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Post by jenming on Feb 21, 2006 0:15:35 GMT -5
Just remember though that languages like Chinese and Arabic take three times as much time to learn as European languages--so you really need to be serious. i've never heard this before. is it true? i mean... kids growing up in china or a middle-eastern country aren't worse at their languages than western kids, right? |
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Post by rob on Feb 21, 2006 0:38:06 GMT -5
I remember right before the Japanese recession in 1989 everyone and their dog was studying Japanese. The language, culture, management-speak was everywhere. Crap, they even owned half of California and Manhattan. But then the bubble burst and all the late Japano-philes got burnt.
We seem to have a similar case now with China. No one dared touch Mandarin immediately post Tiananmen (when all the big $$$ was made in 93-98). But now everyone and their dog (i'm no better!) studying mandarin. Could this be deja vous?
Chinese is extremely useful, but if I had to be bold and do it all again, I'd study Japanese, Korean and/or Russian.
added: On Hindi, dont think its really worth it. There are so many dialects in India they often speak english to each other! Yes, they might have "funny" accents, but their vocab I've found is much more expansive than most north americans who speak it as a first language.
added: On Hindi, dont think its really worth it. There are so many dialects in India they often speak english to each other! Yes, they might have "funny" accents, but their vocab I've found is much more expansive than most north americans who speak it as a first language.
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Post by jefe on Feb 21, 2006 2:45:32 GMT -5
Hindi is somewhat important due to the number of speakers (over 600 million) and some international distribution (understood in Pakistan as Urdu, and by overseas Indian communities around the world), growing due to the rising economic influence of India, and also due somewhat to the spread of Bollywood culture. It is also important in order to fully appreciate one of the world's greatest religions and historical culture.
But India, for better or worse, (correct me if I am wrong) still uses English extensively, in government, business, and as an alternate lingua franca across South Asia. Many families in India also use English extensively at home. As a globally important language, it probably won't move much.
What are the languages of the UN? -- English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese. It is obvious that these are the most important. But Germany, Brazil, Japan and India also applied for security council -- so German, japanese, Portuguese and Hindi would round out the list. These 10 languages stick out above the rest in terms of global importance.
I do imagine that the next 10 in importance (not necessarily numerical speakers) would include Italian, Dutch, Korean, Cantonese, Malay / Bahasa Indonesia, possibly Thai or Tagalog or Bengali.
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n1047
Full Member
Posts: 265
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Post by n1047 on Feb 21, 2006 2:52:26 GMT -5
^What about. Esperanto!
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Post by Sensei on Feb 21, 2006 2:57:24 GMT -5
Just remember though that languages like Chinese and Arabic take three times as much time to learn as European languages--so you really need to be serious. i've never heard this before. is it true? i mean... kids growing up in china or a middle-eastern country aren't worse at their languages than western kids, right? I saw that number stated a couple of times in some studies, but I honestly can't say for sure how reliable those studies were... At any rate, I see what you mean. But, perhaps the fact that it's harder for non-native speakers to learn Chinese than it is French doesn't necessarily correlate with it being more difficult for native Chinese speakers to learn their language than it is for native French speakers to learn theirs. I mean... learning characters is probably a lot more of a natural process for someone who has been exposed to them their whole life than someone like me who has to write the character for salt out "yan2" a couple dozen times before it sticks (and I don't mean the simplified character  ).
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Post by jefe on Feb 21, 2006 4:18:14 GMT -5
All humans learn their language at about the same rate. I don't think that any language is that much harder than any other.
NOW, if you know French and some Spanish, you can easily figure out Portuguese. If you know English and 2-3 Chinese dialects, you have a headstart on Japanese vocabulary. If you know Malay / Bahasa, English and Spanish, you would be surprised at how much Tagalog you can recognize already.
