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Twenty Languages

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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 17 of 117
14 November 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged 
patuco wrote:
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?


I replied early enough in that thread about 10 languages where I imagined telling some strangers what they should think about.

Chung's post from June 27, 2005 wrote:
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. [...]

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


For 20 (foreign) languages:

Afrikaans
Chuvash
Estonian
Finnish
French
German
Hungarian
Indonesian
Kazakh
Komi
Lappish (Saami), Northern
Latvian
Macedonian
Mongolian
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Polish
Slovak
Turkish
Ukrainian
Uzbek

Over the last five years little has changed apart from the fact that Icelandic has fallen off the list of languages that I'd like to learn.
2 persons have voted this message useful



akprocks
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5287 days ago

178 posts - 258 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 18 of 117
14 November 2010 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
My list is constantly changing due to opportunities, convenience to learn languages and interest.

English (native)
Spanish (intermidiate)
Welsh   (novice)
Inupiaq (advanced listener, novice speaker)

Now for the ones I hope to start:
Slovak
Klallam ( check it out at http://www.lingtechcomm.unt.edu//~montler/Klallam/)
Guaraní
Russian
Swedish
Lativian
Bengali
Turkish
Malay

If I live long enough to learn all these I will die a happy man, unless they invent an anti-aging medication in the future in the future I'm afraid I'll have to be satisfied with 12 or so. Their's no way to learn 20 in a lifetime, unless you start from birth.
1 person has voted this message useful



thephantomgoat
Groupie
United States
Joined 5472 days ago

52 posts - 103 votes 

 
 Message 19 of 117
14 November 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 
Apart from the two I already speak:

1. German*
2. Mandarin*
3. Vietnamese*
4. Yiddish*
5. Polish*
6. Turkish*
7. Ancient Greek
8. Swahili
9. Hindi
10. Quechua
11. Cantonese
12. MSA
13. Portuguese
14. Esperanto
15. Indonesian
16. Irish
17. Navajo
18. Yoruba
19. French
20. Russian (or maybe Korean...or Latin...)

*Already began to learn the language. After the first six, these are in no particular
order.

This list is very much subject to change. I'd be surprised if a list of 20 I wrote a
week from now looked exactly like this. XP
1 person has voted this message useful



Deshwi
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5601 days ago

31 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Hindi, Persian

 
 Message 20 of 117
15 November 2010 at 12:02am | IP Logged 
Wow, picking just 20 was really hard. In no particular order:

1 Mandarin
2 Turkish
3 German
4 Swahili
5 Hindi
6 Arabic
7 Farsi
8 Tamil
9 Korean
10 Bahasa Indonesia
11 Tagalog
12 Hungarian
13 Finnish
14 Japanese
15 Amharic
16 Hebrew
17 Vietnamese
18 Russian
19 Zulu
20 Irish
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ReneeMona
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5336 days ago

864 posts - 1274 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2
Studies: French

 
 Message 21 of 117
15 November 2010 at 12:52am | IP Logged 
After number 14 or so it became harder to think of languages I would really be motivated enough for to study them so I guess my wanderlust isn’t as bad as I thought. My twenty dream languages, including the ones I’m already studying:

English
German
Swedish
Frisian
Afrikaans
Old English
Old Dutch
Latin
French
Italian
Spanish
Papiamentu
Esperanto
Russian
Ancient Greek
Greek
Indonesian
Arabic
Turkish
Hebrew

1 person has voted this message useful



ironman
Tetraglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5147 days ago

5 posts - 8 votes
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French
Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Swahili

 
 Message 22 of 117
15 November 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged 
My wish list is constantly growing, I think it's currently at about 15. If I had to grow it to 20, it would like this.

German
French
Spanish
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Arabic
Mandarin
Japanese
Hindi
Latin
Greek
Turkish
Swahili
Hungarian
Hebrew
Dutch
Korean
Zulu
Xhosa
1 person has voted this message useful





jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6910 days ago

4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 23 of 117
15 November 2010 at 1:34am | IP Logged 
Apart from Swedish and English, I've had classes in eight languages in high school/university, have studied a few on my own (on and off), and have flirted with a couple. If I would include all of them, this would be the list:
German
Spanish
French
Ancient Greek
Irish
Welsh
Scottish Gaelic
Japanese
Mandarin
Cantonese
Latin
Russian
Portuguese
Esperanto
Finnish
Cornish
Serbo-Croatic
Persian
Turkish
Sindarin/Quenya (I can't really remember which, if not both)

I've probably forgotten a dozen.

My "real" dream list wouldn't look to different from the previous, but I'd probably include Dutch, Italian, Danish, a bunch of Slavic languages, maybe Arabic and Hindi (even Sanskrit), and God knows which languages I would delete.
1 person has voted this message useful



pineappleboom
Groupie
United States
languageloft-ashley.
Joined 5254 days ago

66 posts - 76 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, French, Russian

 
 Message 24 of 117
15 November 2010 at 1:46am | IP Logged 
japanese
french
spanish
italian
german
portuguese
chinese
cantonese
swedish
dutch
korean
russian
hindi
greek
arabic
basque
mayan
turkish
hebrew
bulgarian


1 person has voted this message useful



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