What language to learn?

plenderj · 29-05-2006 07:56PM #1

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 · 29-05-2006 08:00PM

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

plenderj · 29-05-2006 08:07PM

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

simu · 29-05-2006 08:13PM

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/ · 29-05-2006 08:15PM

You can practice on my pole any time.

simu · 29-05-2006 08:16PM

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

You can practice on my pole any time.

Yeah, should've seen that one coming!

plenderj · 29-05-2006 08:18PM

simu wrote:

Yeah, should've seen that one coming!

No pun intended I'm sure

Squaddy · 29-05-2006 08:21PM

How about Arabic?? The second most used language.

Thirdfox · 29-05-2006 08:24PM

Or Chinese? The most used language

Spanish is useful too.

fuzzywiggle · 29-05-2006 08:26PM

How about American?

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

MrSinn · 29-05-2006 08:26PM

tentare l'italiano(try italian)

plenderj · 29-05-2006 08:28PM

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 · 29-05-2006 08:29PM

plenderj wrote:

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

eh Marino I think

dlofnep · 29-05-2006 08:31PM

How about your own language?

plenderj · 29-05-2006 08:35PM

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

arctic lemur · 29-05-2006 08:41PM

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 · 29-05-2006 08:44PM

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

dlofnep · 29-05-2006 08:47PM

plenderj wrote:

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

tis a shame

biko · 29-05-2006 08:48PM

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 · 29-05-2006 09:14PM

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 · 29-05-2006 09:51PM

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 · 29-05-2006 09:57PM

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 · 29-05-2006 09:59PM

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 · 29-05-2006 10:01PM

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

adonis · 29-05-2006 10:03PM

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 · 29-05-2006 10:08PM

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

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 29-05-2006 10:29PM

Learn to talk like a PIRATE!!!!

That'd be a great way to meet the ladies

singingstranger · 29-05-2006 11:03PM

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

Hail 2 Da Chimp · 29-05-2006 11:04PM

Yarrr Esperanto ye say???

bpmurray · 29-05-2006 11:16PM

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 · 30-05-2006 12:40AM

Latin!

Failing that japanese, or russian.

What language to learn?

Comments