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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 1 of 68 09 January 2015 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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This is one of those "choosing a language" threads. If you don't like these kinds of threads, just skip it. If you're just going to say "Nobody can make this choice but you" or "Study what you feel most passionate about", then just don't comment. Any other comments are welcome, though, including stuff like "You should study Japanese because there's this awesome book I like".
--- I'm getting close to picking up my next language. Due to it being very closely related to Spanish, and due to my studying it very intensively in preparation for my trip to Cape Verde, I've quickly reached a nice place in Portuguese where I can kick back and let it rest for a while. I need a new project, or possibly two, as I've been thinking of breaking my habit of serial monogamy and work on two languages at once. But I'll start with one, as I'll need to do some repair work on my Spanish, which has been neglected due to interference, and get some more reading done in Mandarin and Cantonese. Aaaanyway, I have several candidates, each with their pros and cons. I will now, partly for my own sake, write about them. German German is one of those "I might as well" languages. It's the only European language I occasionally come across living in Sweden and Norway (exceot Swedish, Norwegian and English, of course), and as an engineer, it might be useful at some point (it happened once that it would have had been useful to know it). It's also pretty easy, being Germanic and all. Part of me wants to do German, Italian, Dutch just to get to ten languages. I'm guessing I could do each in a year and be pretty happy with my level in them. I could also work in Germany if I want, and it's one of the few European economies that are doing ok. I'll likely move abroad in a few years and Germany is one of the countries where the company I work for has a lot of offices. Of course, German is boring. It's Standard Average European, some genders, some cases, nothing very exciting. Culture-wise, it's very close to my own, so not too sensational there, either. It does have the advantage of a large amount of media that I'd probably enjoy consuming, which is important for me. I don't dislike German, it's just not very exciting, and at the low price, it gets the grade "might as well". Czech Czech has words without vowels. That's pretty much my reason for wanting to study it, and it's a very strong reason. It's phonetically super fun. It's Indo-European, but Slavic, and I don't have any Slavic languages yet, which makes it a bit interesting. I also like the country, which is a plus. It's still pretty boring grammar, though. Genders, cases, same old, same old. OK, I don't actually know any language with (significant) cases, but cases are basically conjugations for nouns. Been there, done that. Also it's written with the Latin alphabet. How fun is that? I'm also unsure about how much media is availible in Czech. But those consonant clusters really make me all hot and bothered. I want them. Also I'd get Slovak almost for free, and get a discount on Russian, which is a language I'd like to know but don't want to spend too much time studying. Japanese Japanese would be fun. It's grammatically interesting, with honorifics (which terrify me), agglutination, and I don't know what else. It's got the world's ugliest writing system, but at least it's not Latin, and learning a third (and fourth and fifth) set of readings on my old friends the tetragraphs would be fun. There's also enough Japanese media to watch and read until my eyes bleed. Phonetically it's not too exciting, but that's ok. However, I feel like another East-Asian language would not give me the geographic and cultural spread I want. Japanese culture is of course very different from Chinese culture, but it's not as different as, say, Arabic culture would be. Japan is confucian-ish and it's in the Sinosphere. Also, I play RPGs and knowing Japanese risks placing me in the "Anime fans" group, and I don't like anime. And Japan is expensive to hang around in, so taking a year off to live in the country is not going to happen. Thai Thai has an ugly writing system, but not as ugly as Japanese, and it's super fun with all its jumping back and forth. I like it. It's also culturally interesting, since it's in the Indosphere and not the Sinosphere, so extra points there. And Thailand has a great climate and is very cheap. Double plus! There seems to be enough interesting culture to consume, too. The downside of Thai is that grammatically and phonetically it's very close to the Chinese languages. Tones are not that exciting to me anymore, and yet another isolating language promises no fun grammatical surprises. The best it has to offer are some retroflex-ish sounds, but hell, my mother tongue has those, too. MSA MSA has phonetics that are almost as fun as the Czech. I've played around with some "how to pronounce the Arabic letters" videos, and I adore those pharyngealized sounds. They make my throat do things it's never done before. It's also got awesome grammar, what with the cool three-consonant roots thing, and a beautiful writing system that goes right to left. How awesome is that? It gets more plus points on being far from the cultures I know, but that's where it starts getting worse. I suspect I will have trouble finding media that interests me in MSA, and I don't have much interest in hanging around that much in Arabic-speaking countries, except maybe Egypt. But it feels like an important world language, and I think I'd want to have at least the basics of it one day. And my standoffish atitude to arabic culture is an argument for me to actually get past my prejudices and engage with the culture. Dead languages Sanskrit, Latin and Ancient Greek all attract me. First of all, the fact that they're dead (or almost, in the case of Sanskrit) is a plus point, since it's something I don't have. They also have a lot of bragging rights, and some interesting books I'd like to have read in the original (but am, unfortunately, not too likely to actually read). Especially Sanskrit (or Pali) is interesting here, because it's so beautiful when written in Devenagari. The only languages that beat it are the likewise Devenagari-derived Tibetan and Khmer. I think I'll want to learn to read Latin at some point, but I'm not going to do it straight after Portguese. I'm fed up with Romance languages! --- Those are far too many alternatives. I need to narrow it down. This is not going to be easy. If someone can help me clarify the picture a bit, like pointing out that Thai grammar is actually really weird, I'd be very grateful. If someone suggests a new language that's interesting, I'll first be grateful and then want to kill you for making this even harder. Edited by Ari on 09 January 2015 at 9:32pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4496 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 2 of 68 09 January 2015 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
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You should study Komi, then you'll be certain to have boldly gone where no man has gone
before. In all seriousness, study Czech, you'll love the grammar and there's cheap beer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3888 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3 of 68 09 January 2015 at 10:11pm | IP Logged |
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Well, if you don't want answers based on your feelings...
