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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7022 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes  3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 89 of 346 08 May 2006 at 7:24am | IP Logged | |||||
From what I remember, they would be from: Tibetan Mongolian Thai Vietnamese Hebrew Cantonese Although he "consciously aborted" the following: Mandarin Japanese Indonesian Ardaschir mentioned that he still keeps his Chinese character knowledge alive passively through reading Korean. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7260 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 90 of 346 08 May 2006 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, I wasn't sure about Hebrew, so it looks like it's 9 languages, not 8. The languages he consciously aborted were Classical Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian. He didn't learn Mandarin because he thought it sounded ugly.
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| brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6720 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 91 of 346 09 May 2006 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would love to learn probably 100 languages, but I would learn these first:
For usefulness: (no particular order)(I already speak English, so it is excluded) Spanish: Mexican Heritage :D, family there, growing Hispanic population Chinese Russian Hindi French Japanese Italian German Arabic Indonesian 16 languages that I would learn for fun (in no particular order)(I could list fun sounding languages for hours :D) Slovenian (sounds very fun!) Welsh Romani Icelandic Lithuanian Georgian Farsi Modern Greek Korean (I love challenges!) Swedish Estonian Latvian Faroese Polish Esperanto Portuguese Edited by brumblebee on 11 May 2006 at 5:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6801 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 92 of 346 09 May 2006 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Most of these top 10s are pretty similar, but I might as well put mine here. I'm basing the list mostly on colonization, population, and second language speakers.
Spanish French Arabic Portuguese German Mandarin Hindi Russian Indonesian Swahili Honorable mentions: Persian, Turkish, Hausa, Dutch. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7321 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 93 of 346 12 May 2006 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Gentlemen, I have finally created a hit list feature where each of you can enter as many languages as you want in your personal language profile on this website. Just click on your PROFILE button above and there is a link at the bottom of the 'Languages' tab where you can 'Add a new entry on your hit list'. Hope you like it!
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| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6770 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 94 of 346 20 May 2006 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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In no particular order, I would want to know:
Spanish (because Mexico is a neighbor) Portuguese (because Brazil will be a power one day) Mandarin (because there are so many of them) Italian (because it sounds cool) German (because I love visiting Germany) Japanese (because I love visiting Japan) French (because I love chocolate) Persian (because I know lots of great Persian people) Greek (because I'd like to visit there often) Hebrew (because the alphabet looks fantastic) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6731 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 95 of 346 20 May 2006 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't filled my choices, let's see:
Mandarin (enough for the Chinese world) Spanish (some 3,000 million users... perhaps the fourth or fifth language I would ever take) French (prestigious one, again with lots of users) German (less popular, but very academic and is popular among Europeans) Japanese (understanding a very rich culture; I don't count Korean since the number of speakers isn't as many as these ten) Russian (the Slavic representative, and one of the six official languages of the UN) Portuguese (I think it's like Spanish, with similar reasons) Arabic (the Islamic representative) Hindi (again with billions of speakers) Italian (in fact the least popular in the ten, but is a good way to learn the culture) It's based on their popularity. Personally, I'd only try East Asian and European (Western European, the major ones plus Slavic ones) languages. Also, considering the difficulties one would meet in the learning... the most popular languages should be easier to acquire. Beyond these ten, I would add: Cantonese (the second most popular Chinese language) Korean (an East Asian, unique one with a rich culture) Latin (seems to be the "mother" of the Romance languages... huge significance on the Western culture) Greek (like Latin) For less popular "small" ones, I would add: (as per my own preference) Eastern European: Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Serbian (at least two of them; isn't it a collection of the culture of the region?) Turkish, Farsi, Punjabi(?) (West Asian; any two) Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malay(?) (SE Asian; any two) I believe that's enough to cover the large part of the world (even plus Africa) Edited by Andy_Liu on 20 May 2006 at 3:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6713 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 96 of 346 20 May 2006 at 4:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Cantonese is certainly worth learning, but I've gotten the impression that a lot of overseas Chinese communities are adopting Mandarin over whatever Chinese language they previously used. I've also heard that Mandarin is starting to replace the roles English played in Hong Kong under the Brits. Anecdotally, a lot of the Chinese in Canada seem to speak Mandarin these days (and some Canadian cities are more than 50% Chinese). I was also able to try out my very poor Mandarin on my taxi driver in Thailand a few years back. Singapore also has a government-sponsored program to make Mandarin a lingua franca. Its large Chinese population has historically spoken another Chinese dialect (I forget which one). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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