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I need to take two semesters of a foreign language, but I'm not sure which language to learn. My choices are French, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, and German. I've been leaning slightly toward Chinese; I don't really like the "sound" of Romance languages, and Chinese culture seems interesting. I've heard that Chinese is pretty difficult, though, and it probably wouldn't be as useful as Spanish. Also, I intend to learn Japanese someday, and I'm worried that knowing the Chinese readings of characters would mess me up (or would it actually help?).

Any advice?

As a Chinese, I'm willing to remind you that learning Chinese is not that rewarding as learning IndoEuropean languages. You should be prepared that after one year of study, you will be still struggling reading element school level materials, while your friends who chose French are already happily reading Bastiat without any difficulty.

Not because Chinese is intrinsically harder. It's just too different from English in almost all aspects. :)

In 50 years, the majority of the world will speak English, Mandarin (Chinese) or Spanish. The Chinese are teaching English to their youngest generation in a big way. So Spanish will be the most "useful" language to learn.

Spanish is also easier to learn than Chinese. It is pronounced the way it is spelled, and uses the same alphabet as English. Fluency in Spanish will greatly increase your enjoyment as a tourist in Spain, the Canary Islands, most of South America, and much of the Carribean.

Of course, if "usefulness" and "ease of learning" are not your criteria, the field is wide open. French and Italian are beautiful languages, and open up the enjoyment of French and Italian movies. I would not bother with German. It's not an attractive language to my ear, and young Germans speak great English.

Learning ANY second language makes it easier to learn ANY third language. It wires up the brain for multiple languages. So don't worry about that.

Learn Portuguese. 2 words: Brazillian hotties :P

Whatever you do, stick to it.

I find learning any languages very rewarding, but you do need discipline to progress. If you constantly hop subjects when you're bored, your learning curve will never really catch up.

Find motivation and make a resolution not to abandon it for any long period. Don't do the OCD thing to study 12 hours a day three weeks and burn out, only not to touch it in 2 months. A steady, disciplined approach works SO much better.

Learn Chinese if you wanna learn Japanese someday. You won't regret it. The katakana(or was it hiragana?) alphabet for Japanese comes from Chinese. In fact, I don't know Japanese but I could survive for two weeks at Japan - you can pretty much figure out wtf those words are on the signboards if you know Chinese. Most of the similar-looking words have the same meaning. Also, ribuck has a good point there. Many countries are starting to set English as an must-take language in addition to their native tongue.

Friedcat has a point there - Chinese is damn hard to pick up if you don't have a base. However, most of the kids over my country learn 3 languages here, and some Indians even go to 4 as they learn Indian as their native language. I'm sure you wouldn't have any problems picking another language up.  ;)

you should learn swahili

one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that learning italian or spanish is almost like learning two languages in one.

out of those two i've only ever studied italian, but as a result i can understand a lot of spanish, purely because of my italian study.

Since your required to take the classes for your major, I suggest choosing one of these three: French, Chinese or German. Spanish, ergo Italian, could easily be learned via Rosetta Stone. Pick the one you desire to know more about its country of origin, unless you're concern about your GPA, then go with the easiest one of those three, albeit Spanish is the easiest of the five. ¿Comprende?


~Bruno~

Agreed. It takes 5 years to bother speaking Chinese fluently and 10 to learn Hanji.


Seconded. Out of all the languages Theymos mentioned, I think Spanish is the most useful and rewarding.


At least when that language is in the same family of course. Learning Korean doesn't help me learn Vietnamese any easier at all. Learning English though sure does help me learn Spanish!


Agreed. Languages are learned to use. Spanish is actually useful, although not very exotic in the USA. Too bad Korean is not on your list.


Couldn't have said it better myself. I have never studied Korean once, but I'm fluent in reading, writing, speaking and listening, only because I stopped using English when I got here and wrapped my life around the process of using it continuously. The result? My English got worse every day, proving that continued usage is key.

Funny, Spanish is similar to Italian, as well as French and Portuguese... So if you learn one of those Romance languages you have access to pretty much hotties from latin america, spain, italy, and france

Oops, derped there with the kanji stuff - guess I do need more sleep.

I took 3 years of German because its very similar to English, thought it was a pretty easy class. Go with Spanish if you want something you'll use more often.

Don't discount the bolded part. Not having the hurdle of learning a different character set to get over will speed your acquisition immensely.

