At first glance, it may seem that this thread should belong in the "Loungin'" forum, but I do not wish to receive any unintelligent responses.

For a few years now I've wanted to learn Japanese. But, I had no reason. I just wanted to learn the language.

Long story short, I learned a few words and forgot 80% of them.

Now, I'm looking to learn a language, for good. The problem is, I can't decide what language I should learn. My hope is to eventually speak many different languages although that would be a very tedious task.

I'm looking for a useful language. Not THE most useful, because that's an opinion, but a useful one. At the moment all I speak is English, but I have taken two Latin classes so it may be easier for me to pick up on Spanish or any of the other Romance languages.

The main problem I have at the moment is finding the language I want to learn, and how to describe what language I want to learn. I live in the United States, and Spanish would be very useful, but I don't want to learn Spanish.

What do you guys/girls think would be a useful, practical language to learn?


Please do not say any languages like Icelandic or Gibberish, or 1337, or anything like that. I'm looking for serious responses.

Personally I think you should go with Japanese. I am learning it, and it is actually pretty nice. It is easier than it looks like once you get the hang of it. At first writing seems like a royal pain, considering you use three scripts (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji). The only ones you need to learn well are the first two ones, and once you get how Kanji works, you won't need to do much effort on it.

My native language is Spanish and English is my second language. Spanish is also very easy, and you should be able to get the hang of it without problems since both English and Spanish come from Latin.

Thanks for the advice.

At the moment I'm seriously considering German, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese.

The reason why I'm putting so much effort into this search is because I'm going to dedicate myself 100% to this, and I don't want to waste my time learning a language that won't be useful to me.

The thing about the modern world is that it doesn't really matter if you don't know a particular language because so many people speak English, and because of the ease of translating. That being said, learning a language is not pointless, but choosing which language you should learn does not need to revolve around a particular language being more useful than any other (of course, something like Latin or Ancient Greek doesn't really have as much use in the modern world as a European or Asian language).

As such, it's probably best to go with a language you are interested in, and language you want to learn, and maybe even a language who's country's customs and culture etc.., you have an interest in. These are the reasons I chose to study Japanese over the other languages offered at my high school, and I did not regret it.

Japanese, totally. I took a few years worth the classes in early Highschool, but dropped it because I didn't have the motivation. Looking back now, I really regret it. I would love to be able to go to Japan right now and start a conversation with someone. At the moment its on my 'something Ill get around to eventually' list.

Japanese is *bleep*ing hard imo. I find any of the Asian languages fairly hard since they don't stick to the latin alphabet which i'm most familiar with.

That being said, I think Japanese would be a great choice for you if you're interested in the country's culture and lifestyle. Most useful language (Chinese >_>)? Nah, but it'd be a fun (albeit hard imo) language to study.

Japanese would be a good choice of language to learn since its a great country to visit and if you know some of language it would be very helpful.

German would be good too.

What are your thoughts on learning Russian?

I self teach (sort of) Japanese, with a little bit of help from one of my friends.

I find it really interesting to learn because it's quite odd what some of the words translate into sometimes. You should definitely consider learning Japanese because once you get the swing of it, you'll love learning it.

I also learn Spanish but that's for my GCSE (We had to take a language out of French, Spanish or German) and I find it pretty easy most of the time. I'd go with something a bit more challenging because you'll find it a lot more interesting.

-Choccy

It's amazing how popular Japanese is for some people. It does have an amount of reasoning for learning it, though.

Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, and Mandarin might be good choices too.

quote King Asian

What are your thoughts on learning Russian?

Latin can be quite useful...

But if you don't feel like an ancient language...

I hear German's good.

Depends on what you want to do in future >.>

quote Lylodile

Haha Paramore. Dajay is an emo girl

quote King Asian

At the moment I'm seriously considering German, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese.

Russian, Bosnian - or any Slavic languages - will be a royal pain in the ass as they use two alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic) and have some of the most complicated grammar of any languages. Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian is my first language and it gives me issues all the time because of issues with translating it and very strange grammar rules. I'd advise you to stay well away from them.

I also speak German, and it's a good language to know, and it's not too tough. =]

I would highly recommend Japanese again. I'm currently learning it, and like Andy said, once you start learning it, it starts becoming easier, it just seems harder at first with the three styles of writing. But the history and culture is really interesting so it makes the language fun.


You could also try French. It is an interesting language to learn as well. French has a nice way of flowing that depending on how you look at it, it can be fun or a pain.