learning a foreign language?
 

At my work, I have tons upon tons of free time. I've decided that with this free time I'm going to a learn a few foreign languages.

I was hoping some of you guys may have some personal experience or knowledge about the subject.

Currently I speak English (native language), spanish, and a little bit of italian. I plan on learning some of the romance languages since they should be easy for me to pick up, but ultimately I would like to learn some other languages as well (maybe 3 or 4 more).

I have the following questions:

1. what are some of the easier languages to learn aside from the romance languages?

2. what are the hardest languages to learn

3. what do you think would be the top 5 or top 10 most useful languages to know (romance languages included)

4. I've heard the rosetta stone website is a good place to learn foreign languages. Does anybody have any experience with this site?

5.) does anybody have any other advice about learning foreign languages?

6.) any weird languages I should learn just for the hell of it... i.e. swahili or something?

7.) how long would it take an average person to learn some of the languages fluently (maybe number of hours spent studying, or a rough number of days)? i.e. chinese, russian, arabic, french etc.

thanks in advance, I really appreciate it

-Lane

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

Pimsleur. It's gonna take years to become fluent at any foreign language.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

I've heard Hungrian is one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Hungarian is my mother tongue, so I can't comment directly, but I can't understand a word most people say when they try out their newly acquired skills on me.

That being said I've met 2 people in my life who've learned to speak Hungarian fluently w/ no accent. 1 from Minnesota and 1 from Washington.

A dialect of Chinese, and one of Indian would be very useful based upon #s of people who speak them.

You'd have a super easy time learning Portugese. Try reading it. You'll understand about 1/2 of it right off the bat if you speak English, Spanish, and a little Italian... an there's a lot of Brazilian hotties [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

i think thai is pretty easy

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

French, because you can swear like a sacrément d'esti tabernac espèce de fife.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

if you can learn an uncommon foriegn language while being young, white and attractive you will get mad *****. this is a fact.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

If you want to pick up the romance languages, learn some latin first.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
French, because you can swear like a sacrément d'esti tabernac espèce de fife.

[/ QUOTE ]

Va te faire foutre!

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

I almost made this post a while back.

I'm attempting to learn Danish using Rosetta Stone. The software is pretty decent and the way it teaches you is pretty good (no English translation... all learning is in the language you are trying to learn).

I've decided this is one of the hardest languages to learn, at least pronounciation wise. There are a ton of letters/sounds we don't have in English (or Spanish, the other language I know).

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think thai is pretty easy

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? U don't have trouble with the tones?

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've decided this is one of the hardest languages to learn, at least pronounciation wise

[/ QUOTE ]

out of all the languages you have tried to learn?

Danish is actually very similar to Norwegian. Somewhat similar to Swedish.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

In the army, I attended the Foreign Language Institute. They teach dozens of different languages there. The languages are rated by difficulty for English speakers to learn, with Catagorie 1 being easiest, and Catagorie 4 being hardest.

There were only four Cat-4 languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic.

I was taking Korean. Imagine going to school full-time, where you only take one class all day, every day. Eight hours a day (Mon-Fri) in the classroom (virtually all of the instructors are native Korean speakers), 4-6 hours of homework/study each night, and living in a barracks which is really like a dorm where everyone else is studying Korean, where you are encouraged to speak as much Korean as possible to each other.

That's a lot of immersion, right?

The goal is to teach you enough that if you woke up in downtown Seoul tomorrow, you'd be able to survive. You could talk to a doctor, or an auto mechanic, or you could ask for directions and understand what is being said to you.

The course is 52 weeks.

For contrast, the Spanish course is 26 weeks. Spanish is a Cat-1 language. The theme for our company party was, "I Wish I Was In Spanish".

One Korean instructor, who was also familiar with Chinese and Japanese, said he thinks Korean is the toughest of the three. Chinese grammar is similar to English (subject-verb-object); Japanese letters have similar pronunciations; Korean offers none of those things.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

That's pretty hardcore.

Is this the one in Monterey?

Do you speak Korean now? Do they eat spicy food or what?

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

I think the easiest will be one of the scandinavian languages, German, and Dutch. Hardest is probably a tonal languages - Cantonese is apparently brutal.

I would say the top five languages to know for an American are:
1. English
2. Spanish
3. Chinese (Mandarin)
4. Japanese
5. German

English is obvious and not foreign. Spanish is good for business and huge due to immigration. Chinese, Japanese and German good for business. Chinese will become huge in the future. Basically there is a huge drop off after Japanese on my list. German and say Hindi or Bengali aren't as necesary since most German or Indian businessmen speak English. Arabic could easily be 5 due to the current political climate.

My general advice is obvious - go to a country where the language is the given language. Hange out at a local bar until you become a regular.

As for strange languages I would suggest learning Basque or Catalan. If you already speak Spanish you could easily just hang out in Barcelona and find an attractive girl there willing to teach you her mother tongue.

Jared

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Chinese will become huge in the future.

[/ QUOTE ]

Per capita GDP in China: $5,600. right between Venezuela and Cape Verde, 118th in the world.
per capita gdp rankings

granted, total GDP is bigger than Japan...but you need to realise the vast vast majority of people there are dirt poor

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

Yup, Monterey. God, that's a beautiful place to live when Uncle Sam is paying the rent.

I got bounced out of the army after graduating the Korean school, but before I got shipped to Korea (thank God! they had a tent waiting for me on the DMZ). So I never spoke a word of Korean again. Right now, all I can remember is the Day One stuff, "Hello" and "Thank you".

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

The lowest GDP per capita country I've been to is Nicaragua... 163 of 232.

I think I've driven through Luxembourg... or not...

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The lowest GDP per capita country I've been to is Nicaragua... 163 of 232.

I think I've driven through Luxembourg... or not...

[/ QUOTE ]

I lived in Luxembourg for 2 months. very....clean.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

Yeah. I used to live in the Bay Area, so we'd visit Monterey a lot.

Hope you were a diver or otherwise nautically oriented during your stay.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

anyone in india or china with business with the west can speak english.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

the reason to learn a language is to score chicks.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hope you were a diver or otherwise nautically oriented during your stay.

[/ QUOTE ]

Was really into running and bicycling, trying to lose weight to avoid getting kicked out.

So jogging along those beaches, and bicycling the 17-mile drive every weekend, was pretty cool.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

I had a different experience than the army guy. I took Korean in college, because I wanted to learn an Asian language and most people told me Korean was the easiest one.

And I agree with whoever said Pimsleur is good. I've been listening to their German (new for me) and Spanish (re-learning what I forgot from high school) tapes lately in my car, and both languages are coming along pretty quickly so far.

And I agree with what most people are saying about the most useful: spanish, chinese, french, german, and [whichever language will get you closer to the particular girl you're interested in].

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

Go with German, it is easy and very useful. Stay away from Cantonese - it is hard as hell.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

Thai is not easy by any standard.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

tin is for sure the easiest, there is a scale measuring the difficulty of picking up foreign languages. This scale goes from 1 to 5. Chinese, any dialect is a five for an English speaker, Spanish is a two, Latin is a one. Not only that but 50% of Latin words are cognates with an english word.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

One or two of the thai tones are difficult for me, but i usually just work around them, plus when you use a word in a sentence people can tell what youre trying to say.

Re: learning a foreign language?
 

If you want something easy, go with Bahasa Indonesia or Malay. Non-tonal, lots of similarities to English, uses an alphabet, and no conjugation. It's cake.