Since Spanish, ergo Italian, Prtuguese and now French, can easily be learned via Rosetta Stone, your choices have been greatly narrowed to either German or Chinese. Since you're attending college, you need to make your decision based on the following two images.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7o8SdS3qwN4/S3-_wDTFenI/AAAAAAAAAgg/p9ltZ2COUiM/s400/women+drinking+german+beer.jpg http://www.chinese-tools.com/jdd/public/documents/cc/olive/20090703-bier.1.jpg

My father is german and my mother speak french. I speak only ~50 german words but a hottie that speak german arouse me.

Mais la même chose se produit à peu prêt dans n'importe quel autre language! / But same things happen in virtually any language!

Bitcointalk is my first forum where I have to write in english. I see myself improving way faster than by only reading it. :)

But the German accent is so, so, so... You'll just have to view the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VZdQ92pQc

Max Keiser Germany and China will be worlds only superpowers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2En0uIqPNs)

Thanks for the responses! :)

Probably Spanish would look best on a résumé, but I almost never meet Spanish-speaking people who don't also speak fluent English (here in Wisconsin), so I'm not sure how useful it would be to me. I also can't think of any Spanish literature or media which might interest me. I feel like I would never use Spanish once I complete the required courses.

Sounds like Chinese is very difficult and likely not very rewarding, so now I'm leaning toward French. There's a ton of French film and literature which might be interesting, and there seems to be quite a few French-speaking people involved in P2P projects like Bitcoin, Freenet, and I2P, so French might be one of the more useful languages for communication I'm likely to engage in.


Ah, I hadn't realized learning Chinese would be so slow-going. Being unable to read anything substantial would make learning the language much more difficult, I'd imagine.

It all depends on where you are in the world, and where you would like to go in the world.

So take a good look at a map, and a better look at the peoples that speak the different languages, and learn the one that fits you best, both in taste and possibly geographically too.

Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn. There are few difficult sounds to pronounce, it's widely spoken, beautiful, with much exposure and many resources (TV, books, net). If you can write Spanish you can speak it, if you can hear it you can read it. Few languages share that bijective property. Spanish has one of the easiest learning curves and does not get difficult until you learn very advanced (beyond conversational) grammar.

Learning any romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, Catalan, etc) will help when learning any other romance. Learning any language at all will give you the mental tools to learn others.

Ease is not the only criteria for learning a language, but if you do plan to learn several languages, starting with an easy language can be a good strategy. I do not think that learning the tones of east Asian languages is a huge barrier. I learned a great deal of Thai (five tones) just listening to audio on repeat while I slept. The Thai people are extraordinarily encouraging and if you can handle being laughed at with, anyone on the street is an enthusiastic teacher. After some Thai, picking up conversational Lao (six tones) was cake. The tonal ear will help with others like Vietnamese (6) and maybe even Cantonese (with nine tones!).

Chinese characters are incredibly difficult will be time consuming to pick up, but learning them can be a fascinating endeavor. Perhaps more rewarding and motivated if you are actually in China (simplified) or Taiwan (traditional). Considering you intend to learn Japanese, you could start with the ~2000 tōyō and jōyō kanji which are shared between Chinese and Japanese (and are essentially the only Chinese characters used in Japan). Japanese has a few distinct sounds and predictable vowels. Mandarin Chinese has a few more phonemes and the added beauty of four tones.

In my opinion, the most fascinating languages are polysynthetic found primarily in the Arctic (Greenlandic) and in native American languages (Navajo, Mayan). But I don't imagine they'll be among your first picks if you're already undecided.

Quoted because it needs to be said again!

You forgot Quichua spoken by a large portion of the South American Natives

French. It's simple, light to the senses and Quebec is amazing.

Learning a language is always a good idea, as it helps to communicate. ... uhm to and with whom?

It´s even worse! Natur and grammar can´t agree genderwise. Read "A Tramp Abroad" by Mark Twain to be profoundly convinced. 

Bugger! You forgot Switzerland ... although ä klisigs Chuchichäschtli is pretty ununderstandable to any native german.
Once you come along northern Germany make sure to know what "Feudel und Leuwagen" is. It is something like "42 and towel" so to speak. But rarely anybody who knows what a Gummmere or Naggebuzzle is will know what you are talking about and vice versa.
Nevertheless german helps you very well through all of europe from Portugal to Montenegro as well as from Norway to Sicily. It is spoken in Belgium and northern Italy, of cause Luxembourg and ... check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language)
So far so good, but why bother whilst your english is good enough to by some Schrippen.

