Learning a new language, Which one? Options

[boogie_artist]

I am looking into learning a new language, which do you think would be the easiest out of the following to learn:

French
German
Italian
Dutch

[PadSpin]

I'd say French but then I've been doing it since I was 8!

Arguably German is more useful nowadays but it's not easy.

Dutch is a lovely sounding language but who speaks it?

[Sam Hain]

Mandarin, English and Spanish are the most widely spoken languages.
You know English, so it depends if you want your second language (from that list) to be very useful ... in Spanish speaking countries!

[jdcyl]

Italian. If you learn either Italian or French, it makes the other easy to pick up. I also learned French first, but objectively, I find Italian more regular than French, so that makes it the easier of the two.

German is a bit more difficult. Wouldn't know about Dutch, but of course it has more similar with German than French or Italian.

Russian is hard, but at least it still uses an alphabet. Have not tried languages that use characters and no alphabet.

Really the difficulty for native English speakers is that our vowels don't exercise our mouths as much as other languages do.

-.-
Sorry to say, but the conventional thinking about which language will be most useful based on the numbers who speak it, doesn't offer reliable guidance. You'd have to become REALLY proficient in Mandarin if you were thinking of a high flying career in Beijing. But even if you became fluent in Mandarin, Chinese and Japanese, and then found you really love Italy and wished to stay there, then you've still picked incorrectly.

This post has been edited by jdcyl: Jun 5 2010, 13:21

[boogie_artist]

Yeah I think I read alot more countries speak German, could be the most useful.

[Corius]

German sticks with you when you learn it too, I can't speak German but I can more or less get the gist of text I see from German friends .

[ic1male]

Whichever one you choose, check out the Michel Thomas discs. I learnt a lot of Spanish and Mandarin from those.

[tizianofan]

It all depends what languages (if any) you've done before tbh. If you've done something like Spanish for example, I'd say Italian or Portuguese would be easiest. And French too. However, they're not necessarily the most useful career-wise generally speaking compared to German. But for fun, I'd say Italian any time. Plus they do say its the language of lurrrve (I think. May be confusing it with French there. But it sounds hot either way!) so that's a brucie bonus

[jumbler]

-.-
Sorry to say, but the conventional thinking about which language will be most useful based on the numbers who speak it, doesn't offer reliable guidance. You'd have to become REALLY proficient in Mandarin if you were thinking of a high flying career in Beijing. But even if you became fluent in Mandarin, Chinese and Japanese, and then found you really love Italy and wished to stay there, then you've still picked incorrectly.

Exactly. Chinese languages (including Mandarin) are only spoken in China - not in any other country (OK, if you're picky you could say Singapore, Malaysia etc). Maybe. But it's not a widely-spoken language other than in terms of native-speakers. It's only spoken in one part of the globe.

I wouldn't bother learning it - it seems an awful lot of effort for learning, and communication (not least having to learn a whole new character system), unless you travel there enough to use it, or have friends or contacts who wish to speak it. It's also very difficult to master in terms of pronunciation. Different pronunciations or inflections are actually different words or meanings; if you thought English was bad, you ain't seen anything yet.

Sounds like a total headache, I really wouldn't bother.

German sticks with you when you learn it too, I can't speak German but I can more or less get the gist of text I see from German friends .

Definitely. Totally. I guess I've been lucky to be learning German at a time when we have the internet, and there's more travel - I've found it really easy, and interesting to learn. And also, partly due to my interest in travel, and Germany itself. There are so many web pages, and articles out there, it's very easy to get a hold of.

In fact, in some ways I'm more fluent now than when I was 18 or 20. I'm pretty good at one-way translation. Just don't ask me to speak any of it, though, 'cos it all goes wrong!!

I'd say French but then I've been doing it since I was 8!

Arguably German is more useful nowadays but it's not easy.

Dutch is a lovely sounding language but who speaks it?

Who says German isn't easy?? Dutch is a lovely language, yes. And it's spoken widely in Belgium too. And if you know anyone who speaks Afrikaans, it's very similar. If you have knowledge of Dutch/German, that'll help you learn Danish.

And yes, I've learnt French since I was 11 - stays with you for life.

[boogie_artist]

I'm liking the idea of learning German, plus I would like to go there for a holiday at some point.

[jumbler]

It all depends what languages (if any) you've done before tbh. If you've done something like Spanish for example, I'd say Italian or Portuguese would be easiest. And French too. However, they're not necessarily the most useful career-wise generally speaking compared to German. But for fun, I'd say Italian any time. Plus they do say its the language of lurrrve (I think. May be confusing it with French there. But it sounds hot either way!) so that's a brucie bonus

Italian is pretty easy to learn, too. I will say, I found it easier because I'd already learnt French, so never had to try it the other way round. I've never learnt Spanish as such (or Dutch), but have found it really easy to learn based on my experience so far; my brain's a bit like a computer, it links words, phrases, expressions so that helped too.

Not sure about Portuguese, though. It has a very unique sound to it, even though on paper it's very similar to Spanish. Though arguably it's a language you could learn instead of Mandarin, because it's spoken in Brazil - and has almost as many speakers as Spanish.

