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Twenty Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7008 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 117 14 November 2010 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
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There's a thread on advising an aspiring decaglot which ten languages he should learn, although it appears to have morphed into a "these are the 10 languages I would choose" thread.
I can't remember which were the ten languages I chose when I contributed to that particular thread but it occurred to me I would rather learn more than ten languages, say twenty. Assuming a mean time frame of three years for reaching a good level in each, this would account for sixty years of learning. Obviously, if you just wanted a very basic understanding and you chose your languages and language families well, it might take you less time. So, deciding to humour myself, I set myself the task of choosing twenty languages in which I could become reasonably comfortable in, assuming I had sixty more years to live (which is highly unlikely!). I opened an Excel file and started to write down languages. I thought it would be a two minute exercise but it proved to be harder that I thought. When choosing ten languages, I found it easier to leave out some languages and decide on a basic "core" of ten. However, when choosing more than ten*, I found myself thinking "well, I can't choose this one and not the other" or "I can't have this language since then I've got to have these three also". I also tried lists for thirty, forty and fifty, each proving more difficult than the other. For the sake of my sanity (and since I didn't want to waste any more time), I eventually came up with a list of twenty (which I am still not happy about): French German Portuguese Italian Catalan Dutch Danish Swedish Russian Polish Mandarin Cantonese Japanese Korean Arabic Hebrew Hindi Swahili Xhosa Zulu What would your list be? 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| RealJames Diglot Newbie Japan realizeenglish.com/ Joined 5117 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 117 14 November 2010 at 2:01pm | IP Logged |
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I have this fear of learning a language and then forgetting it for not having the opportunity to use it often enough.
For that reason I've limited myself to learning languages which are, if not widespread, at least have enough speakers that I may occasionally have a chance to put it to use. I'm not blessed with the good fortune of being able to remember a language without using it for more than 2 or 3 years. Easy come easy go, I guess. And so, Mandarin English Spanish Hindi French Arabic Malay Portuguese Bengali Russian Japanese German Punjabi Javanese Telugu Marathi Vietnamese Korean Tamil Italian Having said that, I live the dialects of Creole (and the places they are spoken in) and the sound of Swahili, but they don't make the population cut. They'd possibly replace Marathi and Telugu without losing too much practicality :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tuvalu Newbie Turkey Joined 5132 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Turkish* Studies: Esperanto | Message 3 of 117 14 November 2010 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
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English
Spanish German French Italian Arabic Persian Hindi Mandarin Japanese Korean Russian Uzbek Uighur Azeri Malay Swahili Indonesian Bengali Vietnamese 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5662 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 117 14 November 2010 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
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Excluding the 5 languages I am already fluent in, I would add the following 15:
Italian Dutch Russian Japanese Indonesian/Malay Portuguese Catalan Greek Norwegian or Swedish Nahuatl (or maybe Maya) Arabic Hindi Swahili Chinese Thai 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5326 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 5 of 117 14 November 2010 at 3:16pm | IP Logged |
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I fear I shall not live long enough to master Mandarin. If I, perchance, be gifted with longevity, I shall learn German next. Should I be granted eternal life, I'd like to learn, in this order:
Russian (the utmost cool) Finnish (for heavy metal) Cantonese Latin Roumanian (sounds interesting) [Ancient] Egyptian (if I were really convinced I had eternal life, it would be on the very top) Que'chua (something entirely alien) Catalan Arabic An Arabic Dialect Turkish Hebrew Korean Taiwanese (I always wanted to understand what 阿媽 says) Papiamento (spoken on aruba and curaçao) Hungarian (I've heard it is unique) Swiss-Deutch (why not) Dutch Icelandic Bahasa Indonesia (I just love how indonesia looks on the map) Japanese (that's what got me hooked into languages first place) But I would probably change my mind along the way. Edited by luhmann on 14 November 2010 at 11:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6952 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2 | Message 6 of 117 14 November 2010 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
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I love to entertain the notion that one day I could learn this many languages. I love to entertain the notion that one day I could learn even 5 languages! I have learnt over the past 5 years of on/off language study that I'm am far too eratic and easily distracted for such endeavours! However it's fun to dream, so...
I figure the easiest way to clock up to 20 languages would be to work on language groups...romance, scandinavian, slavic...once you've learnt a couple from each group the others would come a lot easier. Spanish Catalan Portuguese French Italian Roumanian Russian Polish Czech Slovak Swedish Norwegian Danish Icelandic German Dutch Afrikaans Japanese Mandarin Arabic 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Genocyde Groupie United States Joined 5765 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 117 14 November 2010 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
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I already had a list of 15 that I wanted to learn written out, choosing the last 5 was difficult though.
German Russian Persian Chinese (Mandarin) French Sanskrit Hebrew Arabic Italian Tibetan Swedish Japanese Spanish Icelandic Swahili Xhosa Hindi Yoruba Latin Ancient Greek 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6861 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 8 of 117 14 November 2010 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm...my lists are aways subject to change, but here goes
German* Spanish* Norwegian Dutch Finnish Hungarian Arabic Hebrew Japanese Lakota Danish Swedish Icelandic French Navajo Russian Polish Irish Aramaic Biblical Greek And if I'm not counting the two I've already learned and am going for twenty new ones, I'll add: Afrikaans Esperanto Honorable mention: Plautdietsch Mandarin I'm sure I'll think of some change to this list soon... Edited by Journeyer on 14 November 2010 at 5:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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