Have you considerd Latin or Sanskrit? Ok ... just kidding but still those two have a purpose of their own.
Russian? .... ja nje gawarju pa ruski ... which is the german way to say: I don´t speak russian.
Keep ya ljoobljoo tey ya in mind, the most important sentence in any language.  ;D

German is good because it's a good step towards many other Germanic languages. It's not harder than Russian. As with many other languages with complex grammars (basically all major European languages have much more complex grammars than English) the grammar variation allows to make more constructions and you can express more memorising fewer morphemes.

All important languages are similarly complex. Languages are shaped by the complexity of culture and thought, and that's similarly complex for all peoples of the world. However, it's much easier when you have more common ground.

Gabriel García Márquez' "El amor en los tiempos del cólera" is the most beautifully written book I've ever read. It's a pleasure in English, but...

A few lines of Pablo Neruda's poems will make most latin women wet and gringo chicks will wonder what power you wield.


And it is consistently structured, unlike say, English.


What does this mean?

It means that any common language is similarly rich and complex when taking all variables into consideration. Difficulty adjusts to human capability. As areas of the language grow other areas get deprecated.

I've read the English translation of that. It is very good (though kind of strange). So I guess I would be interested in some Spanish literature.

Italian, the closest to Latin of modern romance languages, is directly based on 13th century aristocratic Florentine. Dante Alighieri gathered the various dialects of Tuscany to produce what he thought was the most beautiful language for his poetry, La divina commedia in particular.

Russian has been pretty fun so far...  ;D



(Not super practical though. Spanish and french are my "practical" suits as of now.)

One of my favorite songs is partially in Sanskrit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-posN4vRc

Every concert these two sister perform at, sell out--without spending a single advertising dollar.

The following image is not related to the above, but felt it important to this post, coupled with the fact that we all know that theymos loves images.  ;)

http://www.samskrtam.org/classes/logo.gif

Once you've made your choice, theymos, please let us know what it is, thus allowing us to tell you how it was the wrong choice.

~Bruno~

If you're willing to sign up with Facebook, then Spanish Hour is running a promo on Spanish Preperation as a freebie.

http://www.spanishhour.com/clep.html

Remember, theymos only has a choice between five languages, and it's only for two semesters. I still feel that it's only a choice between German and Chinese, for having a rudimentary handle on either one of these would enable him to pursue his major/career much gooder.

~Bruno~

Thank you very much! Just enrolled! It looks like it's way easier to learn with a french background. Gender and number work the same way!  ;D

I feel funny doing this training in english.

I wouldn't take Chinese if I was only doing two semesters and didn't have a pressing need for it. Personally I took Spanish, cause I'll actually use it.

+1

NP, it looks a lot like DuoLingo at first shake, but haven't had enough time to really get my hands dirty.

Anyway, they have a sister site for CLEP tests for college credit. Link in the sig.

Now why the hell am quoting BadBear? Oh yea, I remember. Fuck Spanish, albeit your reasoning for not taking Chinese is valid. That leaves only German.

I present my case via a YouTube video. Everybody else feel like presenting their case as well via the same, please do so. That said, my best argument for theymos to take German for two semesters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urAz1T5hxsA

Don't forget to include an image when stating your case.

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=49758267

~Bruno~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_-54aB9lo

http://www.muziquemontreal.com/IMG/jpg/001-202.jpg


Even Phil Ivey try to learn french with Montreal hotties! It looks like he really did enjoy his stay!

http://www.fotocincou.com/2011-03-27/029.jpg

As an added bonus: most of these hotties also speak english ;D

Sandra Bullock speaks German: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzbrztZFCFA

The hottest women, even the lowest common denominator, are found in Copenhagen. Unfortunately the Danish language, like German and Dutch, is verbal diarrhea but less smooth. I'd have to give a vote up to the ladies of Montreal and Quebec and the always charming français québécois...

...which sounds a bit like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hJQsvoY6VU

Sure, go ahead and convince theymos that French is the way to go. By next year he'll be able to do stand-up comedy like this: Languages--Eddie Izzard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hJQsvoY6VU).

~Cackling Bear~

I advocate learning as many as one can. Neither German nor French should be particularly difficult starting points. Theymos is not likely to get very far with Chinese in a year while remaining on American soil. However, Chinese will help if he intends to learn Japanese later but not much. Except for a handful of characters and old cultural ties, the two languages are quite different (perhaps Japanese is grammatically and lexicographically closer to English than Chinese).

I personally think Germanic languages (which includes English) are ugly. For me the opportunities to speak and the pleasure of the spoken word are most motivating. I speak French and a few Germanic languages, and while not fluent, I enjoy forming words in Spanish more than any other language on Theymos' short list (others being Romanian, Pali/sanskrit, Hausa, any tonal language, and I imagine Khoisan languages).

