Best language to learn?

Citizen2011

Duck's hoop wrote: »

It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more than 750 million francophones. Mostly in Africa of course. But it's spoken much more widely than German, even within Europe.

Why would ya want to speak to 750m starving africans

Donkey Oaty

Links234 wrote: »

I'm learning Japanese, dunno how many others might find it useful, but I love it

リンクス - いい きぶん

(Adapted from an ancient Japanese convenience store advertising slogan)

dissed doc

Mandzhalas wrote: »

One of my new years resolutions is to learn new languages. What is most beneficial language to learn?
Because of predictions China becoming leading economy in next two decades I am thinking Chinese?
Or language that have most speakers in europe- German?
Or any other language?

English is already on a downward trend in the internet era. Spanish, Chinese (i.e., Mandarin Chinese), Russian and Arabic are exploding. There will likely be a balance of all these in 20 years.

If you plan on working in Europe, then English and German is best. South/North America is Spanish and English. Otherwise, the dominant languages of the other major regions are then obviously Arabic/Russian/Mandarin.

Spanish would be easy to learn. My advise to pick the theoretically easiest one then, i.e., German. Then Mandarin.

MRnotlob606

Igbo

AlanS181824

Deutsch!

Donkey Oaty

dissed doc wrote: »

English is already on a downward trend in the internet era. Spanish, Chinese (i.e., Mandarin Chinese), Russian and Arabic are exploding. There will likely be a balance of all these in 20 years.

If you plan on working in Europe, then English and German is best. South/North America is Spanish and English. Otherwise, the dominant languages of the other major regions are then obviously Arabic/Russian/Mandarin.

Spanish would be easy to learn. My advise to pick the theoretically easiest one then, i.e., German. Then Mandarin.

My advice is to ignore all the above on the grounds that it is nonsense.

People who pick languages strategically are always crap at them.

You are best going for a language and a culture that inspires you, and where you have the opportunity to practice it. If you don't have some real interest in the people who speak it, you're fecked before you start.

Lingua Franca

Spanish is the easiest language to learn. It makes a lot of sense, especially to an English speaker, and isn't loaded with irregular verbs.

Just a tip: if you're looking to expand your opportunities in European companies from Ireland then there are very few Dutch speakers in English speaking countries and recruitment agencies and headhunters will be beating down your door if you can speak it. I have no idea why but it happened to my (Dutch) partner when he moved over to Ireland for a while. Otherwise Dutch is pretty useless as it's only really the Dutch and a few obscure carribbean islands that use it, and they all speak English too.

Digital Solitude

Gaelige.

heldel00

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Gaelige.

Everyday at school I bust my ass teaching Gaeilge.
I use puppets, songs, rhymes, group work, paired work, DVDs, irish cartoons, games, you name it iv tried it. I think at this stage I could stand on my head in the middle of the floor singing irish songs and they still wouldn't care!
So disappointing because I really do try but they just moan and groan when we do Gaeilge! Must be inbuilt in us so no OP, don't learn Gaeilge.

Yurt2

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

People who pick languages strategically are always crap at them.

You are best going for a language and a culture that inspires you, and where you have the opportunity to practice it. If you don't have some real interest in the people who speak it, you're fecked before you start.

This is oh so very true. A lot of people who take up Chinese for instance because they rationalize that there's over 1 billion of them.

The thought process is:

1. Learn Chinese
2. Something something
3. Something something
4. Money

Many of them that I know actually held Chinese culture in contempt and guess what, they got bored of the hard work and learned nothing in the end. The reality of learning Mandarin is hours upon hours of practicing characters and being interested enough about the base culture to learn a high cultural context language very different from Indo-European ones.

dissed doc

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

My advice is to ignore all the above on the grounds that it is nonsense.

People who pick languages strategically are always crap at them.

You are best going for a language and a culture that inspires you, and where you have the opportunity to practice it. If you don't have some real interest in the people who speak it, you're fecked before you start.

Strategically is not exclusive of personal inspiration regarding culture. I presumed it was a given that the OP was already personally inspired to learn something, so the idea of living in south america, central european culture or the far east is the connection to strategic. Didn't expect it needed to be spelled out to concretely. That was his question, and the reason why my answer covered the big languages of the next 20 years based on current evidence. Chances are, the OP will find something in one of them.

pconn062

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

My advice is to ignore all the above on the grounds that it is nonsense.

