Poll: If you could learn another language, which would you pick?

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

My first language is English as you may guess but I've been learning Irish since I was about 4. Despite this I am not fluent as the language is so badly taught in Ireland. I really want to be better at it as it is a massive part of our history and it's something many people have died to preserve. I also started learning German 5 years ago. I'm okay at it, our teacher is a psycho nicknamed Kaiser and he's a rather....... motivational teacher

 

[Poetic Nova]

Japanese and Russian maybe chinese.

 

[thespyisdead]

since i know english finnish and russian(and and a little swedish, but i normally don't want to touch it with a 20 m pole), i would say i am doing pretty well! however, i would like to learn spoken japanese(just thinking of learning kanji makes me cringe, though who knows... maybe it's fairly straight forward)

 

[Latinidiot]

I speak dutch, english and spanish, and am pretty good at listening to and reading french and german, so what I d really like to speak would be either japanese or chinese.

 

[crusha_aa]

Japanese because I am a nerd.

Gaelic because I like to think it would make me more Scottish

 

[GLo Jones]

I actually made a thread on this over 2 years ago. I was thinking about picking up a bunch of languages, but didn't know which to start on.

Since then, I've become pretty damn sharp with Italian, and am studying Korean. At the start of 2014 I'm going to begin studying for a degree in modern languages with English & German (hopefully becoming somewhat fluent in German in the process). After that, I'm moving to Korea to teach English, and during the years I'm there, will hopefully be able to learn Russian and some Chinese.

If all that goes at least partially to plan, then I'd like to also learn some Arabic. Can you tell that I like languages yet?

 

[AnarchistFish]

I actually made a thread on this over 2 years ago.

Didn't think to search. Sorry

 

[Launcelot111]

Icelandic, because why not. I've heard that they make up their own word for every newly invented foreign word (eg. computer would have some very Icelandic word instead of being komputor or something). I don't know if that's a common practice or not, but I'd like to know more about it.

 

[SenorNemo]

Me gustaría aprender inglés. Me parece que sería muy util.

But really though, I already speak fairly OK Spanish and am learning Japanese, so on top of that, it'd probably be cool to know some proto-indo-european. Totally useless, but cool.

 

[Reaper195]

I would attempt to learn the most obscure language of all.

The language of WOMEN.

But that's not a language. At least...there are no identifiable patterns that count it as a language.





On a less joking term....Latin. Because Latin sounds awesome.

 

[SFMB]

I'd go with Klingon or Esperanto. I already know Finnish, so which is more useful of the two?

 

[Sethzard]

I would probably learn Chinese simply because it's the language of business these days. I would Probably learn Japanese if I wasn't thinking of practicality.

 

[lacktheknack]

I think Italian should be lumped with Spanish.

With that said, I'll go Arabic. It seems like a language that might be really useful for trolling some of my friends.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I can handle myself decently in Russian now, but I'd like to be fluent in it. Once you manage to wrap your brain around it (not only the alphabet, but the completely fucked up grammar too) it starts getting easier. I'm actually thinking of going to МГУ and take some classes there next year.

Oh and what the hell, I'll try this: if there's a native Russian speaker who wants to learn French lurking about this forum (you never know...), PM me, we can help each other out!

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Brail, to increase chances of surviving under our coming robot overlords.

 

[monkey_man]

Well, I'm not English, but I've passed the Cambridge bloopity bloo words Exam,(CPE) and that's basically proof I'm good at English. I've got a fancy certificate and everything. but I suppose I'm decent enough at it.
Seeing as I don't really care about Dutch (My native tongue) or any other language, I don't care about any of those options. I suppose Greek or Latin would be sort of cool to know though. I went into this thread hoping it'd be like "You magically know [language x] congratulations!", so I could sleep during German class, sadly not. If I still have to actually work for it it's not going to help, I'm terrible at it's stupid Grammar. Way too complicated.

Captcha: it is raining.
No it isn't you lying piece of software! It's perfectly dry outside! Have you been drinking Captcha?

 

[the doom cannon]

Does want to learn count if I'm currently starting to learn? Cuz I just started taking Japanese classes this semester, but it's still my #1 want-to-learn language. Followed by Arabic, then German

 

[Canadamus Prime]

FORTRAN 77.

No, I'm not joking.

Japanese. Why? I don't know. I like anime and I can't stand subtitles... yeah let's go with that.

Binary though it's a pain to speak

Binary isn't a language, it's a counting system.

I'd always heard it reffered to as "computer language", never thought of it as a counting system but you're right, that's exactly what it is.

Well you could say it's the computer's "language" in a manner of speaking since at the most basic level it's all the computer understands, but strictly speaking it's not a language, it's a counting system just like decimal and hexadecimal.

There's also the fact that pretty much nobody except assembler writers work that close to the metal these days anyway. Apart from reading core dumps, there's very little you can gain from being able to read binary, octal or hexadecimal from any perspective except a mathematical one.

Well Hex is slightly more relevant as it is the format of network packets. But unless you're actually intercepting and scanning network traffic you really don't need to know much about it.

 

[THE_JOKE_KING33]

Russian, because it sounds badass.

Of course if I were to pick one based on practicality it would be Japanese.

 

[trooper6]

I speak English and German, I have some basic spanish...but it isn't very good.

If I were to pick up a new language it would depend on why I'm picking the language.
For my work (when tends to focus on Jazz Age Transatlantic Popular Music), French would be the ideal next language and then really getting my Spanish up to speed.

But I was stationed in Korea for a year when I was in the Army and picked up a few phrases; I'd love to be fluent in that language if I got to pick for myself...I also grew up in San Francisco, so Cantonese would also be awesome to know.

To answer the follow up question: How did I teach myself German? I lived in Germany for five years. But mostly what I did was watch German soap operas and crime shows...and then I'd try to go to places where people didn't speak english (easier said than done)--so I'd go to some working class bars and joined a soccer club.