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What is a useless language to you?

  Tags: Usefulness
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
42 messages over 6 pages: 1 24 5 6  Next >>
CheeseInsider
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
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Speaks: English*, Mandarin*
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 17 of 42
20 November 2010 at 2:39am | IP Logged 
I do not want to offend anyone. But a useless language for me would be Japanese. Not really interested in ever visiting Japan, or the culture. I do like the sound though. I guess I want to learn it, but what is stopping me is the fact that nothing about Japan (other than the language of course) interests me. >_<
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Lucas
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Switzerland
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 Message 18 of 42
20 November 2010 at 4:22am | IP Logged 
darkwhispersdal wrote:
I can't wait to learn Latin and Ancient Greek as I love
reading the classics such as Cicero's speeches and the thought of being able to wrestle
with the text in Latin without the filter of a translation (no matter how good) just
thrills me.


Cicero is extremely difficult to read, because it is rhetoric, with incredibly long and
complexes sentences: the syntax is a nightmare and it takes you a lot of time to
understand the meaning, even if you masterize the whole latin Grammar (but you can read
Cesar very easily)!

PS: you can't wait to learn ancient greek? Learn it first then...so latin will be a
piece of cake in comparison!
:)
And forgot classics in ancient greek...far too hard to read (even if you know well the
whole grammar): too much strange syntax, strange verbal forms, strange words, etc...
But you can read Aesopus or the New Testament.
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thephantomgoat
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United States
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 Message 19 of 42
20 November 2010 at 5:22am | IP Logged 
There is no language useless to me; even one I created and spoke solely to and with
myself would serve for entertainment purposes. But since the main reason I learn
languages is to communicate verbally with other people, considering the number of
speakers is a major factor in my deciding whether to learn a language. I have been
frustrated by the comparative lack of speakers and resources available for languages
like, say, Yiddish, which to an observer seems to be the most "useless" of my
languages: I only speak it with my classmates, I have no Yiddish-speaking heritage, and
thus far I've only been able to use the language to understand what Mel Brooks is
saying when he plays a Native American chief in Blazing Saddles. But an
observer's opinion won't dissuade me from learning a language, and my inability to use
Yiddish outside of class speaks more to my lack of imagination than it does to its
"uselessness."

For me, a more illuminating question would be "what languages do you have little or no
interest in learning?" (Not that this hasn't been discussed on the forum before. XP)
The answer to this question can include evaluation of a language's relative
"uselessness," but there are other reasons, to be sure...I find French, for instance,
utterly uncompelling, even though it would be very useful to me as someone considering
graduate school in the humanities; there's a lot of great literature there. But I don't
like the sound of French, especially the nasal vowels (nevermind that I'm currently
learning Polish), and I despair of ever being able to pronounce it well enough to
content myself. Despite the literature--another of the main factors I take into account
when deciding whether to learn a language--I have little interest in learning Russian;
the unpredictable stress, case system (again, nevermind the Polish), and Cyrillic
alphabet turn me off. And even though I love K-Pop, I also don't plan on learning
Korean anytime soon; the difficult pronunciation is part of it.

Despite my lack of interest in French, Russian, and Korean, if any of them ever became
"useful" enough for me, I'd learn it in a heartbeat. This isn't to say they aren't
useful, even to me; it's just that they haven't reached the necessary threshold
required for me to start learning any of them. And since my interests are continually
developing, the chances of one of these languages suddenly passing that threshold is
not out of the question.
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Bao
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 Message 20 of 42
21 November 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged 
No natural language - though I have to admit some seem more useful to me than others; and almost every conlang.

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markchapman
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 Message 21 of 42
21 November 2010 at 4:30am | IP Logged 
There's no useless language, but useless for me would be Taiwanese & Hakka. Even when I've lived within
communities where these languages are spoken, most people want to speak to me in Chinese or English, and most
young people think that these languages are not cool, or are only for the family.

Apart from these, Klingon, Elvish and Esperanto seem particularly useless to me. No offense to any Klingons, Elves
or Esperantans.
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Nature
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Canada
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 Message 22 of 42
21 November 2010 at 6:04am | IP Logged 
A useless language to me would be Vietnamese. I don't want to visit the country and it's insanely hard enough for me to learn it.
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oneplus
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South Africa
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 Message 23 of 42
23 November 2010 at 3:01pm | IP Logged 
A useless language for me would be Georgian
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CS
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United States
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French

 
 Message 24 of 42
23 November 2010 at 4:40pm | IP Logged 
In general, I'm not interested in east Asian languages, because I'm not currently planning on traveling to that part
of the world, and I'm hopelessly Europhilic in general when it comes to languages.

Then there are languages that I do have some interest in, but I can't see myself ever needing like Persian (again
I'm not traveling there anytime soon).

Latin and Ancient Greek are also languages for which I lack motivation. Ironically, I'm very interested in late
Roman and early medieval history, and I'd very likely need them if were to work professionally in those fields -
but I'm only an amateur. It doesn't help that my interests are primarily historical rather than poetry or rhetoric,
so I don't feel like I'm missing a great deal by reading a translation. Also my historical interests are later than the
period when people wrote really "good" Latin or (ancient) Greek, even if they were trying to do so.

If anything is going to revive my Latin studies, it will be my interest in the roots of French. So there may be hope
yet. Alas, I might have to study Modern Greek before I care about Ancient Greek again.




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