KoopaFanatic

Hi folks! I'm hoping I can tap into the vast pool of knowledge here to help me decide what language I should try and learn next. I realize from experience that learning a language is a very subjective thing, but I'm just wondering if anybody has experience with or knowledge of any of the ones I'm considering. Book/tape and other resource recommendations would be really nice, too.

English is my native language, and I also speak Japanese. I'm pretty decent in German and Portuguese, and have basic survival knowledge of French and Spanish (i.e. I know how to order in restaurants and ask where the toilet and American embassy are ).

At this point, I'm not really concerned about utility...it's more about learning the language for fun and aesthetic reasons.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions?

wildernesse

I voted for Russian because I liked it when I studied it!
But also because you seem to have some familiarity with Romance and Germanic languages plus Japanese--and Russian is Slavic--so more to stretch your brain on linguistically.

Plus, I enjoyed learning more about Russian culture, especially literature.

My two cents.

--tibac

MJones

I think you should learn C++.

Dirty Dog

DMB

Based on the number of speakers, Chinese.

German and French both have a lot of vocabulary in common with English, which makes them easier than some. Many anglophones find German grammar a bit of a barrier, though.

Latin is lovely and helps a lot with a whole raft of other languages, including English.

Undercurrent

Esperanto!

Yay Esperanto!

Non-praying Mantis

Ditto that!

NPM

KoopaFanatic

Well, I used to be okay with BASIC and Fortran back in high school, but am too out of practice now. I've done some basic stuff with C, but frankly computers and I only get along well if I let somebody else write the software for me

I learned a bit of Esperanto for a college linguistics class, but since I was the only person I ever knew of who spoke even a word of it I decided not to follow up on it (and took Portuguese instead).

Chinese doesn't work for me. I don't know why, but I just don't like the sound of it and it's never clicked. Plus, I suspect there'd be some nasty feedback from trying to learn yet another pronunciation for each kanji I know

I probably should have included ASL, but that's one I've just got some sort of block on -- I'm okay with vocal mimicry, but physical? Not so much. (I took Social Dance in college, and have the grades to prove that )

Oddly, I never found German grammar at all difficult. Maybe it's because I started learning it early enough, but the pronunciation, sentence structure and verb usage always struck me as far more intuitive than French or (Brazilian) Portuguese.

ju'iblex

Latin is a fantastic language, and its fantastic to have, but as someone who has now been learning for 5 and a half years i can say

DO NOT LEARN LATIN

honestly. If you want an easier language, i would suggest Spanish or Greek. Russian is also quite difficult to grasp IMO, and Arabic would be pretty difficult as well.

If you want the easiest language in the world, i would suggest Indonesian, bloody easy. But if i were you i would go for something you are familiar with like Spanish.

If you do end up wanting to do Latin, i would recommend the Cambridge books available.

ju'iblex

triple post!

ju'iblex

double post, how can this be possible, what happened to my dear flood control!