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Post by jefe on Feb 21, 2006 4:33:29 GMT -5
I remember right before the Japanese recession in 1989 everyone and their dog was studying Japanese. The language, culture, management-speak was everywhere. Crap, they even owned half of California and Manhattan. But then the bubble burst and all the late Japano-philes got burnt. In 1989 I was living in Manhattan and studying Japanese (since 1987). In 1991 I went on a study tour to Japan. YES, I AM GUILTY. Did I get burnt? Well, I had previously learned Mandarin and Cantonese and came to HK instead. But my company did send me to Japan for a while, so it was not a complete loss. Put your eggs in different baskets. Actually, I want to learn more Portuguese. I think the China / Brazil connection will grow. OK, my personal list to learn or improve or maintain: English Mandarin Cantonese French Spanish Japanese Tagalog Bahasa Indonesia / Malay Portuguese German Hindi Thai Arabic Russian Hokkien / Taiwanese Toishan / Sze Yap (my native? Tongue) Shanghai Italian Vietnamese I still have a ways to go. You can see why I will always be busy. I think you repeated yourself. |
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Post by helles on Feb 21, 2006 4:52:39 GMT -5
I studied korean at uni for a year..just because i wanted to learn another language, and everyone and their dog as rob put it, studies/d japanese, so just to be different, i chose korean.. but it has to be THE hardest language ever to learn.. jees. I've forgotten most of it now too.
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Post by etudes on Feb 21, 2006 5:05:18 GMT -5
I studied korean at uni for a year..just because i wanted to learn another language, and everyone and their dog as rob put it, studies/d japanese, so just to be different, i chose korean.. but it has to be THE hardest language ever to learn.. jees. I've forgotten most of it now too. really? i thought it'd be similar to japanese (or even easier; none of that chinese stuff i think). in jap, some ppl took it very hard while some ppl took it over the edge by learning more than they're supposed to  ..naughty students  haha |
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╗
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Post by ╗ on Feb 21, 2006 5:10:13 GMT -5
I think European languages are much easier if your 1st language is English.
In my 1st week in my 1st year of French, our teacher would talk to us ONLY in French and would never translate anything. Again, this is a beginner's course, and it's the 1st week!!
Surprisingly, we could understand most of what he said.
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Post by TeeHee on Feb 21, 2006 14:07:53 GMT -5
up until i moved out here to phoenix, AZ, i didn't really have much use for spanish, as there were barely any latinos in new orleans, so i didn't really get much into learning spanish. but since moving here, i'm surrounded by latinos galore(not that i'm complaining ;D) and it's used alot more commonly around here, so spanish is definitely on my must-learn list now. back in NOLA, i'd say the most commonly used language(other than the default English) was vietnamese, since that was the largest [asian] ethnic group. i come across some viets here and there around here, but nowhere near as often as i did back in NOLA. and i want to go to france one day eventually, so french is there too.
i plan to become a sign language interpreter, so ASL(american sign language) is a given must-learn. i began working with deaf people back in highschool, and that's pretty much how i got my start with ASL. since i didn't use it much, my signing has gotten kinda rusty, but i'm getting back into it sometime in the not too distant future(career/education-wise)
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Post by y2j on Mar 4, 2006 0:54:02 GMT -5
Japanese is still all the rage here. I majored in it in my Arts degree.
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Post by etudes on Mar 4, 2006 3:35:31 GMT -5
Japanese is still all the rage here. I majored in it in my Arts degree. same here, or french. chinese (mandarin?) is basically new, and not much school offer it. |
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Post by Aiko on Mar 4, 2006 15:31:35 GMT -5
^Haha I gave up on trying to improve my Japanese. I'm just gonna let it rot there unless my urge to learn suddenly comes back to me. Even though I'm fluent in Mandarin, my reading and writing skills aren't too good. I might consider taking some upper level classes, but my university doesn't offer any! I've always liked Spanish and it's extremely useful so I might try that. I learned a little bit of Korean from friends but chances are, it's not going to be too useful to me since I'm probably going to end up in a dentist office in a white suburb in the US fixing white people's teeth.
So the languages I already know:
American English
Chinese (Mandarin)
Japanese (ehh)
Languages I'd like to pick up:
Spanish
4 languages total, not too bad huh?
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Post by BayBoy415 on Mar 4, 2006 23:36:46 GMT -5
if youre living in Cali you better know spanish. LOTS of Latinos. People always say learning spanish is easy, but i cant figure out how to conjugate them damn er,ir, ar verbs
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). 
..naughty students 
haha 
