So You Want to Learn 5... (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

So You Want to Learn 5...
Tags: Number of Languages \| Fluency
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Language Learning Forum : Advice Center

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Li Fei
Pro Member
United States
Joined 4913 days ago
147 posts - 182 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin
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Message 449 of 580

07 December 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged

I'd choose:
Mandarin
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian

but since I'm fifty, I'm not sure I'll get beyond the first three!
1 person has voted this message useful

gdoyle1990
Groupie
United States
Joined 5410 days ago
52 posts - 60 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian

Message 450 of 580

07 December 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged

I know I've posted on here at least twice before, but I'll post again the languages that I am currently studying plus one.

1.) Russian - I've been in love with it for upwards of 5 years, which is saying something since I'm only twenty. I'm currently a Russian studies major and I'd like to say that I'm mid-upper intermediate.

2.) Serbian - My love for Serbian began about the same time as my love for tennis. I've always been a fan of Novak Djokovic, and since I'm learning Russian I thought, why not add Serbian too.

3.) Yakut - Came completely out of nowhere. One of my Russian professors is a native speaker of Yakut and I always thought it was so exotic.

4.) Hebrew - Unexplainable, but I love the language.

5.) Turkish/Tatar/Chuvash - I haven't decided the next language that I want to study, probably Turkish because it has so many speakers and would be really useful, but I like Tatar and Chuvash better.
1 person has voted this message useful

thephantomgoat
Groupie
United States
Joined 5261 days ago
52 posts - 103 votes

Message 451 of 580

08 December 2010 at 12:06pm | IP Logged

I speak English and Spanish. As for my five:

1) German
2) Mandarin
3) Polish
4) Turkish
5) ...

Why is the last one so hard to choose!? Murr...it's currently a toss-up between
Vietnamese and Portuguese, though the former's edging ahead by a nose.

Don't know why I'm fretting so much on choosing the fifth; it's like to be different
tomorrow. I change my target languages nigh as often as I change my clothes. :P
1 person has voted this message useful

Leurre
Bilingual Pentaglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5215 days ago
219 posts - 372 votes

Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, Spanish^C2
Studies: Japanese

Message 452 of 580

08 December 2010 at 9:14pm | IP Logged

I speak English and French, so I would chose:

1. Spanish: I can speak it and understand it, but not perfectly, so I would go for
something a lot closer to native speakers' fluency

2. Korean: In the long process of learning...!

3. Japanese: so much fun!

4: Italian: Love the way it sounds!

5: 역시 a toss-up: Indonesian (no idea why) Hausa (one of my dad's native languages)
1 person has voted this message useful

Ubik
Senior Member
United States
ubykh.wordpress.com/
Joined 5106 days ago
147 posts - 176 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish

Message 453 of 580

09 December 2010 at 4:05am | IP Logged

Ubik wrote:

1. German (Its the most beautiful-sounding language Ive ever heard + the language is
intuitive (to me, anyway) and I already know quite a bit from high school)
2. Arabic
3. Spanish (I live on the west coast of the US so thats an obvious reason, but real
Spain Spanish is almost as beautiful as German to me)
4. Romanian (Just plain 'ol fascinated with it. I have been for years. Its perhaps the
least Romance of the Romance languages despite its name and that alone intrigues me)
5. Serbo-Croatian (Again, dunno...it fascinates me. I want to start with Croatian first
because it uses the Roman alphabet, then move to Serbian to learn the Cyrillic script)

The above was what I originally posted, but Ive done a lot more research since then and
have changed my mind

Im almost through my first semester of Arabic and its not that Im not doing well in the
class (I think I have a solid A in fact), but the more I read about the religion and
the culture the less I care about it. Its not that I was completely ignorant of their
culture and religion prior to committing to learn it, but I shrugged a lot off as "well
its just stereotypes" "its just "different" not "bad", etc, but after all Ive learned
there is 0 incentive for me to go to any of the countries, have meaningful
conversations with their people, get interested in their culture, etc. So that one is
now off my list.

Ive also decided to drop Croatian and Romanian. I am still interested in those
languages moreso than most languages, but theyre just not in my top 5 any more. So here
is my new and improved top 5:

1. German. Still #1 in my book. Still a beautiful language. Frustrating to
learn, but that will be overcome eventually
2. Spanish. Beautiful language, highly highly useful as Spain is on the short
list of places to eventually move to
3. Basque. One of the most unique languages. I love everything that Ive studied
about it so far. Of course its almost a guarantee that I *will* have to move to Spain
in order to learn it
4. Finnish. Call me crazy, but the longer the words the better and the more noun
cases the better too. I would MUCH rather learn a language with giant
agglutinative/inflecting affixes than learn a language where >50% of the words are 2-3
letters long or rely on many diacritical marks/punctuation/word order to be understood
5. Latvian or Welsh. Maybe Ill post yet a third time to come to my final
conclusion, because Im still weighing out which one I would rather learn between the
two. They both are really cool and fascinating to me and I like most of their features,
but there are minor plusses and minuses clouding my decision still.

