depends on what you want to do with the languages. Are you planning on using your languages for your future job? Or is it just for fun? Do you want something easy to learn or rather a challenge?
German is a very hard language to learn, at least that's what I hear from other people (I was born in Germany so I can't really judge) and when I compare it to the other languages I speak - I speak 4 languages and I want to learn a 5th - I'd say it's more complicated.
When you know Spanish, French is a very easy language to learn, just like Italian as the languages are related to each other.

 

All languages would probably be useful to know, although not all to the same degree, it's just that getting those three East Asian languages to a useful level is incredibly difficult indeed and requires a lot of persistence.

 

French/Italian, and here's why:

I am lying when I say that my cat is green (EN)
Estoy mintiendo cuando diga que mi gato es verde (SP).
Je suis mentir quand je dis que mon chat est vert (FR).
Sto mentendo quando dico che il mio gatto è verde (IT).

See why? If you already know Spanish, then just get those two (and Portuguese) out of the way, THEN work your way up to harder languages (like German, Japanese, Polish, etc.)

 

Don't know about the others but that one's actually wrong. Just thought I could let you know.

 

listen to tv in that language

---------- Post added 18th Jul 2013 at 04:04 PM ----------

"je ments quand je dis qu mon chat est vert"

 

I speak 9 different languages, so I feel I am qualified to help with this!

French and Italian are easy because they closely resemble Spanish, Italian more so I find.

German is fairly easy because there is a lot of similarities between German and English

Japanese, Mandarine, and Korean are all far more difficult, I managed to pick up swedish in under a year, where as I've been studying the 3 of those for several and still find myself struggling with them to the point where I don't even consider myself able to speak them.

So from least difficult to most, I will say:

Italian
French
German
Japanese
Korean
Mandarin

For usefulness (Most to least) I would rank them as:

French
Japanese
Mandarin
German
Korean
Italian

^)^

 

Where do you see similarities between English and German? I'm rather curious now...

 

I studied Spanish throughout high school and college. I also picked up a couple of courses in Italian. I found Italian pretty easy to pick up initially. I found a lot of the basic vocabulary to be similar in nature.

 

He's had the same or similar pointed out to him a few times before but the corrections were never appreciated... I think the Spanish should be more like 'miento cuando digo que mi gato es verde' but I'm not sure because I've not learnt it for three years.

Well English is a Germannic language, albeit heavily influenced by French. Old English (before the French came along) was pretty much a very distinct variety of Old German. Once the English (and Scots) started speaking a pidgin between the two in the upper classes, we forgot all about cases and grammatical genders, as well as making English a lot less inflected.

Anyway, enough history - we still share plenty of vocabulary, although it's mutated to the point where English speakers wouldn't recognise German phrases despite having very similar translations. It's often the case that the more abstract, complicated words come from French, Greek or Latin whilst the more basic words (hound/Hund, water/Wasser, the/die, cat/Katze) come from German.

Obviously there are tonnes of differences. I have no idea when the word order 'split', but the order in other Germanic languages is closer to English, right?

 

Comparative table of languages and language profiles for the prospective learner
Language Learning Difficulty | About World Languages
Language Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning
9 hard languages for English speakers | Matador Network

I thought these links might get a few people started, though I'm aware there's a bit of controversy and subjective opinion involved, especially in the last link.

 

Actually, his Spanish is correct. "Mentir" is being use in the present progressive, for which the gerund is "mintiendo," and the verb "decir" is being used in a conditional sense, which puts the verb in the subjunctive tense, for which the correct conjugation is "diga."

Sorry, but I'm fluent in both languages, and I'm a certified Grammar Nazi...

My work here is done! :rolle:

Oh! And to be on topic, I'd go with French. The three Asian languages would be rather difficult, because you basically have to throw out everything you already know about language, and you could probably learn Italian and German on your own, if you wanted to. French is similar, but a lot of the syntax (the order you put words in) and pronunciations can be very different from any of the others, but it wouldn't be impossible to learn. Good luck!

 

This website also has great resources for learning foreign languages.

Fluent in 3 months – Language Hacking and Travel Tips

I fell in love with Russian a few years ago, so that's that language I'm taking in college right now. I'm also trying to learn German on my own. German, from what I can tell, really isn't that hard. It just takes time to learn grammar and vocabulary just like any other language. I tried doing French, but my pronunciation was awful. Maybe I'll try it again someday. Russian, on the other hand, is really fun but the grammar is nuts! Luckily, they don't care if you butcher it as long as you get your point across.

 

Well, a lot of words, when spoken in german, sound similar to english, for example "Ich spreche Deutsch" compared to "I speak German."

both Ich and Spreche sound similar to their English counterparts I and Speak. Of course some words are vastly different such as German and Deutsch. Also, I found a lot of similarities in how English and German are spoken.