What language to learn?

plenderj

Contemplating what to do in the evenings with lots of free time now, and with a desire to meet new people etc., someone suggested I go to language classes in the evenings. She commented there should be women there and at least I'd end up learning something new.

So. Did the whole French & German thing in school. I figure that's got my main European languages covered. I was thinking something like Polish or something like that... Any thoughts?

Huggles

A mate of mine started Polish earlier in the year and loves it, finds it very useful!

plenderj

Polish you say /strokes chin/ Where's he doing it?

simu

Yeah, I'd go for Polish. It's fairly hard, I'd say, because it's so different but there are plenty of Poles here to practise on too.

DonkeyStyle \o/

You can practice on my pole any time.

simu

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

You can practice on my pole any time.

Yeah, should've seen that one coming!

plenderj

simu wrote:

Yeah, should've seen that one coming!

No pun intended I'm sure

Squaddy

How about Arabic?? The second most used language.

Thirdfox

Or Chinese? The most used language
Spanish is useful too.

fuzzywiggle

How about American?

or if you have difficulty with then yeah Polish or Russian!

MrSinn

tentare l'italiano(try italian)

plenderj

fuzzywiggle wrote:

How about American?

or if you have difficulty with then yeah Polish or Russian!

Even at this level of alcoholism I don't think I could kill off enough brain cells to hack American

Huggles

plenderj wrote:

Polish you say /strokes chin/ Where's he doing it?

eh Marino I think

dlofnep

How about your own language?

plenderj

Nope, I'd have no interest to further my knowledge of Irish unfortunately

arctic lemur

I'm doing Greek at the mo, its ok cause it a phonetic language (once you can read their alphabeth)

Dutch is fairly easy

Jello

Yeah I'd say Polish would be fun...Spanish can be useful too.

dlofnep

plenderj wrote:

Nope, I'd have no interest to further my knowledge of Irish unfortunately

tis a shame

biko

Jello wrote:

Yeah I'd say Polish would be fun...Spanish can be useful too.

Yep these two are big at the moment. If you go for Spanish, choose South American - nicer accent and easier to learn.

JustCoz

Russian is a really interesting language coz it's so different from English. Or what about latin? I know you wouldn't get to speak it but it's really interesting because you can see a bit of every different language in it and it makes other languages easier to learn

iFight

Japaneese..not much reason behind that thought, but they write backwards and upside down(i think that that is japaneese), how cool is that? I wouldnt mind learning it, if i wasnt so damn lazy

plenderj

Some pro's and con's:


Spanish: We have property in Spain so it would come in useful, but just not bothered to be honest. I have enough French to get by with understanding Spanish.

Italian: Too much like Spanish. Couldn't be bothered

Polish: In the lead right now, and the one I might go for

Russian: My ex is studying Russian so that'd just look wrong

Greek: I always was a fan of backdoor beauties

Karl Hungus

Well I'd say Japanese, but yeah, Polish does seem to be the most useful option, seeing as they'll be the majority soon enough.

plenderj

Oh and my parents did Japanese, so that'd a definite option. Am thinking Polish though

adonis

i think arabic would be the best one to go for..very important language in the scheme of things!
all those words with AL as a prefix originate from arabic..

and how can you understand spanish from french? i speak spanish and find french completly different

plenderj

They're both Latin in origin. I find it easy enough /shrug/

Hail 2 Da Chimp

Learn to talk like a PIRATE!!!!


That'd be a great way to meet the ladies

singingstranger

Give Esperanto a go! It's piss-easy.

Hail 2 Da Chimp

Yarrr Esperanto ye say???

bpmurray

Decide if you want to learn a Latin-based language or one that uses a new script. The Latin scripted languages include all the European plus a couple of others, e.g. Vietnamese (although that has a bizarre way of stacking accents).

For non-Latin, what about Japanese: you could start with katakana - only 28 of them & they're syllabic, so it's not too difficult - and then progress to Hiragana & Kanji, the ideographs (and no, iFight, it's neither backwards nor upside down). The advantage of learning the ideographs is that they are very similar to what's used in China and Taiwan (and to what the government is pushing in South Korea).

Then there are the Indic languages, which are based on the old sanskrit scripts (although the Tamil folk might disagree with that). Actually this is an interesting area, particularly since the scripts can be transcripted from one to another (and even to a Latin script).

For something really obscure, you could try traditional Mongolian which *is* vertical.

Tar.Aldarion

Latin!

Failing that japanese, or russian.

