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Your list of "useful" languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| anethara Diglot Newbie England Joined 4240 days ago 25 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Sign Language | Message 1 of 31 09 September 2013 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
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By useful*, I mean which languages native speakers often don't speak English?
For example, I have been completely lost in Malaysia because I haven't found an English speaker around, yet I seem to always be close to an English speaker in Norway. *I couldn't think of one word which neatly embodied this concept, so I went for useful! I know that's not how many would describe a "useful language", I'm sorry. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 2 of 31 09 September 2013 at 5:12am | IP Logged | ||
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The 6 languages of the UN.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 3 of 31 09 September 2013 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian was incredibly useful while I was in Moscow. With young people English is a little more common, but not that much. Most of them (at least the ones I knew) speak just Russian, some can speak English.
I think it's the exact same thing here in Brazil. If you don't speak Portuguese, it'll be hard to find someone with a good English. I guess that's much better in a good university environment, but at bars, night clubs, stores, etc.... don't expect to find English. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 31 09 September 2013 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
My experience of Latin America is limited so far to Peru, and while the situation there regarding English is probably better than as described above, I think you'd be a bit stuck sometimes if you knew no Spanish whatsoever. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4097 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 5 of 31 09 September 2013 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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French.
If you are doing touristy things in Paris, they even might be "helpful" enough to speak English to you without being asked to, but when you leave the capital you need to start speaking French to get around. At least it has been my experience, from 7 holidays (covering three of the four corners of the country) and 2 years of living here. The only place I have consistently found an English speaking Frenchman has been at the veterinarian. In areas with extremely high populations of British pensioners the banks also usually have one person on payroll who speaks English and basically handles anyone who is white and has an accent (I've even been sent to this person myself on occasion, when specifically asking for someone else in French). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 31 09 September 2013 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Every language is useful if you put yourself in situations where you force yourself to
use the language. For some languages, this is easier than for others - French is a good example as eyðimörk wrote above. But I've had occasion to use all of them. For Scandinavia, it suffices to ask them to speak Swedish (or Danish/Norwegian) to you. I do not have any trouble finding use for any of my languages. I am also pretty insistent on responding in a certain language. I even have had written correspondence in Breton (!!!) this way. The language that has been the most useful to me is English. Second most useful language is French, then Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 31 09 September 2013 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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That would depend on where you live, what you do, do you travel, where do you travel, do you meet a lot of tourists, where are the tourists from etc.
Personally I have (in addition to English) found the following to be very useful at some point in time: Spanish French Russian German Italian On a couple of occasions it would have come in really handy to speak Mandarin, since I have been twice to China, but in my home environment I would never need it. If I were to add one more language to the mix, to cover a lot of ground, I think I would have added Turkish. Less speakers than China, but I am a lot more likely to go to Turkey than to China, and it would help me learn lots of other languages in countries closer to Europe. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4857 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 8 of 31 09 September 2013 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even in Paris life without English can be a nightmare. Grrrr.... Stupid monolingual people, it should be penalized.
Russian is EXTREMELY important language if it comes to the number of countries. In not every of them though it's appreciated to speak Russian, even if they understand you without any difficulties. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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