I took Spanish in high school, so I have at leas a little familiarity with it, but I've never understood how people can speak it in such a rapid fire way. Some people I've seen on the Metro sound like a Dick Dale guitar riff. Don't you ever pause for breath between words?
I think Italian is easier, personally. I've heard that German grammatic rules are slightly more complicated, plus I find it hard to pronounce some words. French is like Spanish, but with more letters. Italian, being the closest language to Latin, is very important to learn if you are studying anything Roman.
Mandarin has easy grammar, on average (subject, verb, object). The problem arises when one tries to actually speak it. Tonal languages are very hard. Plus, it's hard to speak to anyone from a different province than the one you learned in. (For example, textbook Chinese [mandarin] is Beijing dialect. If you speak mandarin in Hong Kong, they get irritated and correct you, because you are white and can't speak it 'properly'.)
Japanese is easy to speak, and the writing and grammar aren't too difficult. It does have three alphabets, but two are phonetic.
Korean grammar is confusing to me, and I've only learned a few words. From what I gathered, it goes verb-subject-object. Can anyone explain?
People who natively speak a Romance language speak three times faster than Americans speak English. This leads me to question how much more slowly Americans think.
I'd say go learn Chinese. Both Cantonese and Mandarin if you can. If you only want to learn one, Mandarin would be a good bet since a good portion of the world speaks it. Hey, even England is starting to teach their children Mandarin.
Japanese. I don't think there's any way to overestimate the importance of Japanese culture and economic power as we see ever-increasing globalization.
I disagree. I would go with one of the two Chinese languages, although I'm not sure of the differences between the two. China is positioning itself to be one of the next super powers, so I would think that either Mandarin or Cantonese would be a great asset.
Yes! I'm like a machine gun when I get exited, going back with the list Italian/German, he had Spanish 2nd thus Italian would be a ton easier to learn.
I know Spanish and English, but everything comes down of what you expect from life. English will open many doors around the world, it is basically the language of business areound the world. However, if you want to read old documents then Latin would be a good language to learn, if you like manga and anime and japanese culture in general then Japansese would be also a good option, and that same goes for any other language.
If you know Spanish then Portuguese and Italian becomes a lot easier to learn, basically you can learn it in less than 4 months if you already know spanish :P
Oh, what's a good language to describe abstract concepts? I seem to hit brick walls everyday using English and Spanish, but I'm not familiar with many other languages. It reminds me of Newspeak in 1984: It is very hard to define a concept if the word does not exist for it. I know Polish and Japanese are better than English, and I think Hindi might be very good for this sort of thing. What do you guys/gals think?
[English] reminds me of Newspeak in 1984: It is very hard to define a concept if the word does not exist for it. I know Polish and Japanese are better than English, and I think Hindi might be very good for [describing abstract concepts]
Dunno about Polish/Japanese, but English rarely suffers from the "no word to say it" problem. English has a long tradition of coining words at the drop of a concept, or using something from some other tongue. This allows me to dust of one of my favorite quotations, attributed to James D. Nicoll in Wikipedia:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
I agree with you on that front, Hank, but I maintain there is much to be said for defending the purity of English syntax. Without proper adherence to grammatical rules, communication becomes less effective.
I'm learning Japanese, but that is somewhat (ok completely) influenced by the fact I'm living in Japan. If I was still in Australia, I have considered studying Russian, Latin and Esperanto, even though I know the last two are almost completely useless for actual communication purposes.
I agree with you on that front, Hank, but I maintain there is much to be said for defending the purity of English syntax. Without proper adherence to grammatical rules, communication becomes less effective.
I've no real problem with this idea, except that the rules---in English anyway---are rather ill-defined in some cases, and of dubious provenance. Like any language, English was in use in various forms for a long time before anybody thought to write it down and codify it. It still changes even now: when is the last time someone showed up at your door saying "I am come to meet with you, sirrah."
Another example: the alleged rule "thou shalt not split an infinitive" turns out to be part of the ravings of some eighteenth or nineteenth century parson who wanted to write an iron-clad English grammar, and wanted the rules of English to follow, as closely as possible, the rules of the Best Tounge There Is: Latin. In Latin, infinitives are a single word, hence unsplittable, therefore---reasoned Reverend ---English verbs should be the same.
Similar non-rules and linguistic urban legends pollute the the discussion of English grammar. Another annoying 'rule' I have heard tossed around is that sentences shall neither start nor end with a preposition. This is something up with which I should not have to put:
A Texan is visiting Harvard, and asks a passing student "'scuse me pardner, where's the library at?" The student smiles condescendingly and says "my dear sir, here at Harvard we never end a sentence with a preposition!" The Texan retorts "All raht then, where's the library at, you fuckin' asshole?"
It depends on what you want to do. Want to go to South America Learn Spanish or Portuguese, want to work in Africa learn French, South East Asia learn Japanese or Chinese or Indonesian etc. etc.
Japanese is an extremely hard language to learn what with there being about 4 alphabets and 16 ways for saying the same thing however if you are interested in getting a job in tourism Japanese is the way to go.
I of course am speaking out my butt having failed at learning both Japanese and French at school and despite talking a lot about learning a language not actually managing to enroll in any sort of course.
I wouldn't necessarily go by the usefulness of a language, or how many people speak it, but go by how nice the language sounds, how the writing appears and how interesting the culture the language evolves around seems to me.