Nightwish

I second Tar, once you learn latin, many latin based languauges will be quite easy to learn afterwards

Heinrich

plenderj wrote:

They're both Latin in origin. I find it easy enough /shrug/

Says our resident philologist!:D

I wonder where you got this nugget of sagesse from? I lived abroad in a francophone area and never understood a word of Spanish. Maybe it was my Columbian pal's accent.

Try learning Gaelic! I suppose after the failure of 13 years studying the language the further effort would be too great...

Hagar

adonis wrote:

i think arabic would be the best one to go for..very important language in the scheme of things!
all those words with AL as a prefix originate from arabic..

I wouldn't bother with Arabic, the way the US is going now you would have no-one left to talk to...

Hobbes

Whatever language you are going to learn I strongly suggest you take one that you are going to use frequently while learning. Polish might be handy if you have polish people to practise on.

Padraig Mor

Did evening classes in Russian this year. Really enjoyed it and it's surprisingly easy to learn. Phonetically, it's very similar to Czech and some other Eastern European languages so it comes in handy in several countries!

adonis

i notice that a lot of people are writing in "american" in this thread..

Joeface

Mandrain Chinese ; if for no other reason , Its the most spoken of the Chinese dialects , and since they will rule the world in a couple of years it might be handy to be able to beg for ur live and have them understand

eirebhoy

I'd actually love to be able to speak another language but I just find it terribly hard to learn. In my leaving cert I think I did all honours except the 3 languages (Irish, English and Germany) which were pass level. I could tell you my age in German but little more and probably couldn't even tell you that much in Irish. With me having a brutal memory do you think I could learn a language if I really put my mind to it or are some people just terrible when it comes to this type of thing?

MikeC101

Was considering Arabic myself, but the prospect of learning a new script seems a bit daunting. Anyone here learn / learning it?

SF1

Irish:D

chamlis

I tried learning Japanese with one of those teach yourself books. Got a few phrases and the basic grammar/accents, but it really is something you need a class room environment for I think. I couldn't find any in my area so that was that.

It was awesome though. People were well impressed with my (admittedly improvised) sentenses of foreign wisdom. Just sound cool and you will be

Then a mate started going out with a Jap girl and the game was up! I'd recommend it, just for the cool factor.


also, I've only heard of "Esperanto" recently. Wiki it and see.....

plenderj

Right. I've settled on Polish. I asked a barman friend of mine if he knew anyone who could teach me or whatever and looks like I've got the ball rolling on this one.

Check back in about 4 years time and I'm sure I'll be able to say hello

Pythia

I'd love to learn Russian.

Try Ancient Greek or Latin.
Really interesting and you get some history too.

plenderj

Can't do Russian because that's what my ex is studying and it'd just look plain wrong.

I've just finished Homer's The Odyssey, and am currently reading Virgil's The Aeneid and Vitruvius' 10 Books on Architecture, so I think I'm covered on the history front

GerryRyan

A nice easy language would be Spanish - it's all phoenetical *spelling?*, and the grammar isn't too hard (accordin to a friend).
I'm taking it upon myself to learn a few words of Polish over the Summer tho.

YeAh!

plenderj wrote:

Right. I've settled on Polish. I asked a barman friend of mine if he knew anyone who could teach me or whatever and looks like I've got the ball rolling on this one.

Check back in about 4 years time and I'm sure I'll be able to say hello

Its Djen-do-bri as fas as I remmember

Polish is a good idea though. I think there will be a huge demand for translators soon enough, if that demand doesn't exist already! Plus you would be able to get plenty of practise with all the Polish people!

plenderj

YeAh! wrote:

Its Djen-do-bri as fas as I remmember

Polish is a good idea though. I think there will be a huge demand for translators soon enough, if that demand doesn't exist already! Plus you would be able to get plenty of practise with all the Polish people!

Yeah that's the idea, plenty of people to practice on, and the women aren't half bad looking either

X-SL

German! It's a very powerful language. Not going out of style anytime soon! Ich finde es sehr interessant. Ob, meine Deutsch SEHR slecht ist

I know you've already decided on Russian but Spanish is really useful. It's not complicated to learn but it's hard to speak *well*, I find all the people who say it's easy at college are crap at it and have a horrendous accent. I'd give Japanese a shot as well, it's great fun but 'tis a process to learn all those characters. Nothing beats the sense of achievement when you understand a sentence of Japanese from a tourist

plenderj

Japanese was my second choice to Polish *cough*cough*
I was doing Ninjitsu for a while and I'd like to be able to understand the language. Polish seems handier for me though, plus I don't find Asians attractive