Battle of Languages

[AllLagNoFrag]

Hi escapists! Its been a while since Ive partaken in a forum discussion and this has been the topic of my discussion with my friends recently:

"If you had a choice of any language that you could instantly learn (Speak and write fluently), what would it be? (Oh and dragon tongue does not count) and why?"

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Japanese would be cool because I could finally watch all my old samurai movies without subtitles! Realistically, I might have to do some research as to which language would be the most valuable on a resume.

 

[Dedtoo]

I would say Spanish.
It's one of the larger languages, and i already know English good enough.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I would say Spanish.
It's one of the larger languages, and i already know English good enough.

Don't you mean, "well enough?" Ohh, I guess not well ENOUGH. PWNED! Sorry, I couldn't resist. I am really not a grammar Nazi.

 

[wooty]

Japanese without a doubt, then I could go back to my old job over there and actually be able to hold a full conversation with my workmates and have the confidence to ask that girl to dinner.

Sigh, wasted opportunity.

 

[Sewora]

I'd love to learn how to speak Arabic. I already speak my own native language which is Swedish, and I speak English fluently. Adding Arabic to my language pool would help me get by quite alot easier. And it's actually a pretty interesting language.

Either that or French. They're basically the ones ones who can't speak english properly in Europe. I'd love to be able to communicate with them.

 

[Dedtoo]

I would say Spanish.
It's one of the larger languages, and i already know English good enough.

Don't you mean, "well enough?" Ohh, I guess not well ENOUGH. PWNED! Sorry, I couldn't resist. I am really not a grammar Nazi.

But you still understand what i mean, so well enough.

 

[Arina Love]

Japanese. Because learning it the normal way is pain in the ass, i progress slowly and I mainly play Japanese games so my choice is self-evident.

 

[Joseph Harrison]

I already speak English and Spanish so I'd probably do German because I've wanted to know German forever.

 

[flaviok79]

Japanese is my first choice also, because I tried it for one and a half year and it is hard as hell. I love their culture, there are many japanese descendants in Brazil and it is one of the countries in my "to travel to" list.

But I must say that today, I would probably go back to my Mandarin (Chinese) classes. Since they kind of are the next capitalist Soviet Union, you know.

 

[Kreett]

RUSSIAN! Because who wouldn't want to know Russian?

 

[Colour Scientist]

French.

It just sounds so... sexy.
I can't resist it.
Even speaking English in a French accent is sexy.

 

[KeyMaster45]

German for really no other reason than I think it's awesome. In retrospect I probably should have just taken that instead of three semesters of Spanish. Probably would have actually learned it since I just didn't give two shits about Spanish. But they say Spanish is one of the easiest to learn next to french, and since I had prior background in both it was really just a coin toss for which one I could bullshit my way through the easiest for the credits.

 

[Edd4224]

Chinese, so that I could actually get round to enjoying being in this damn country (long story involving self esteem and confidence).

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

Oh yea, forgot to mention mine. I would definitely want to be able to master French (Ive done it before but, never got round to getting good at it).

 

[Aidinthel]

Spanish, because I live in California and it would be pretty useful.

 

[Melon Hunter]

Japanese, I'm learning it already and it's a damn cool language. Instant fluency would be very nice (not least because I start tearing my hair out as soon as kanji gets involved).

Actually, a second choice might be Mandarin Chinese. It's the world's most common language, and yet its stress on tonal differences in speech and its brutal amount of unique characters make it extremely difficult to master. I think it would be great to know (not least because I'm an Engineering undergraduate, so a lot of people in my lectures speak it, and two of my supervisors are Chinese, so I could impress them)

 

[somonels]

The universal machine code language.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Chinese, so that I could actually get round to enjoying being in this damn country (long story involving self esteem and confidence).

Uh... which Chinese?!

I kid, I kid, Mandarin, I take it? Depending on where you are, learning the Hakka, Min, Wu, Yue, Xiang classes of languages might get you further. The funny thing being, even amongst themselves the individual dialects can be mutually unintelligible... especially the Min languages. I can understand a bit of Fujianese, but further north they talk pure gibberish!

OT: Not sure... I speak casual French and German and one day I'd like to be technically fluent in them. So Arabic or Russian...

EDIT: No takers for Esperanto? No-one?! =P