Tell me what language I should choose to learn?

Question

My mother tongue is an Aryan Language, which is so different from English. But I learnt English as a second language so have a satisfactory level of knowledge, and still keep learning. Recently I felt like I ant to learn another language for no special reason. I like it to be something that would useful to me.

If it's an international language - better. What are your sugestions. If I start learning French, Spanich, Italian etc.would it be confusing to learn it together with English?

What do you think about learning Japanese or mandarin? Have you tried learning them? Were they easy to master for somebody whoose languages are so different from them?

Answer 1

Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, etc. should not be confusing with English, as they are not related in the least! :) This is a common misconception, but English is a Germanic language, although it has borrowed heavily from Latinate languages. If you pick a Romance language, your English will probably help you, not confuse you, because there are many English words that have the same roots as words in these languages. I don't know that I would recommend trying to learn multiple Romance languages at once, unless you have a lot of studying time, seeing as they are very similar...I have a hard time keeping my Spanish separate from my French and Italian (I only speak a very little of those last two, not that impressive :) ) You might be surprised at how much you have in common with those languages--Aryan languages and Romance languages both are part of the larger Indo-European language family (English is too, but Latin is closer in time to the common ancestor, and the Romance languages have more in common with Latin than English does with the old Germanic language it descends from)

Generally speaking, your success at learning a language will be dependent only on your motivation for learning them and your own linguistic ability. If you are bilingual, and you seem to have a very good command of English, chances are you will find a third language much easier than your second, and a fourth easier than your third. As long as you can keep in mind that your mother tongue has nothing to do with your adopted one, you shouldn't find it too hard. Pick one that piques your interest, or is spoken in an area you would like to travel to, or are interested in the culture of. This will keep you motivated. Have fun!

Answer 2

I would suggest learning Japanese or Mandarin EXCEPT that you are already learning another language so I wouldn't complicate my life too much now. Try learning a Romance language: Italian, French or Spanish.

I would recommend Italian or Spanish. French grammar is more confusing and difficult for the simple reason that there are too many more "irregular" than "regular" verbs. And, you have to memorize ALL the irregular ones. As far as pronunciation is concerned, all three languages are very similar since they are based on Latin. Italian pronunciation is easier than the other two because it has the most vowels of any other language and so it "flows" more easily. Also, Italian is pronounced as it is written.

Good luck. You are undertaking a huge task but it will be so worth it in the long run.

Answer 3

Today's trend is to open to Asian or Arab culture as it's no longer as remote as it used to be. If you ever need to move to China or Japan, there is a risk you stay illiterate if you haven't prepared kanji learning for already quite a long time.

On the other hand, if one day you really need to know French, Spanish or Italian, you'll be able to catch up more easily with these languages. Besides, knowing English already makes Europe quite affordable with respect to tourism.

If you just feel like learning another language, then maybe Chinese or Japanese are the best answers because they will teach you the most what learning a language can mean : new alphabet, ideograms, different approach of time concept, socially-layered lexicon. But it's no picnic!

Answer 4

Go with whatever language you associate with a culture that interests you. If you hvae an interest in the culture, then studying the language will open up many insights about that culture and your dual interest will make motivation easier.

If you're looking at doing it for the benefits of being able to speak to a wider array of people, then Chinese or Hindustani are probably your best bets (being 1 & 3 respectively in the top 10 most spoken languages - FYI French only comes in at 10).

Contrary to popular belief, Chinese isn't that difficult. The tonal system can be awkward to master, but most Chinese are used to having to figure out what foreigners are saying through context, and while you're not considered literate until you've learned about 3,000 characters, you can get by with a much smaller lexus. What's more, while you can't tell exactly how a character is pronounced by how it's written (or vice versa), think about how many English words you know (I guarantee you it'll be a LOT more than you think) and how different their spelling is to their pronunciation, when you do that you'll realise that much of English spelling is rote memory too. Also, you can often get a sense of what a character means (sometimes vaguely, sometimes pretty accurately) once you get to know the radicals, of which there aren't that many.

Having done both Chinese and Japanese, it's my opinion that Japanese is more difficult, as its grammar is vastly different to that of English (though I don't know how it compares to your native tongue) and *much* more complex than that of Chinese (not that Chinese is without its complexities). But you may find it to be a lot easier than I did.

No one language is inherently "harder" to learn than another (however Arabic is more phonologically complex than any other and English has a reasonably large phonemic inventory), but you will probably find some languages harder to learn than others.

Answer 5

Y'know, if you learn Latin, learning Italian, French, and Spanish will be much easier for you. However, if you wanted to learn just one language, it really depends on what appeals to you most. If you want to communicate with it often, I would say French, Spanish, or Mandarin as they are in the top-10 list of most spoken languages in the world.

Mandarin is very difficult, I'll tell you that. If you're still learning English, learning Mandarin at the same time would not be a good idea. The writing system is a pain and the language is so sensitive to tones. A change in tone completely changes words.

Japanese, in terms of speaking, is not so difficult. In terms of writing, Japanese has three different sets of symbols - Katakana, hiragana, and kanji. Katakana and hiragana aren't really difficult to learn. However, kanji is difficult because there are tens of thousands of different kanji symbols. I read somewhere that the average Japanese college student knows around 3,000 kanji. They also don't use subjects [words like I, you, us, we, they don't exist] and the subject has to be guessed from the context. Japanese is a nice language, though =]. I learned it fairly quickly [still working on kanji,though =D], however I'm very much a language person and they tend to come easily to me.

Answer 6

It depends on where you live for example if you live in miami, or L.A it is useful to learn spanish as lot of people in L.A, and miami speak spanish as well as english. Think of where you want to go or live and find out what languages they speak and learn them. Spanish is easier to learn than english by my expeince. While french is hard to pronuce, once you get the hang of it it's not that hard.

Mandarin is very very complicated! it's best if you speak a language that is similar to madrain (tonal, use of charcters)
because learning it without a base in another tonal language will make it all that much harder for you to learn, japanese is a little easier to learn than Mandrain because japanese actually has a alphabet, but if you're learning english at the same time it could be very hard!

if you're learning english your best shots are french or spanish beacuse of the use of a latin alphabet and cogantes that the 3 languages share.

Answer 7

you need a reason to start learning a new language. (at least, i do). that reason will become my motivation drive to totally master the language.

japanese vs mandarin
japanese's easier, no question bout it!
the biggest difficulty with chinese is that it doesn't have alphabet system. you have to memorize at least 10.000 chinese words to really be considered "speak chinese". and all 10.000 words have different ways of writing (although there are some similar characteristics among them). And then, the same spelling could be pronounced in 5 different tones to make different meanings.
with japanese, they use 3 alphabet system. hiragana, katakana, and kanji, and japanese mix them 3 to make a sentence. you have to memorize which word use hiragana,a which uses katakana, and which uses kanji. Kanji, is actually chinese character with japanese pronounciation.
I studied japanese and chinese at the same time and it really gave me a hard time. i could remember kanji meanings perfectly coz they remain the same. but sometimes, when i was speaking chinese, i couldn't get the rite japanese pronounciation, or vice versa.

i think it's easy to master a totally new language as long as you're serious about it and really make an effort on it.

Answer 8

Italian - as it is the most beautiful language and easy to learn.

Answer 9

If u want helpful languages worlwide i´d say spanish and french, if not learn a helpful one according to your place.

Answer 10

You should learn Aiola, then you can communicate with ALL Latin based language speakers on some level.