Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7138 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish
| Message 9 of 346 14 June 2005 at 2:31am | IP Logged |
Aren't we going off topic here? Isn't the question about which 10 languages you'd recommend and why rather than the ones you actually do or do not speak.
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cbashara Senior Member United States adventuresinspanish. Joined 7122 days ago 186 posts - 188 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 10 of 346 24 June 2005 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
Okay, I'll play. I'd recommend (to an English speaker living in America) the following languages:
Spanish
Mandarin
Japanese
French
Arabic
German
Russian
Italian
Portuguese
Hindi
--Chandra
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cbashara Senior Member United States adventuresinspanish. Joined 7122 days ago 186 posts - 188 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 11 of 346 24 June 2005 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
I forgot "why"..
Spanish -- number of speakers worldwide and proximity of countries to America, plus number of speakers in America, also literature, movies.
Mandarin -- again number of speakers worldwide and in America. Growing global economy.
Japanese -- hard to decide between this and French for spot #3. I might actually switch them since Japanese would be grueling to learn right after Chinese!
French -- popular language for second language, can converse with speakers of other languages through this language, "chic factor" (to quote moderator) is high. Hard to get around in France with out it (as I discovered Summer 2001).
Arabic -- number of speakers worldwide, important role in global politics.
German -- another popular 2nd language like French.
Russian -- large number of speakers and great literature.
Italian -- beautiful language everyone wants to be able to speak, if you've already learnt Spanish and French, why not?
Portuguese -- same as above, plus Brazil factor.
Hindi -- number of world wide speakers and in America.
Chandra
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Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7181 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin
| Message 12 of 346 25 June 2005 at 10:12am | IP Logged |
I'd say...
English
Mandrin
Russian
Spanish
German
French
Hindi
Japanese
Portuguese
Hungarian (For the novelty)
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Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7138 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish
| Message 13 of 346 25 June 2005 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
yes but why darobat?
Edited by administrator on 25 June 2005 at 12:14pm
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Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7181 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin
| Message 14 of 346 25 June 2005 at 10:19am | IP Logged |
All of those for their economic importance, or future economic importance.
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7149 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 15 of 346 27 June 2005 at 9:13am | IP Logged |
I think that it would make for a somewhat boring world if we all pick more or less the same 8 to 10 languages. I think that it would be better to consider five languages purely for their own sake, and not for any political or economic reasons.
If I had to pick five mandatory languages, they would be:
English ('nuff said)
French (surprisingly useful - can sometimes communicate with Europeans and educated folk of old French colonies in Africa)
Italian/Spanish (either one is fine - certain chic factor when you're on holidays in Europe)
Mandarin (even though this dialect sounds out of tune and harsh compared to Cantonese, you'll be understood by about three quarters of a billion people)
Arabic (handy for the Middle East and gives you access to documents of Islamic civilization)
I believe that one should not study more than two languages of the same family or sub-group unless you need extra ones for travelling or work. For me, I admit that I had a somewhat easier ride when I started studying Czech after having tackled some Polish and Slovak. The only reason why I learned some Czech was to enhance the experience of my stay in Czech Republic. I didn't need to learn it since it turned out that I could've got by with my German and Slovak. It's not that difficult to get a good grasp (if not mastery) of closely related languages. I would be bored studying Italian considering that I am almost fluent in French (French Immersion student for over 10 years) and had studied Latin for three years in high school.
My five fun languages
Hungarian
Estonian
Slovak
Mongolian
Icelandic
Another way that I could approach this question is to pick the UN's official languages (there are 3 that are frequently used and three others that are less so), and then the remainder should be to satisfy your own curiosity or for the sake of linguistic aestheticism.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000854.h tml
Regards
Chung
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Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7097 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds
| Message 16 of 346 27 June 2005 at 10:21am | IP Logged |
If I had to choose ten total languages, I would go with:
Spanish
French
Russian
Italian
German
Dutch
Portuguese
The rest would be more for fun:
modern Greek
Ukrainian (that's my family's heritage on my Mom's side)
Norwegian (or another Scandinavian language)
I excluded English from the list because others have. I'm really not into Asian languages, but first for me would be Mandarin.
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