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So You Want to Learn 5... | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6655 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 33 of 580 16 September 2006 at 6:33pm | IP Logged |
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I already speak German, French, and English well, I'd like to add:
1) Italian 2) Turkish Probably, I won't try to learn another language after that, unless I absolutely need to (for professional or private reasons). Life's short and I'd rather focus on improving the languages I already know and enjoy the corresponding literature, music, cinema, etc. I've been flirting with Russian, which would be useful to know, but after having done a couple of Russian lessons, I'm starting to think that the price to pay in terms of time invested and frustation suffered is too high. By the way, I'm rather surprised of some of the answers here; many list several very difficult languages, e.g. Mandarin, Arabic, Russian AND Japanese. I mean, even if you were only to master 2 or 3 of them, you'd need to sacrifice a lot of your lifetime in order to do so. And if you don't get to use them on a regular basis, you are very likely to forget them... Are you sure it's worth it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7146 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 34 of 580 16 September 2006 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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German
Hungarian Mongolian Polish Slovak 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6933 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 35 of 580 16 September 2006 at 11:09pm | IP Logged |
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My list is:
- French - German - Hindi - Italian - Spanish. The languages are not ordered according to a study sequence - Spanish is currently at the intermediate level, the rest are in the various stages of beginning. I don't target any of these languages for a specific level of eventual mastery. The plan is to keep dabbling in the four recent additions until my passive skills in them are at the level of my Spanish, and then just keep using all of them for fun while (hopefully) gradually improving them in the process. Five is quite enough for me, I won't be caught dead even thinking of studying another language. Ideally, I should pare down this list, but these are all pretty cool languages, so it may no longer be possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6949 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2 | Message 36 of 580 17 September 2006 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
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Five is about the number of languages I would like to master in my lifetime so it's interesting trying to narrow down which languages to choose!
I think I would have to go with the two i'm already working on... Spanish and Russian As well as... Arabic and French Just like every one else I get a little stuck on the last one. I feel like the other languages all cover such vast areas of the world and would be extremely useful in travel. But I can't think of another language which covers so much. Mandarin would be the obvious one, but I think I would be much more interested in learning Japanese. At the same time I think another Asian language such as Hindi or Indonesian would be very useful. I'm also interested in the beautiful sounds of some African languages aswell. Or something Scandinavian... AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Luckily it will be quite a long time before I get to the point of having to chose that 5th language. Hopefully it will be easier then! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Duffie Diglot Newbie United States connect-languag Joined 6633 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 37 of 580 17 September 2006 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
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Easy for me. I would say, if I had to add five languages to what I already know (English, Spanish,) I would choose:
Japanese Russian Norwegian French Arabic. But if I could only ever learn five more and that would be it, I would choose: Japanese Mandarin Chinese French Arabic Russian 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Wildfire Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6633 days ago 14 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French | Message 38 of 580 19 September 2006 at 8:52am | IP Logged |
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I am a native speaker of Russian, and already know English at decent level.
Although it's hard to embody these plans, I'd like to become fluent in: 1) French, since it is one of the most beautiful languages, beside being widespread and important to know. I hope I will be able to learn it in university (in the 3rd year of study) as the second foreign tongue. However, French is currently taught only for those who learned it at school as the 1st foreign. I don't know what to do if the faculty I study at won't start providing French language courses. Probably I will choose German (it is available for sure). 2) Swedish. (I like how it sounds; moreover, Sweden attracts me) The languages I mentioned above are more or less possible to learn. Other 3 do attract me, but I am not sure if I will go for them in close future. 3) Spanish (beautiful, relatively easy, has a lot of speakers all over the world. Furthermore, if I will fail to learn French in university, learning Spanish will be a good way to "get acquainted" with Romance languages). 4) Slovak. This language isn't transparent for Russian speakers, thus I desire to learn it. The alternative is Czech (Czechs seem to preserve Slavic traditions, e.g. they saved Slavic months names). Croatian language also attracts me, mostly due to being melodic. 5) Hungarian. It is probably the most uncommon and exotic language in Europe. This language differs from the tongues which are spoken in surrounding countries. I would like to learn it at least to astonish people. =) However, I don't exclude the possibility of learning Bulgarian (Russian and Bulgarian are intelligible; and it would be nice to learn the latter deeper). Edited by Wildfire on 22 September 2006 at 8:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6776 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 39 of 580 21 September 2006 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
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Since I'm Chinese, mastering all Chinese languages related to my close relatives (Mandarin, Teochew, Hakka, Cantonese) is a life-time struggle, so I won't include Chinese in my list.
English is the undisputed second must-be-mastered language, but since I speak English also at a decent level, it doesn't matter if I could only understand the International version instead of a regional version (British/American). I believe in future I'll have plenty of chances "learning English" while actually learning another language - you know, lots of language materials use English as the medium of instruction. Then, the five would be: 1) German and Japanese (equally important; having great interest) 2) Spanish and French (again, equally important - both have a large share of speakers around the globe; cultural interest is of great importance) 3) Not decided. For the time being, I won't be taking Korean as my sixth foreign language. I would rather put one or two, namely Italian, Russian, Czech, Portuguese and Polish (in order). Non-Slavic or non-Latin alphabet ones are yet too hard for a non-alphabet native user like me. Now, I only like to understand the Western European and the East Asian series. Edited by Andy_Liu on 21 September 2006 at 11:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MissMelon Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6624 days ago 28 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 40 of 580 26 September 2006 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
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English
French (such a beautiful language) Russian German Welsh 1 person has voted this message useful |
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