• About to learn a new language. Any suggestions?
    48 replies, posted
Hey, I'm about to learn a new language since it can't harm to be able to speak with people you couldn't talk to before. Also I love traveling around the world so it might help there a little too. I thought about japanese because it sounds awesome. Maybe russian or spanish but I don't know. Any suggestions? Shouldn't be a dead language like latin.
The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it as much as possible. Talk to people who are native speakers of it, try reading it, try listening to music of it, etc. Whatever you learn in it, try to use it as much as you can. Try to converse with people who are native speakers as much as you can for example. Learning a language is easy, the difficulty is keeping it inside your head and being able to remember it. Whereas for choosing a language, it depends on who you want to speak to, how much you intend on using it, and where you intend to live.
I've heard swedish is pretty easy to learn, spanish isn't hard either. Remember if you learn a language like Japanese or Russian, you have to learn a new set of characters as well.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;34231277]The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it as much as possible. Talk to people who are native speakers of it, try reading it, try listening to music of it, etc. Whatever you learn in it, try to use it as much as you can. Try to converse with people who are native speakers as much as you can for example. Learning a language is easy, the difficulty is keeping it inside your head and being able to remember it. Whereas for choosing a language, it depends on who you want to speak to, how much you intend on using it, and where you intend to live.[/QUOTE] Well I know how to learn a language considering I taught myself how to speak english relatively well in a year and a half. That sounded really dumb but it wasn't supposed to. Just wanted to say that I have no problem with learning a new language at all. I just don't know which since there are so many of them. [QUOTE=Trunk Monkay;34231306]I've heard swedish is pretty easy to learn, spanish isn't hard either. Remember if you learn a language like Japanese or Russian, you have to learn a new set of characters as well.[/QUOTE] The difficulty isn't really a problem since I got plenty of time to learn. Also it might be cool to learn a new alphabet.
french is pretty easy
Well, you can always teach yourself Latin. I mean, is there a more bad-ass language than Latin?
[QUOTE=<Insert Name>;34231318]Well I know how to learn a language considering I taught myself how to speak english relatively well in a year and a half. I just don't know which since there are so many of them. [/QUOTE] Well which ones sound cool at first? Secondly, how often do you intend on using it? Thirdly, how committed to learning it are you?
Shit, fucking rate me bad reading
I'm teaching my German girlfriend how to speak Norwegian, and vice versa. What someone said earlier here is true; immerse yourself in the language as much as possible, use google translate, etc. Learn the basic grammar, and try to translate sentences from your native language into your new one.
Chinese. We'll all be speaking it soon enough anyway
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;34231389]Well which ones sound cool at first? Secondly, how often do you intend on using it? Thirdly, how committed to learning it are you?[/QUOTE] Languages that sound cool in my opinion: Japanese, Russian, Chinese in that order. There might be more but those are the ones I thought of for a long time. As often as possible. I propably won't use it as much as I use english but I can think of russian or japanese as languages that could come in quite handy. I got almost a year now with nothing to do at all. School is going to start again next year for me so it would be pretty much the only thing I'm going to do.
Either Chinese or Russian I'd say
I am myself interested in the Finnish language btw OP.
So facepunch suggested: Swedish Spanish French Arabic Finnish Chinese Russian But why not japanese? Is there something wrong with the language? Or is it dying? Or is it the weaboo image? I might go for chinese. Or maybe arabic.
I'd go for chinese, if not for the mere usefulness of it.
Don't learn spanish awful language [QUOTE=MountainWatcher;34231679]I'd go for chinese, if not for the mere usefulness of it.[/QUOTE] Basically this
[QUOTE=<Insert Name>;34231651]But why not japanese? Is there something wrong with the language? Or is it dying?[/QUOTE] Probably because it's hard, and I've also heard the japanese are not too fond of foreigners. Also, [QUOTE=<Insert Name>;34231651]Or is it the weaboo image?[/QUOTE] [img]http://ogeeku.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PBF071-Weeaboo.jpg[/img] [sp]Really, I've heard they dislike weeaboos more than most people around here.[/sp]
[QUOTE=Simski;34231847]Probably because it's hard, and I've also heard the japanese are not too fond of foreigners. Really, I've heard they dislike weeaboos more than most people around here.[/QUOTE] Well I don't really mind those "dislike foreigners" attitudes since I've heard that about most asian countries. And yeah I can imagine them hating weeaboos. Luckily I'm not one.