Ancient Greek, because nothing is quite as wonderfully obnoxious as responding to the question "What are you up to?" with "Oh, nothing much... working my way through Plato's collected works in the original Classical Greek." Also because you can start with something seemingly impressive like Plato quite soon. At university we did less than 10 weeks of Greek with a textbook before switching entirely to Plato. If I ever pick one of my lost languages back up, it's going to be Classical Greek. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 68 09 January 2015 at 10:23pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, both of you! I'm not much of a beer drinker, but Czech really is very tempting. It's near the top of the list, for sure. As for Classical Greek, reading Plato in the original does tempt me. And it's in its own branch of the IE tree, and non-Latin alphabet to boot! How large are the differences between Classical and Homeric Greek?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5555 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 68 09 January 2015 at 10:23pm | IP Logged |
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German only makes sense if you are willing to not only take the stuff that is relatively easy, but work on all the intricacies until you get really good at it - or if you know that you are about to move here.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5134 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 6 of 68 09 January 2015 at 10:41pm | IP Logged |
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If you start a language only because it looks fun or interesting, you're very likely to abandon it once the novelty wears off. That's not to say you'll get nothing out of the exercise.
That being said, you could learn Georgian. It has consonant clusters, exotic phonemes (try pronouncing "water"), minimal pairs that most other languages do not distinguish, a different alphabet, a unique grammar, a mysterious place within the development and spread of languages, and you can read the works of ჭაბუა ამირეჯიბი (Chabua Amirejibi). Edited by Juаn on 09 January 2015 at 11:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4919 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 68 09 January 2015 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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I don't have a recommendation but am curious as to why you'd be terrified of Japanese honorifics? I mean, it's just one component of the language (although I suppose it's culturally huge), but aside from cultural mistakes - which can happen in any language, I guess - I wouldn't think it would be any more difficult than some of your other choices.
Czech would be cool. I'm biased because of the little bit of Polish I've studied, though. Consonant clusters are fun. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4079 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 8 of 68 09 January 2015 at 11:11pm | IP Logged |
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I urge you to consider Dutch. I studied German at age 14 but nowhere near high levels.
The only region that I studied German was to read German chess books, since German is one of the "tripartite" languages of chess publishing, English, German, and Russian. Any serious chessplayer generally considers some German for access to chess materials that are not published in English or Russian that can be very instructive since Germany now (and the Federal Republic of West Germany and the German Democratic Republic of East Germany when they existed) were and are powerhouses in chess. Actually in Germany, there is "Schachbundesliga", modelled after the football league, and this chess team league is often purported as the strongest and most challenging team competition in world chess, contracting top players into big German chessteams. But if it were not for chess, I have the same feeling, that German does not really interest me, but it does not bore me either. It is basically neutral. Dutch is easier I find than German, but it is also much less popular, but I find it much more interesting and I find it easier to pronounce. I really have to move my mouth and jaw a lot when I speak German, but Dutch just flows for me like a river. I really should not compare so generally, but having also studied Mandarin for 4 years, I consider Dutch to flow like Mandarin. German seems to be much choppier than Dutch, like Cantonese is to Mandarin. It should also be noted that the economy of the Netherlands is in relatively good shape (as far as I know, not sure on the exact details), but I think that their GDP is green (arrow up) so far. Netherlands also have Shell and are a key international producer of pharmaceuticals. You mentioned that you are engineer, but these fields are more in the chemical engineering field, if that helps. Edited by 1e4e6 on 09 January 2015 at 11:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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