Which one of these languages should i learn?

Question

Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Belorussian
Bulgarian
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Farsi
French
Georgian
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Kazakh
Korean
Latin
Macedonian
Malay
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Spanish
Swedish
Tagalog (Filipino)
Turkmen
Ukrainian
Uzbek
Vietnamese

Answer 1

It really depends on your ability to adapt. Do you have a high tolerance for ambiguity? According to the Department of Defense standards of languages...Chinese, Korean, and Arabic are the top 3 category 4 languages as far as difficulty goes. The rest are supposedly less difficult. English is a category 5 language...it's considered more difficult because it changes too quickly. More people in the world can speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language...it's not going to be easy if you want to compare it to what you already know. I speak it courtesy of Uncle Sam...our motto at Defense Language Institute was 'I speak Chinese so you don't have to!' Once your mind begins to expand with your first, second language...then you can pick up other similar languages...the younger you are, the easier. I learned Mandarin in my mid 20's...lucky for me, I already knew three other Chinese dialects before that, so I was able to retain more.

Answer 2

It depends what you're native language is (with the question being in English I'll assume it's English).

I'd definately go for a modern Indo-European language, as the grammer in non-Indo-European languages makes them vastly more difficult to learn (I gave Hebrew and Arabic up as a bad job). The writing system of Far Eastern languages is usually very hard to master too, Chinese especially.

The modern Indo-European languages in your list are:
Azerbaijani
Belorussian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Farsi
French
Georgian
German
Greek
Hindi
Irish
Italian
Macedonian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkmen
Ukrainian
Uzbek

Your best bet's going for ones that use the Latin alphabet, so that excludes:

Belorussian
Bulgarian
Farsi
Greek
Hindi
Macedonian
Russian
Serbian

Of those remaining, Romance or Germanic languages are easiest to learn for an English speaker, so:

Danish
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish

Spanish and Italian are the most phonetically spelt (in that order), and Norwegian, Danish, German and French are most similar to English (in that order). Norwegian has the simplest grammar.

It helps a lot if you've got some sort of motivation to learn the language (e.g. you plan on visiting that country). The internet also helps a lot, because you can read newspapers, listen to the radio, and speak to people all in that language. It's good not to just learn a lot of set phrases as well, but to learn how to form your own sentences - that way you have a lot more flexibility in what you say. I'd also like to say that when you listen to someone speaking a foreign language, you're probably not going to understand every word they say, so don't even try; just try to pick out the main points.

Answer 3

Depends on what you feel like learning.

I'd go with Spanish, because it's easy to learn, or Italian (you can memorize Italian words real quickly, but Italian grammar is a killer). Both of these languages are phonetic and easy to read. I wouldn't recommend French, it's very hard to read and to learn grammar. You can learn some of Slovene languages, for they are a bit exotic and you don't usually see someone speaking these languages. Russian is widely spread, but try learning Serbian. Serbian is completely phonetic, though it has very hard grammar. It uses both Cyrillic and Roman alphabet. All those Asian languages are very exotic, and I think that you would find a great job if you learned one of these.

Answer 4

Whatever it is, don't make it Spanish, French, Japanese, or German. These are courses commonly offered in American schools, anyone with a little hard work can achieve intermediate fluency. And I would not reccomend Latin, as outside of school and maybe a career in law, it has no practical applications. Go for a language like Russian or Hebrew that is widely spoken in other parts of the world, but not America. It opens up doors for you, believe me.

Answer 5

It depends on your preferance, because it's all up to you in the end. I'll just give you some tips.

Learning Arabic is easier than Chinese and Japanese.

Malay and Bahasa Indonesia is quite similar, although the same words may mean different things, if you know Malay, you can more or less understand Bahasa Indonesia.

Norwegian pronounciation are not what we're usually used to, and it's hard to pronounce the words properly. =_=;

All the best to you~! ^__^

Answer 6

I'd go for an asian language -- Chinese, Korean, Japanese. All would be really cool to learn, if you like the culture. I have always hated the stress of learning most languages, but I love learning Korean and Japanese. Some day I want to learn Chinese too.

Answer 7

I already spoke english when I decided to learn spanish. Then I learned German. Surprisingly, just knowing these three languages opened up the door to many more. for example spanish and Italian have alot of similarities which made it easy to learn Italian. I was able to travel just about anywhere in the world and get in trouble.

You see when in Italy you say "Ciao" and that means "Good Bye.
In China when you say "Ciao" you just said F**K.

Just something to think about when learning new languages.

Answer 8

Spanish -- The Hispanic population is surging in the United States.

Answer 9

spanish because not only is it very easy to learn, it's also the foreign language more commonly used here in America. So because it's used so much, chances are it will help you remember it and use it as often as possible.

Answer 10

French. I speak french and it is a beautiful language. It is easy to learn and many english words come from french words. Also, on menus in french i can read them without translation and french food is tres bien. FRENCH GO FRENCH!