i speak english, spanish, and Portuguese.
I want to learn French, Arabic, russian, Italian, and mandarin
i live in the u.s., by the way, with Hispanic relatives. i wanna focus on a new language but idk which one
Back in reddit in r/languagelearning whenever someone asked this question without giving any context about who they are or what they want out of language learning there was a long running joke to reply with “Uzbek”
You should learn Uzbek.
Mandarin and French are likely to be the most useful. French because of how much territory they had influenced and Mandarin for business.
Python would be a great choice too 😉
I learned French and it hasn’t done much for me. Occasional use in the Middle East but I’ve spent considerable time in multiple countries there and it’s still only occasionally useful. I love the language and have no regrets. But I’d get 1000x the use out of Spanish, here in the US.
Depends on why you want to learn the language. I’d say mandarin could be very useful to know for future employment prospects.
China’s economic growth was on such a steep climb for enough years that we all basically thought we’d need to know Mandarin to get by in the future. Remember in Firefly how they all cursed in Mandarin because it was basically the primary language of humanity in the future. I know white people in California that sent their kids to Mandarin language school.
But this impression has peaked. In the 80s we thought we’d all be speaking Japanese soon. And the Chinese growth miracle is over. With demographic collapse staring them in the face, I’m no longer seeing them featuring so prominently in 20 years. India has surpassed their population and are taking a lot of their business - and they speak English
Though I suppose as languages go, Mandarin is as good as any other and better than many. What are you going to do with Italian, honestly?
What are you going to do with Italian, honestly?
Lol even though I have Italian ancestry this is exactly why I chose Spanish instead when I needed to choose a language to study in highschool. I’ve since forgotten a bunch of it, but it still helps since I’ve always worked with a least a few Spanish speaking people that didn’t speak English well.
The language of wherever you want to spend substantial time. Probably not Russian I would think, but you do you
当然是 汉语/普通话 啦
这建议不是因为我祖先是华裔，没偏见。😁
Of course its Chinese Language - Mandarin
My advice is in no way biased because of my Chinese Ancestry, totally no bias at all! 😉
(You shall suffer the same fate as me being tortured by the very difficult writing system)
But serious tho, if China internationalizes more, democratizes more. I can see a Democratic China starting to become equals with the, now-in-decline- USA in a fascist-ish downward spiral
Or, you know, you wanna become an astronaut then have to perform an emergency landing due to a space-disaster by commandeering a Chinese landing-capsule and doesn’t understand the controls because they are all in Chinese, then its gonna be a lifesaver.
P.S. I haven’t written in Chinese (besides typing pinyin) for over 10 years, so maybe you’ll beat me, a “native” speaker, in terms of skill? 👀 (Too difficult, I gave up. Not in the country anymore, so its not too useful to me)
I’m fluent in Spanish and English, currently learning French. I like to describe it as Spanish with all the parts of English that make no sense. But knowing Spanish does make it a lot easier.
French will help you in Europe and Canada
Same here. Learning French knowing English and Spanish is too easy.
It it was my choice I would try to learn the language of the culture I’m most interested in
English, spanish, Portuguese… they all shear a lot of common words. With no context and thinking of “which language would be more fun to learn”, I would choose between ukrainian, arabic and mandarin.
Depends on your goals. I’d say learn the one you have the most use for. If you don’t have a use and are just learning for fun, then pick the most interesting one. If you’re learning intending to acquire the language as quickly as possible, then either Italian or French would be good choices.
I am learning Chinese (mandarin, aka 汉语, aka 普通话) and I personally find it very logical, interesting, and fun as a native english speaker who used to be conversationally fluent in Spanish. There are definite difficulties with the language (soooooo many homonyms, characters (汉子) take some getting used to, tones, etc) but if you learn it, there is a lot of reading material and media that will become accessible to you. Additionally some things about it are easier than other languages - like the grammar is very simple, you don’t have to worry about conjugations and tenses as much. Also, I think that it provides more cognitive benefits because of how different it is to romance languages.
汉语是很酷。我推荐你！
Would choose Toki Pona, later I would like to learn Swahili too
mi olin e toki pona!!
sina wile kama sona e toki mute la, o kama sona e toki pona. toki pona li toki sin sina nanpa wan la, sina kama sona e toki ante la, sona pi toki pona li ken pona e kama sona sina!
If you want to learn a lot of languages, learn Toki Pona. If Toki Pona’s your first new language, and you’re learning other languages, knowledge of Toki Pona can help your learning!
(“you” as in anyone reading this, not the person I’m replying to)
I’ve taught myself Toki Pona and am in the process of learning Japanese rn (read: procrastinating heavily), and the experience of having already learned one language has definitely helped me learn how to learn a language. Toki Pona just happens to be a pretty easy language to learn, but it’s by no means “trivial” to learn, it still takes effort and dedication.
Esperanto is Chad language
Jes
Why these languages specifically? If it’s for different reasons you should pick what’s most important to you. Also, with Spanish and Portuguese, Italian and French should be much easier than the others but don’t you already understand a good part of them?
French is probably the most wide spread. Mandarin has most people, but only in one country.
French and Italian will come relatively easy for you, the others are quite different. Personally I’d go with Arabic, but that’s just because there are many Arabic speaking people at my job.
I’ve been learning Russian and it’s so much fun. Very challenging, but not as much as I expected. Of course, the case system is quite different from English, so you would have an easier time with French or Italian.
I’ve also heard Arabic is very cool to learn. It sounds quite nice too.