Given the short timespan and indecision, it might be worth considering the British Foreign Office's categorization from easiest to hardest for native English speakers (diplomats) to learn:

Level 1
Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese

Level 2
Swahili, Icelandic, Malay, Indonesian, Romanian

Level 3
Finnish, Croatian, Serbian, Latvian, Czech, Hungarian

Level 4
Arabic, Russian, Persian

Level 5
Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean

Yay! I know a Level 2 and a Level 5 Language. That makes me a Level 9!  ;D

You're such an idiot! 2 and 5 make 8. Aren't you learned?

~Cackling Bear~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=283sjvDBZMA&feature=related

Ok so much for Chinese, but no real help on the rest.

My approach runs like this: You need communication partners with whom your one-year-experience in language x is helpful.
German?
Why learning German, whilst already speaking English fluently? Very few german speaking people have less than one year of experience with english (except for the southeastern part of Europe probably).

Italian?
Rarely spoken compared to the others, but if you like Operas ... still one year wouldn´t be of much help.

French?
A bit like Italian, although more widely spread in the world.

Spanish?
Well the last one left and a very good choice, provided you agree on my approach.

You forgot Wallis. It's in the south and is by far the hardest swiss dialect to learn, due in no small part to its inclusion of French, Italian and Romansch. And the fact that as a canton it's mostly a very long and isolated valley and didn't get the "German 2.0" updates that everyone else did in the 1700s.

But by god you guys are such pussies! Wallisertiitsch is the most manly and aggressive language I've ever heard or spoken. Just thinking "huere schiissdrechhhhhh" makes me feel more manly.

Portuguese for sure, just visit Brazil and decide for yourself.

Oops my fault. Should be 6 instead; -1 for lower-then-usual IQ!

By bad, too. I concur.

~Cackling Bear~

College doesn't offer Navajo?

Yá'át'ééh, E la na tte?
Dinéena bizaad doo shi?
Háadish yah anída'aldah góne'?
Ahéhee', Nizhónígo Nee Ado’ááł.

If you want to try some languages, here are some free courses:
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php

I vote for Chinese. Guo Tie (gwo-tee-eh) is one of my favorites. No it's not a music artist.
http://mandarintools.com/chardict.html

The first Chinese phrase I learned: Doonay luo mu hi!

The only downside to learning to speak Mandarin is going into Chinese restaraunts and finding they speak Cantonese.

More than 70 million germans don´t speak Low German: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOg_8A-Zfn0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOg_8A-Zfn0)

I've always thought that Navajo was only a spoken language. Guess I was wrong.


My grandmother used to tell me that there were two different Lithuanian languages, and she spoke the one from Little Lithuania, whatever that meant.

Here's another attempt to convince theymos that German should be his choice.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316729572l/385664.jpg
Mijn luchtkussenboot zit vol paling, theymos.

~Cackling Bear~

I´d guess she came somewhere from Königsberg now called Kaliningrad and spoke Nehrungskurisch (don´t know the englisch translation).

How interesting. I've heard some other people say this, but my opinion is the exact opposite: I find German quite pleasant, but I just can't stand Spanish.

 ... so now theymos? What is your decision?

btw: This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utgx1e2RpIM) is german too!
I´d say at 0:24 there is a faulty german to german translation.  :o

Not totally sure yet. Probably I'll make an impulse decision about it at the last moment. I'm leaning toward French, though.

I'll post here when I've made a final decision.

French school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_E-MST5yvg

I'm from Quebec, Canada, my native language is french.

I would say that french and spanish are really similar, and when you know one, it's easy to learn the other. I've followed spanish courses a couple of years ago, and even if I've forgot almost everything of it and didn't practice it, I can still understand basic spanish. A lot of words are similar and sentences are written almost the same way. Sure, it's not the exact same thing, but going from english to french to spanish or english to spanish to french is going to be a lot easier than going from english to mandarin.

I don't know how many languages you want to learn, but tell yourself that if you learn french, you already know somes bases of spanish (or vice-versa).

Best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in a country that speaks it. And since Québec is awesome, you should come here. We'll teach you hockey, beer and sacrer (because Tabarnak is the best word ever ;D ).

Well, if you meet someone about your age that is native in german, there are very high chances (s)he'll be better in english than you in german...
I never got why anyone would learn italian, after all it's only spoken in 1 country, this leaves french, spanish and chinese.