The only reason I would recommend German is to be able to read Goethes (or other famous authors) works in their original form. German grammar is VERY hard compared to English or Latin grammar, but since the language isn't bound to the order of subject, verb and object, as the English language is, you often times read/ discover very interesting ways to express feelings or say certain things which don't really translate well.
What I find interesting about Korean, is that the written characters of the language are designed to represent the position of the tongue in your mouth while you say them. At least that's what Guns, Germs, and Steel told me.
What I find interesting about Korean, is that the written characters of the language are designed to represent the position of the tongue in your mouth while you say them. At least that's what Guns, Germs, and Steel told me.
Wow - I've never heard of that before, I'll have to ask her!
I've started learning Japanese because I find the spoken language very nice to listen to and the written one beautiful. I was going to decide between Arabic, Chinese and Japanese as languages to learn and then later on study. I wanted to do Arabic because I used to live in the middle east, Chinese because it is one of the most spoken languages in the world and Japanese because I lived there for a short amount of time and can identify with the Japanese culture.
I chose not to do Arabic because the grammar is a real bitch. I didn't do Chinese because I had great dificulty trying to speak it and I had no ambition to ever visit China (except Tibet). I then chose Japanese because it has a quite steady learning curve and because all of the reasons I've already named.
My girlfriend is teaching me Korean, it's extremely difficult as you can imagine but its an incredibly beautiful language, and a lot of fun to speak.
I love the logical layout of the written language, you have simple lines for each vowel in the alphabet:ã…Â, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅜ, ㅡ, ㅣ.
The consonants are simple constructs also: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ã…Â, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ã…Â, ㅎ.
As you can see some are based on Chinese characters
Uuuh so that is the language the .exe files speak when you try to edit them with the notepad.
Comments
I took Spanish in high school, so I have at leas a little familiarity with it, but I've never understood how people can speak it in such a rapid fire way. Some people I've seen on the Metro sound like a Dick Dale guitar riff. Don't you ever pause for breath between words?
Mandarin has easy grammar, on average (subject, verb, object). The problem arises when one tries to actually speak it. Tonal languages are very hard. Plus, it's hard to speak to anyone from a different province than the one you learned in. (For example, textbook Chinese [mandarin] is Beijing dialect. If you speak mandarin in Hong Kong, they get irritated and correct you, because you are white and can't speak it 'properly'.)
Japanese is easy to speak, and the writing and grammar aren't too difficult. It does have three alphabets, but two are phonetic.
Korean grammar is confusing to me, and I've only learned a few words. From what I gathered, it goes verb-subject-object. Can anyone explain?
If you know Spanish then Portuguese and Italian becomes a lot easier to learn, basically you can learn it in less than 4 months if you already know spanish :P
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
Another example: the alleged rule "thou shalt not split an infinitive" turns out to be part of the ravings of some eighteenth or nineteenth century parson who wanted to write an iron-clad English grammar, and wanted the rules of English to follow, as closely as possible, the rules of the Best Tounge There Is: Latin. In Latin, infinitives are a single word, hence unsplittable, therefore---reasoned Reverend ---English verbs should be the same.
Similar non-rules and linguistic urban legends pollute the the discussion of English grammar. Another annoying 'rule' I have heard tossed around is that sentences shall neither start nor end with a preposition. This is something up with which I should not have to put:
A Texan is visiting Harvard, and asks a passing student "'scuse me pardner, where's the library at?"
The student smiles condescendingly and says "my dear sir, here at Harvard we never end a sentence with a preposition!"
The Texan retorts "All raht then, where's the library at, you fuckin' asshole?"
Japanese is an extremely hard language to learn what with there being about 4 alphabets and 16 ways for saying the same thing however if you are interested in getting a job in tourism Japanese is the way to go.
I of course am speaking out my butt having failed at learning both Japanese and French at school and despite talking a lot about learning a language not actually managing to enroll in any sort of course.
On a more serious note I wouldn't recommend trying Mandarin - it's an extremely difficult language to learn, way harder then Japanese anyway.
I would try either Spanish or German.
The only reason I would recommend German is to be able to read Goethes (or other famous authors) works in their original form. German grammar is VERY hard compared to English or Latin grammar, but since the language isn't bound to the order of subject, verb and object, as the English language is, you often times read/ discover very interesting ways to express feelings or say certain things which don't really translate well.
I love the logical layout of the written language, you have simple lines for each vowel in the alphabet:ã…, ã…“, ã…—, ã…œ, ã…¡, ã…£.
The consonants are simple constructs also: ㄱ, ã„´, ã„·, ㄹ, ã…, ã…‚, ã……, ã…‡, ã…ˆ, ã…Š, ã…‹, ã…Œ, ã…, ã…Ž.
As you can see some are based on Chinese characters
I wanted to do Arabic because I used to live in the middle east, Chinese because it is one of the most spoken languages in the world and Japanese because I lived there for a short amount of time and can identify with the Japanese culture.
I chose not to do Arabic because the grammar is a real bitch. I didn't do Chinese because I had great dificulty trying to speak it and I had no ambition to ever visit China (except Tibet). I then chose Japanese because it has a quite steady learning curve and because all of the reasons I've already named.
Then come have some fun in Brazil. It will be really useful, hookers here
tend to try to take advantage of gringos. Lol.
Uuuh so that is the language the .exe files speak when you try to edit them with the notepad.