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How many languages do you need to learn..

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
60 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>
ennime
Tetraglot
Senior Member
South Africa
universityofbrokengl
Joined 5909 days ago
397 posts - 507 votes 
Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans
Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu

 
 Message 33 of 60
02 February 2010 at 11:12am | IP Logged 
doviende wrote:
A lot of them are really unrelated to each other too. I'd worship
anyone who could speak Cantonese, Xhosa, English, Hindi, and maghreb Arabic, let alone
all the others ;)


Me: English - check; Xhosa - semi-check; Hindi - soon to come; what about levantine
instead of maghreb? not there yet by far... but give me another, say 7 years?

I've always wanted to be worshipped :p
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lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5965 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 34 of 60
02 February 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
Antiprism wrote:

We've already had a discussion along these lines in another thread: just because Italian isn't useful for AMERICANS doesn't mean it's not a useful language. Italian is more useful for Europeans than Spanish, for the very good reasons that 1. there are more Italians than there are Spanish people, 2. the Italian economy is stronger than the Spanish and 3. It's a national language of Switzerland, a country with an extremely high quality of life.

Even most Europeans don't bother learning Spanish or Italian. And I was speaking from a global perspective. My point stands.
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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6039 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
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 Message 35 of 60
02 February 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
Antiprism wrote:
lichtrausch wrote:
m32amir wrote:

In other words although learning exotic languages like Chinese or Hindi it's getting popular, these 5 languages (EN, FR, GER, SPA, ITA) are always gonna be widely used.

In 50 years I'd be surprised if even 1% of the world population learns Italian as a foreign language. Even now Italian is hardly used outside of Italy and it's only going to go downhill from here.


We've already had a discussion along these lines in another thread: just because Italian isn't useful for AMERICANS doesn't mean it's not a useful language. Italian is more useful for Europeans than Spanish, for the very good reasons that 1. there are more Italians than there are Spanish people, 2. the Italian economy is stronger than the Spanish and 3. It's a national language of Switzerland, a country with an extremely high quality of life.

Oh, come on, it will only go downhill... what's that supposed to mean? It's a pretty cool language, and personally I would love learning it. I've always considered Spanish and Italian as equal in terms of "usefulness" and this is true in a European context. Moreover, I can't understand this obsession with always going for the biggest language. Life is short, so 60 or 300 million speakers, it really doesn't matter so much.


Edited by Sennin on 02 February 2010 at 11:36pm
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lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5965 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 36 of 60
03 February 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged 
Sennin wrote:

Oh, come on, it will only go downhill... what's that supposed to mean?

It means the graph line for the number of people learning Italian is a declining slope.

Quote:

Moreover, I can't understand this obsession with always going for the biggest language. Life is short, so 60 or 300 million speakers, it really doesn't matter so much.

Believe it or not, many people learn languages for practical reasons, in which case 60 or 300 million makes a big difference.
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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6039 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
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 Message 37 of 60
03 February 2010 at 12:52am | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:
Sennin wrote:

Oh, come on, it will only go downhill... what's that supposed to mean?

It means the graph line for the number of people learning Italian is a declining slope.

It may well rise at some point in the future.

lichtrausch wrote:
Sennin wrote:

Moreover, I can't understand this obsession with always going for the biggest language. Life is short, so 60 or 300 million speakers, it really doesn't matter so much.

Believe it or not, many people learn languages for practical reasons, in which case 60 or 300 million makes a big difference.

I learn languages for practical reasons, and I'm saying that 60 or 300 doesn't matter because both are sufficiently large. It's not a question of practicality versus enjoyment etc.


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lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5965 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 38 of 60
03 February 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged 
Sennin wrote:

I learn languages for practical reasons, and I'm saying that 60 or 300 doesn't matter because both are sufficiently large. It's not a question of practicality versus enjoyment etc.

Yes it is. If you are a practically thinking person, all other things being equal, you will choose the language which allows you to reach more people.
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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6039 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
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 Message 39 of 60
03 February 2010 at 1:45am | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:
Sennin wrote:

I learn languages for practical reasons, and I'm saying that 60 or 300 doesn't matter because both are sufficiently large. It's not a question of practicality versus enjoyment etc.

Yes it is. If you are a practically thinking person, all other things being equal, you will choose the language which allows you to reach more people.


How many people can you reach in a lifetime? Anyway, let's not turn this into a brawl everybody is entitled to his opinion.
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lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5965 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 40 of 60
03 February 2010 at 1:53am | IP Logged 
Sennin wrote:

How many people can you reach in a lifetime?

You're looking at it the wrong way. Consider that, although, as you would say, a sufficiently large amount of people speak both German and Chinese, you are far more likely to run into a speaker of Chinese around the globe because there are something like 8 times more Chinese speakers. So in your average uni class, hotel, business you'll probably have 8 Chinese speakers for every 1 German speaker. So considering these kind of situations, you can reach more people by knowing Chinese. Of course I left out a host of other factors, but this is just to demonstrate the effect that total speaker numbers have when isolated from the other factors.

Quote:

Anyway, let's not turn this into a brawl everybody is entitled to his opinion.

???
It's called a debate where I come from.


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