Im pretty set on that above list so I dont imagine there being a revision #3, but we'll
see...

And...obviously I wasnt toooo set on it because 6 months later Ive changed my mind yet
again.

Instead of focusing on the more unusual languages, I want to have a variety of more
useful ones. The ones below reflect what was more on the 6-10 list and Im simply just
bumping them up. the quicker I can learn the more useful ones, the quicker I can make
good money knowing them and then have fun learning, say, Finnish.

1.German: Still #1. Hopefully in a year or so it can come off the list because
then Ill be fluent ;)
2.Korean: The script is beautiful & easy to read and I like the sound of it over
every other east Asian language. I also feel it is very important as US relations with
Korea are getting more intense in a number of aspects.
3.Arabic: When I wrote my last post, I was kinda angry at everything to do with
Arabic, but Ive since calmed down and realized its still a very important world
language and now that its had a chance to sink into my brain, I think Ill approach it
with a positive and open frame of mind next time
4. Russian. Id been very afraid of Cyrillic for the longest time, but I really
want to bite the bullet and take it. There is way too much scientific material written
in Russian that I know Id like to read and translate one day.
5. an African language: Too many people discount the entire continent save for
the Arabic part and Afrikaans. I think all African languages are beautiful, and while
none are UN languages, they all are very important. I think Xhosa is the most beautiful
sounding language Ive heard, followed closely by Zulu, while Swahili is the most
accessible so...Ill narrow it down when I get to this point.

I dropped Spanish not because I dont think its beautiful or useful, but because Im
kinda bored of it and I feel that there are enough people (at least in the US) who
speak it that I would just be one tiny fish in a giant pond. Its quite possible, after
this semester of Spanish is long over, Ill get reinterested in it...who knows...

Stay tuned in 6 months for me to change my mind again.... :D
1 person has voted this message useful

Pantherus
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4892 days ago
13 posts - 15 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

Message 454 of 580

09 December 2010 at 1:41pm | IP Logged

I would choose, in order of most important to me:

1. Korean.
2. Japanese.
3. Mandarin.
4. Cantonese.
5. Vietnamese.

Taiwanese barely lost, because I'd already know two Chinese dialects fluently, so it would probably be better to do Vietnamese.
1 person has voted this message useful

joleisa
Triglot
Newbie
Italy
Joined 4889 days ago
4 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: Turkish*, English^C2, Italian^C2

Message 455 of 580

09 December 2010 at 3:23pm | IP Logged

I speak Italian and English
and I'd love to speak fluently:

1. French
2. German
3. Greek
4. Arabic
5. Japanese
1 person has voted this message useful

strikingstar
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4963 days ago
292 posts - 444 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written)

Message 456 of 580

09 December 2010 at 11:19pm | IP Logged

Ubik wrote:

1.German: Still #1. Hopefully in a year or so it can come off the list because
then Ill be fluent ;)
2.Korean: The script is beautiful & easy to read and I like the sound of it over
every other east Asian language. I also feel it is very important as US relations with
Korea are getting more intense in a number of aspects.
3.Arabic: When I wrote my last post, I was kinda angry at everything to do
with Arabic, but Ive since calmed down and realized its still a very important world
language and now that its had a chance to sink into my brain, I think Ill approach it
with a positive and open frame of mind next time,
4. Russian. Id been very afraid of Cyrillic for the longest time, but I really
want to bite the bullet and take it. There is way too much scientific material written
in Russian that I know Id like to read and translate one day.
5. an African language: Too many people discount the entire continent save
for the Arabic part and Afrikaans. I think all African languages are beautiful, and
while none are UN languages, they all are very important. I think Xhosa is the most
beautiful sounding language Ive heard, followed closely by Zulu, while Swahili is the
most accessible so...Ill narrow it down when I get to this point.

I dropped Spanish not because I dont think its beautiful or useful, but because Im
kinda bored of it and I feel that there are enough people (at least in the US) who
speak it that I would just be one tiny fish in a giant pond. Its quite possible, after
this semester of Spanish is long over, Ill get reinterested in it...who knows...

Stay tuned in 6 months for me to change my mind again.... :D

Dude, I'm always angry at Arabic. I curse, groan and throw a hissy fit (ok, not really)
whenever I see a title along the lines of "Masculine sound plurals in idaafas or with
pronoun suffixes".

I also agree with the sentiment that too many people discount Africa. I'm still a
little disappointed that there're so few Swahili speakers on this forum. The great
thing about Bantu languages is the great deal of similarities that they share with one
another. I was browsing through some Chichewa lessons once and found the number of
similarities striking. For example, Chichewa and Swahili both have
m/mi/li/ma/n/n/u/ku/pa/ku/mu noun classes in exactly the same order. There were a few
differences like chi/zi instead of ki/vi. My point is that just learning one Bantu
language will make the rest of the Bantu languages much more accessible and easier to
learn.

With regards to this thread, I just want to focus on Arabic and Spanish right now. Once
I feel comfortable with these two languages, I'll move on to Russian and French and
that's all for the time being.

1 person has voted this message useful

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