Arabic and russian is fucking hard
Go for Spanish, imo spanish is pretty easy and is easy to spell & say because the way you say something, is the same way you spell it or vice versa.
English... see what i did there. But honestly go for Chinese.
Java.
Whatever you go with, especially if it has a different alphabet, like Japanese or Russian, don't buy Rosetta Stone, and if you acquire it some other way, realize that it's not enough to use it on its own. It teaches you vocabulary somewhat well, but is bad at teaching grammar, doesn't teach you the alphabet first, and for the money there are much better options. Also, set your Computer, and all the programs you use regularly to the language once you get the basics learned, to force yourself to use the language more. [editline]15th January 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=<Insert Name>;34231318] The difficulty isn't really a problem since I got plenty of time to learn. Also it might be cool to learn a new alphabet.[/QUOTE] Cyrillic is quite easy to learn (a few hours maybe), and probably worth learning even if you don't learn Russian, because you can often pick out enough cognates to get around. [editline]15th January 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=<Insert Name>;34231651]So facepunch suggested:[/QUOTE] Swedish- pretty easy to learn especially since you know German and English. Grammar isn't too bad. Fewer tenses than most languages. Spanish- also relatively easy, though grammar can be a bit difficult, lots of tenses to memorize and irregular conjugations. Finnish -difficult gramatically, not sure how useful you would find it. Russian -also difficult gramatically, but pretty useful.
Personally I would love to learn Japanese too (hurr durr im a weeaboo) but it's a hard language and doesn't really prove all that beneficial. Spanish would be quite useful and from experience, it's not that hard trying to learn it.
Well I'm learning your fucking language, german, it's cool and not cool. Anyway, I think you should learn something that would actually be useful in the marketplace. Hell if you want to learn something, might as well learn something useful right? English is of course the one everybody should know. German is also pretty important nowadays, thats why I'm learning it Mandarin is also big, but it's a pretty hard language. Some people say it's as hard as german so I don't know, it gets complex sometimes. Spanish could be ok too. I don't know how useful japanese and russian would be compared to the ones I just talked about, but I think that should be your main guideline Liking the language you learn isn't that important at all IMO. I started learning german because my parents made me. I hated classes, I didn't understand shit, I could barely speak it. But when I moved here, I started speaking more often, I started liking the country, and my experience got better overall. After learning all that hard grammar, I started enjoying it more, because the rest was easier. I think that once you're able to communicate in that certain language you're learning, everything seems so much better
[QUOTE=KillaGunna24;34235311]Personally I would love to learn Japanese too (hurr durr im a weeaboo) but it's a hard language and doesn't really prove all that beneficial. Spanish would be quite useful and from experience, it's not that hard trying to learn it.[/QUOTE] He's from Germany though, so it's a lot less useful than it is here.
[QUOTE=jeimizu;34235744]He's from Germany though, so it's a lot less useful than it is here.[/QUOTE] I guess that's true. May prove useful online though. Well, be able to communicate with a much larger audience versus learning a smaller language.
[QUOTE=jeimizu;34234002]Swedish- pretty easy to learn especially since you know German and English. Grammar isn't too bad. Fewer tenses than most languages.[/QUOTE] We do have a lot of really weird "exceptions" and things like that in our grammar though. We also have a widely different pronunciation of almost all vowels, words pronounced using things like "w" and "th" is basically non-existent, and our common usage of "sh/sj/skj/sch" can be hard to learn.
I actually want to learn Latin. I have a Latin dictionary, that has a small section about how to form sentences. It's quite nice :v:
If you want something useful: Chinese.
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