People who pick languages strategically are always crap at them.

You are best going for a language and a culture that inspires you, and where you have the opportunity to practice it. If you don't have some real interest in the people who speak it, you're fecked before you start.

+1

Pick a language of a country or culture that you enjoy and the whole process will be much easier. For me that was German and I really enjoy the learning process as opposed to it being a slog. Gaeilge will be my next language.

Leeleather

heldel00 wrote: »

Everyday at school I bust my ass teaching Gaeilge.
I use puppets, songs, rhymes, group work, paired work, DVDs, irish cartoons, games, you name it iv tried it. I think at this stage I could stand on my head in the middle of the floor singing irish songs and they still wouldn't care!
So disappointing because I really do try but they just moan and groan when we do Gaeilge! Must be inbuilt in us so no OP, don't learn Gaeilge.

How about teach the basics rather than rhymes and songs.

When they speak using those basics reward them with chocolate or something.

boobar

The language of love

heldel00

Leeleather wrote: »

How about teach the basics rather than rhymes and songs.

When they speak using those basics reward them with chocolate or something.

Basics are well taught thank you and reinforced with rhymes and songs

Links234

Donkey Oaty wrote: »

My advice is to ignore all the above on the grounds that it is nonsense.

People who pick languages strategically are always crap at them.

You are best going for a language and a culture that inspires you, and where you have the opportunity to practice it. If you don't have some real interest in the people who speak it, you're fecked before you start.

So much this!

I'm hammering away at learning Japanese, it's a seriously tough language, and the written language is just... quite easily the toughest thing I've ever tried, it's a gigantic undertaking. But I'm learning it because I've an interest in Japan, I've been there and should be going back again before too long. I'm enjoying learning it, I've friends who I can talk to in Japanese, I watch a fair bit of Japanese movies and anime, and a huge amount of the music I listen to is from Japan

Oh the songs Jim, the songs, they'd melt your face!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RbMHylx2M

I couldn't imagine learning a language if I wasn't interested in it, interested in using it, etc.

Donkey Oaty

dissed doc wrote: »

Chances are, the OP will find something in one of them.

Fair enough Doc - we're approaching things from a different angle

Leeleather

heldel00 wrote: »

Basics are well taught thank you and reinforced with rhymes and songs

So they know how to conjugate simple verbs and how to firm simple sentences, like say, "they eat apples".

forgotten password

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse

Mister Vain

Polish, there are so many of them here. Plus its handy for chatting up Polish burds.

heldel00

Leeleather wrote: »

So they know how to conjugate simple verbs and how to firm simple sentences, like say, "they eat apples".

They don't "know" that they are conjugating verbs but yes they do form simple sentences, singlular/ plural, broad/ slender vowels, use of the fada as a magic e, mostly present but introduction slowly of the past tense and so on.

Dexter Bip

forgotten password wrote: »

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse

And Irish to...?

Banjo String

Java, COBOL, Pascal or BASIC.

Feelgood

Links234 wrote: »

I'm learning Japanese, dunno how many others might find it useful, but I love it

Ditto, learning Japanese at the moment with the intention of working in Japan for a year or two. Its quite an interesting language, everything is backwards to English.

OP I guess you should ask yourself why you want to learn a language and what are you going to do with it once you learn it.

If its just for fun, I would seriously consider scrapping the idea and spend the time learning guitar instead.

DaveDaRave

man i remember i was a giant weaboo saying japanese words i heard from anime all the time. such cringe, onii-chan

Links234

DaveDaRave wrote: »

such cringe, onii-chan

Hey, I ain't your onii-chan, sempai

braddun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

AlanS181824

forgotten password wrote: »

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse

This made me laugh haha.

supersean1999

Id like to lern spanish. Cos i reli ave mastered eng now. + its reli getting boreing.

There was a study done (I can't find links) of the languages that are most translated into English. The result was that if you learned, English, Russian, German and Spanish, you would have most of the world covered.
I was suprised Chinese wasn't there!