What language should I learn?

I'd recommend the Pimsleur audio course (long version) from Simon & Schuster, plus a good romanised electronic dictionary like the Seiko RM2000 (about $170).

Sounds like the fun way to learn! (But what I can't understand is why someone that bright is working at a shoe store...)

I'm surprised by the lack of CD ROMs on the subject myself, because as I said there are plenty of French, German, etc that seem perfectly feasible. I can't do the anime/manga thing though, that stuff freaks me. I got forced to watch Cowboy Beebop a few weeks ago, I mean what the hell?

Now that I don't know. But imagine if he was El Presidente here instead of there.

(arched brow) If that's true, then we must truly need some help!

Ally, Japanese is a great language to learn. Hard, as hell, but worth it. Most of the tech job ads I look at are willing to pay ridiculously high salaries for Japanese speakers (we're talking $50-70 K). Even if you don't want to do technology, interpreters and translators get paid much, too.

Besides, take a trip to Japan, and the citizens will be impressed when ypu have a conversation w/o flipping through "1000 Japanese Phrases, and How To Say It In English";>

...that is if you don't mind your man looking like he came from another universe to TAKE SOULS...

This is quite possibly the most offensive thing anyone's ever said to me. What's the matter with you? :P

Anyhow, I think I decided on German. Russian is too hard and I don't want to go to any of those countries, I might get shot or forced to wrestle bears.

You should learn Basque. Or Esperanto.

It means "the speed limit".

SI!

Urgh, if I learnt Japanese would that mean I had to go to SOAS with the CRUSTIES?? Zoiks!

I think you're thinking of llamas, luv. LLAMAS are no match for Conan the Barbarian. I'm not worried anyhow, it's not like either of you layabouts are actually going to do it. Though that white blazer is DEFINITELY going to get you shot in Russia, believe me.

No, seriously, I'm just being too lazy to look. Maybe I shall look right now. Who knows the mysteries of what I will do next with my varied and impressive workday.

t\"\'t - can you speak russian, then?

yep. and read and write, heheh.
though i'm prone to making *some* mishtakes now and again, no doubt.

(i did, in a manner of speaking, "speak" a tiny-weeny bit of "russian" on mark s's magical mystery interweb thread recently, ha ;)

Hey, what language should I learn??

In two weeks I will have completed two years of college German and I honestly have no interest in continuing trying to learn it. No offense to the language, just all of the joy of learning it has been sucked out of me. However, I want to learn a language on my own as a hobby. I also want to stick to languages that have Rosetta Stone software for them because I really enjoy how that system works.

My personal short list is:
- Latin
- Russian
- Irish
- Hindi

What do you all think? I'm not very interested in how "useful" the language will be for me. Moreso I'm interested in subjective things like how cool/badass/fun a language is, so therefore I need outside opinions on these matters.

Yay German! Wir lieben die Deutsche Sprache! (Here is where someone with more time on their hand's quotes Tom's German poem.)

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, March 6, 2002 8:00 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark

Ich habe eine Schlange
Meine Schlange hast viel Durst
Er geht in zum Kafe
Er hat Getranke und eine Wurst

it depresses the shit out of me to say this but as someone who is pretty fluent in irish, it is kinda pointless learning it. the only person I ever kinda spoke it with died last year (at 96) and the only programme I watch on telly is seacht which has subtitles anyway (which I catch myself reading), the only person I know who speaks it on a regular basis lives in Belgium.

Well I think Russian is badass and beautiful, but I'm biased because I learnt it while having a great time in Russia. It's not as hard to learn as implied upthread, especially if you know German (apparently - I don't, so wouldn't know).

I learnt Cyrillic in two days in St Petersburg from street signs and just about enough to order in restaurants which, worryingly, may be the most accomplishment I will ever achieve in this life. As my friend Mariah (or Mashenka as I realised onced I had cracked Cyrillic!) said while I was there, as many languages you speak, is as many people you are, which means in France I am a complete idiot.

It was pretty amazing when i realised, based on seeing Bulgaria written in Cyrillic at the beginning of DVD copyright warnings, that Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic.

I once taught my boss to read Cyrillic on the plane from the UK to St Petersburg. Fun and easy and really satisfying. The problems start with the grammar, but there's a kind of hump you can get over with that.

I love Russian, it's interesting and beautiful and possibly badass (although it's hard to say whether it's just the Russians who are badass), but it's really not a very useful language for most people living in the US. I know you said you're not concerned with that, but it is a problem if you're learning on your own because you need to be able to practice regularly.

Latin is not that badass. It's dead, so it's not conversational, and it's just really systematic and sensible. Irish is pretty badass on account of crazy spelling. Hindi sounds most exciting though. I would love to learn that someday!

i was gonna take portugese in college but then i started dating someone who had an italian mom so i took italian. always regret that esp. when i got into brazilian music

in terms of badassness latin is the coolest on that list. (xpost!)

irish (apparently- i don't speak german) is constructed similarly to german according to people i know that have both. learnign it would be neither badass nor useful, as t1ernan says.

xpost - you can practice Russian regularly in the US if you're in a city with Russians all over it. I heard loads in Philadelphia last weekend.

It would be badass, and you could make fun of people on the subway with me (a big disappointment with going out with a fucking australian for two years was robbing me of this important part of the Irish experience while on holiday)

eh you could have taught them the gist in two years, just sayin

too late for that

if i'd a chance to go back to my last ex and teach her a lesson it wouldn't be fuckin irish

I had an Irish friend who did this in Russia with another Irish friend on the metro - spent the whole journey talking about the other passengers - after 10 minutes one of the passengers got up, hoped in fluent Irish that they were having a pleasant stay in his city, and got off.

zing!

yeah, this has happened to every Irish person who ever tried this but whatevs. I have been on the receiving end of it in St Petersburg actually while we're at it, Nevsky prospect, Offaly savages.

how could you understand them?

i got the gist

even through an offaly accent. impressive, loike

jesus christ I am kinda burning with rage just thinking about the existence of Offaly. Birr is the elbow scree of western civilisation.

take it to the relevant thread- you know where it is.

haha, they've got that fucking telescope

anyway viceroy don't learn irish mar ta an gaeilge gan usaid in aon chur

OK so basically its been boiled down to Russian vs. Latin as far as I'm concerned...

With Latin I could read old classics in their original, but thats about it.
With Russian I can read Russian classics in their original, and talk to Russian peeps.

I'm going with Russian. Thank you all for your input!

ach amhain, an úsáid atá leiritear anseo.

xp

It's not as hard to learn as implied upthread, especially if you know German (apparently - I don't, so wouldn't know).

eh?!?

(i mean, german isn't a Slavic language so i don't understand how learning one would make learning the other easier.)

i mean, i understand German and i can read Dutch fairly easily (though i can't understand it when i hear it spoken). but these two languages are closely related (plus if you know English then Dutch is pretty easy to learn to read).

i am Polish, so i say fuck all russians. monsters, all of them.

the russians i know all make interesting microhouse music, though!

I did Erasmus in Dutch speaking Belgium for a few months and without concretely learning any Dutch at all beyond alstublieft and dank u well managed to pretty much follow every class.

Eisbaer - German has cases. Russian has cases. Cases are a pain when you first try to learn them, so knowing a bit about how they work is useful. But I think that's where the usefulness of German ends. Don't know how true any of this is first-hand though.

I did some Polish at university but Russian wiped it from my brain :-( Sorry table.

i've got the polish rosetta stone, i didn't get far w/ it before i actually went to poland but i was actually able to pick up a couple of words here and there and could phonetically sound out polish words on signs pretty easily. now if only my friend would give it back to me...