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What would you recommend? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| anethara Diglot Newbie England Joined 4039 days ago 25 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Sign Language | Message 1 of 15 24 April 2014 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Which first second language would you recommend learning to a native English speaker, if
you knew nothing about them other than this information? I'd probably recommend Spanish for its relative simplicity and usefulness, but it would depend on what said language learner was enthusiastic about and where they lived (e.g if they lived in Canada I'd probably recommend French). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6953 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 15 24 April 2014 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Finnish 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6394 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 15 24 April 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Chung is the best <3
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5329 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 15 24 April 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
As Khatzumoto once said about a foreign language:
Languages aren't exactly hard to learn, once you overcome the initial roller-coaster of perfectionism, failing motivation, self-flagellation, and endless random ups and downs in your ability. But oh my, do languages take time to learn. I can think of a bunch of good reasons to learn a language: 1. All the people around you speak it. 2. You'll learn a lot more money if you know it, and you're a naturally ambitious person (though this is often insufficient). 3. You want to read awesome comic books in the language. 4. You're madly in love with the language, the people or the culture. But if somebody just comes up to me asks, "I'm a monolingual English speaker and I want to learn a language. Which one should I pick?", I'd be a bit puzzled. They're basically asking, "I want to spend hundreds or thousands of hours acquiring a skill, and I want to spend the rest of my life using it—at least in some small way—so that I don't backslide. But what skill should I acquire?" Does anybody actually invest that much time based on such vague and impersonal motivation? Now, if somebody comes up to me and says, "I'm madly in love with Italian, and my company does a huge amount of business with Russian customers. Which should I pick?", I could maybe say something semi-coherent. They've narrowed down the list a bit, and they're motivated. My advice might be useless, of course, but at least there would be something to discuss. I suppose it's different if your school requires you to study a language to graduate (or to go to university), and you have to choose between some combination of Spanish, French, German and Latin, and you don't feel any particular calling towards any of them. In that case, go read a bunch of logs and see if one of the languages starts calling to you. 15 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5059 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 5 of 15 24 April 2014 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think some folks (talking about adults out of school/university) like the idea of learning a language. When presented with the reality of what that entails, they soon go off that idea. The language industry doesn't help with their false promises and hype. If I had a nickel for every time a friend or relative told me they wanted to learn Spanish, I could buy HTLAL and fix all our problems. :) If I had a nickel for every one of them that reached that goal- I'd be flat broke. Edited by iguanamon on 24 April 2014 at 8:00pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4819 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 15 24 April 2014 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd vote for this post a hundred times if I could. If you don't love it, its just not gonna happen, period. Even if you really do love it, and its an easy language like Spanish, and even if you give it every thing you've got, you have to sustain that passion for a very long time. Obsession is very much a requirement. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| anethara Diglot Newbie England Joined 4039 days ago 25 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Sign Language | Message 7 of 15 25 April 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Perhaps I shouldn't have asked this question... :P
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4462 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 15 25 April 2014 at 3:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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While it is true that passion or at least a very strong practical motivation of some kind is necessary for long-term success, it can also happen that a mere mild curiosity suffices to "get the ball rolling" into something much bigger. This was what happened with me and French, for example. I imagine that most people who pay attention to the world outside the borders of their own country, or have some contact with the immigrant communities within it, have at least a bit of curiosity for a particular culture or music or literature or language that they have encountered in some way. So I would tell this hypothetical person to start with that little grain, whatever it might happen to be. Edited by tastyonions on 25 April 2014 at 3:35am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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