I'd just give any of them a whirl, really. But be prepared to stick at it. You don't get anywhere fast, unless you practice. Just like driving a car.

I'm liking the idea of learning German, plus I would like to go there for a holiday at some point.

Good choice!! In terms of similarity to English, it's Dutch followed by German. Once you can 'Germanise' and get used to the vocab., you realise that it has a similar flow to English. Just need to master the word order a bit.

[BonjourCava]

French is far more useful. It's more widely spoken than German, it's also the official language of most international bodies. It's probably the easiest of the lot as well, coming from someone who's tried to learn all 4.

[ic1male]

Japanese is pretty easy. The sentences can be broken down into smaller segments each with their own particle. Plus half their words seem to be English but Japanized. Like kouhii for coffee, biiru for beer, orenji juusu for orange juice. There you already know three drinks.

[jumbler]

Japanese is pretty easy. The sentences can be broken down into smaller segments each with their own particle. Plus half their words seem to be English but Japanized. Like kouhii for coffee, biiru for beer, orenji juusu for orange juice. There you already know three drinks.

But how'd you learn the kanji, though?? Must take months, years even!!

French is far more useful. It's more widely spoken than German, it's also the official language of most international bodies. It's probably the easiest of the lot as well, coming from someone who's tried to learn all 4.

Yeah, definitely. You may find that, if you're meeting with a group of foreign people whom you don't share a first language with, French may just be that language. Although English is widely used now, French can still often be used as a second language to communicate with.

This post has been edited by jumbler: Jun 5 2010, 15:01

[ic1male]

Generally, you learn a language to communicate in real-time with people. Writing can be done later on. After all, illiterate people manage quite well in society, don't they?

[BonjourCava]

Generally, you learn a language to communicate in real-time with people. Writing can be done later on. After all, illiterate people manage quite well in society, don't they?

Glkshgf dgflk eroire mdjwiq e!!!

[stefanino]

I saw a cartoon once: a couple are in a travel agency and declare: "We want to go somewhere where there are no irregular verbs!"
Esperanto has no irregular verbs and is piss easy to learn but do you know anyone who speaks it?

I got my GCSEs in French and German centuries ago and I have done evening courses in Spanish and Japanese (& sign language). I learnt Italian when I came to work in Italy.

You seem to be drawn towards German...I'm not sure that's a good idea because of the case system. An example: Both Mann ('man') and Hund ('dog) are masculine so 'the man' and 'the dog' are 'der Mann' and 'der Hund'. But if you want to say 'the dog bites the man', 'the man' must be expressed in the accusative case: 'der Hund beisst den Mann'*... Then add the dative and genitive cases to the mix...then consider you have to learn...
prepositions that require the dative case,
prepositions that require the accusative case,
prepositions that require the genitive case,
prepositions that require the dative or accusative case depending on whether there is movement or not!

Japanese is pretty easy. The sentences can be broken down into smaller segments each with their own particle. Plus half their words seem to be English but Japanized. Like kouhii for coffee, biiru for beer, orenji juusu for orange juice. There you already know three drinks.

'Watashi-no namae-wa Stefanino des. Anata-no name-wa nan des-ka? Let's look at that...

Watashi = 'I'
-no = a suffix that changes a subject pronoun into a possessive adjective so 'watashi' + 'no' = 'my'
namae = 'name'
-wa = a suffix that shows that something is the subject of the sentence
des = 'is' more or less
Anata = 'you' so Anata-no = your
nan des-ka = 'is' more or less combined with suffix that shows it's a question....*

EASY?

*I hope I've remembered these examples correctly...we're dealing with stuff I got taught in the 70's and 80's...

[blake2108]

Der, Die and Das always confused me at school. I gave up German in year 9 and 3 years on I can only remember certian words. No sentences.

I learned spanish at school for a few months too. I couldn't understand my teacher though. I can't remember any of that.

I want to learn Norwegian.

[Pluvia]

The thing with French is, if you understand and learn your verbs you've set the foundations. From there you just need to learn vocab and small grammar points. Then it all falls into place. The part about french that most people find difficult is verbs. But once you get your head around them they become a lot easier.
I don't know much about the other languages, but Spanish, French and Italian are all linked. As they all derive from Latin. They're the 'Romance languages.'
With German, quite a bit of it is linked with English. So you may find that quite easy, but the grammar apparently gets quite a bit harder later on.
Good luck on whatever language you learn

[ic1male]

EASY?

*I hope I've remembered these examples correctly...we're dealing with stuff I got taught in the 70's and 80's...

Exactly. It's all perfectly logical in your example. And you've remembered it perfectly.

As for irregular verbs. Try Mandarin then! The verb form for anyone, any time is always the infinitive!

There is no I am, you are, he is, I was, you were, he was, etc. It's all just 'be'. I be, you be, he be and then add a particle at the end to indicate something in the past.

Der, Die and Das always confused me at school. I gave up German in year 9 and 3 years on I can only remember certian words. No sentences.

I still remember that 20 years on - der, die, das, den, dem, des, etc.