It might be helpful to know if you speak any other languages besides english (and which level)... chinese might be really interesting but is probably a pain in the ass to learn outside of China. between french and spanish it really boils down to what you consider more interesting - just learning a language for the sake of it has no real point in my opinion, so plan a nice trip to Canada/France/Haiti or the southern part of North America and below/Spain asap or at least hang out with some exchange students.

Actually, the chances are that she'll speak better English than you speak English.

At the age of 40-something, I started learning Japanese.  I know enough to get me around the place and scare the locals.  I also learn kanji and can read enough, but still enjoy the slow progress I'm making.  If you're wanting to learn that later in life, starting now makes some sense.

I could have learnt Chinese, as may more people speak it, and in the future (a few decades) they will be a major international influence, however, my interest was in Japan, not China),  While in Kyoto recently we met a student from Shanghai - amongst her amazing traits was fluent english, chinese and japanese and could simultaneously translate between the three.  She was very smart - doing law.

I don't speak any other languages.

Most people that don't speak English as second language, usually speak German or French, but most likely German. Regardless which language you choose, learn Japanese as your third, for good fun and mental exercise.

The only places I can imagine where people would speak german but not english (besides old people in Germany/Austria/Switzerland that have already forgotten english or never learnt it properly) would maybe be some rural areas in the neighbouring countries of the native german ones...

As you said you don't know any other natural language so far, I'd really recommend you to watch a few movies you already know (or you don't know) in both french and spanish (maybe subtitled so you also see how it's written). Then choose the one that you like most. "I have to learn a language for college but actually want to learn japanese" is not a very strong motivator in my opinon and you'l need a LOT of motivation to learn a language from scratch.

I think the first language most Yanks should learn to speak, read and write fluently is English.  ;D

+1, although I don't think Theymos has any outstanding issues in this department.

The odd bit is if you speak only one language in most of the EU you are severely handicapped.

Très magnifique bien sûr! Alors on y va.

A long time ago I stopped a 5 years attempt to avoid learning french.  ;D
Skipped it for chemistry, made life easier in those days.

Is there something like this (http://dict.leo.org/frde?lp=frde) for translating english to french and vice versa?

But what happens immediately post WWIII when you want to be able to impress a French exchange student on the outskirts of the ruined glassy radioactive wasteland that used to be your city? You'll need a book then. I say be prepared.

(same goes for a zombie apocalypse and a French exchange student. A living one, I mean).

I would stay away from french girls if I was you, wether they are dead or alive...
French kiss and stuff... yuck!  ;)

Have you ever wondered if Bruce and Ed French kiss in bed? Now that you (the reader) have read that sentence, try getting the image out of your mind.

~Cackling Bear~

I hate you!

What?  ;D

http://www.funiacs.com/poze/mare/untitled_ideala_pt_un_french_kiss_1217857105.JPG
Premier jour dans la classe française.

ç

In case you don't speak French, he wrote "The Premier took Frank's dance classes". Not sure which Premier he means though.

Well, the first of cause.  ;D

I have finalized my course schedule for fall, and I will be taking French. Hopefully I'll like it (or it won't be too bad, at least). Thanks a lot to everyone who replied! :)

China is going to be the world super power, you have overlooked the future potential.  :'(  C'est la vie.

Learn telepathy and you'll be able to communicate with everyone.
 ;D
http://www.ehow.com/how_8504068_achieve-telepathy.html

I see my reverse psychology worked, for French is exactly what I wanted you to take.

Seriously, theymos, we wish you well with the French courses, and thank you for allowing us to be part of your decision making process.

http://rlv.zcache.com/french_cartoon_girl_magnet-p147819536450770542b2gru_400.jpg

~Bruno~

Bien joué!

Don't do it! It's a guetapens.

Get some Esperanto lessons and become a God amongst men.

From the website:

19   Snigdha Nandipati   U-T San Diego, San Diego, California   guetapens    guetapens (http://public.spellingbee.com/public/results/2012/round_results/summary/13)

What does the winner receive?

http://cmsimg.indystar.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=BG&Date=20120601&Category=LOCAL&ArtNo=206010336&Ref=AR&MaxW=300&Border=0&Word-no-guetapens-winner-National-Spelling-Bee

An over-sized (note hyphen) crachoir.

FTFU!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/instead?s=t

Source: http://theymos.com/

I starting a petition to get a scammer tag implemented.  ;D

Oh Boy!, I hope I don't get a three day vacation because of this post.

If I find out your Zhou, I'm driving up to Wisconsin and kicking your 2cm balls.

~Cackling Bear or Bruno~ (not sure)

EDIT: WTF! You've been editing Wikipedia since you were 14. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Theymos&oldid=50197680

Learn the language of love if you want to survive.