What Language to Learn?

[Despain]

Arabic Spanish and Chinese would be it imo

ftfy

Being able to speak these 3 languages will make you a beast. Majority of the population speaks Spanish in the Western Hemisphere. I don't know how far French will take you compared to Spanish.

[toonces]

is all about where you live, where you plan to live and what type of career you plan to persuade.

But any language you pick, i would start with the easy one first so you get a grip on what it takes.

and im Biast, but I would start with spanish, is hella easy and the pronounciation will help you with Japanese if you ever feel like learning that.

Arab and Mandarin seem like great choices for the future too.

[Beckwin]

If access to native speakers is the main issue, then i can't see much use for learning anything besides spanish in the US. Perhaps living in Europe might help.

the native speaker thing is more about ease of learning rather than any other sort of value. otherwise, you'll at best end up sounding like a textbook that speaks really slowly.

[Blackmagik]

the native speaker thing is more about ease of learning rather than any other sort of value. otherwise, you'll at best end up sounding like a textbook that speaks really slowly.

Thank god there are websites of sorts that you can record yourself speaking in a different language you are learning, and other people will comment on it, giving helpful advise on things.

[Darus Grey]

Thank god there are websites of sorts that you can record yourself speaking in a different language you are learning, and other people will comment on it, giving helpful advise on things.

Too bad their effect is negligible.

There is an X factor to language acquisition that REQUIRES access to native speakers, it's a component of human interaction that is, so far, completely irreplaceable by any technology.

i.e. If you had say a long series of videos of a native speakers, and a native speaker, same person, saying the same exact things, in the same time-frame. The people listening to the native speaker will learn almost 10x faster as shown in studies. It's a factor we don't understand well outside simply knowing it exists.

I used to be very encouraging of language learners using whatever they have available, but as we've learned more and more, I honestly believe without access to native speakers, one's time is simply better spent pursuing something else, because you will never get to the level you want any other way(for now...).

[Beckwin]

You may not get to the exact level you want, but you can acquire useful knowledge. But what happens is that you spend years studying, and while your grammar and vocab might be pretty good, your actual communicative competence isn't up to par. So you might become fairly literate, maybe get some decent writing ability, and maybe can do pretty well understanding one-way aural formats (TV shows, movies, etc) but conversation-wise you'll be behind.

Native speaker access will provide authentic speech for your brain to break apart and opportunities to have real interactional practice. It's pretty well documented that non-native speakers adopt a set of behaviors when speaking to native speakers that differs from how they address other NNS, and there's something going on with that which contributes to language acquisition. But basically, it's hard to get real practice unless you have some real conversations and tasks involving native speakers/authentic situations.

That all being said, chances are there is a foreign or native-speaker community you can reach out to. If you're at a decent sized university, chances are you can find native speakers of many languages. Also look into cross-tutoring opportunities, or even community/workplace opportunities (i.e. a friend of mine is learning Spanish and when he worked at a sushi place, he'd shoot the shit with all the mexican chefs in the back).

[toonces]

not learning a language cuz you don't have access to native speakers? that is just lazy talk.

[Darus Grey]

not learning a language cuz you don't have access to native speakers? that is just lazy talk.

No, It's REAL TALK.

On that note, something that is often overlooked in language is not just learning new languages, but learning new dialects.

With nearly 700 dialects of English spoken in the united states, being multi-dialectal can be just as valuable as being multi-lingual.

Like on my resume or my CV I often list myself as being fluent in Standard American English, Buffalonian English, and African American Vernacular English.

Or under French that I'm specifically an expert in Qubec French.

Just something to keep in mind, there's a lot to explore within your own native language without having to even branch out.

[toonces]

that real talk was from your african american english?

[wop]

Wait, they speak English in America?

[Beckwin]

yep, and it's the kind that the rest of the world wants to learn

[Kaelan?]

Like the lady governor of Texas on teaching kids Spanish

If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me

[Zoolander]

If you are gunna go with a Middle Eastern language, as cool as Farsi is, you would be a fool not to do Arabic. The number of people that only speak Farsi is small and a lot of Farsi speakers know Arabic since it is the language of the Koran. Maybe if you wanna work for the CIA/etc and lock yourself into a small language then go for it, otherwise you will get far more mileage out of Arabic.

Hindu has potential too as many projections have India outpacing and passing China in population and economics. And yea seriously, there is no Chinese...Mandarin or Cantonese people. Spanish will really be needed of anyone doing business in the U.S. in the near future. Everyone I talk to who is already in their careers preaches this constantly and its not really hard to learn and so many people all over the world speak it. It is definitely the most practical second language if you are in the states.

[Electro]

Why should anyone learn spanish? We live in American and we should only have to speak American. We didn't genocide an entire race to learn a different language

Nevermind im gonna be nice

[Darus Grey]

Hindu has potential too as many projections have India outpacing and passing China in population and economics. And yea seriously, there is no Chinese...Mandarin or Cantonese people

There's even less of a "Hinidi" language than there is Chinese. "Hindi" is like our "Standard American English"...less than 8% of the population speaks it(way less for hindi), and pretty much only in large business environments where they all speak English anyways.

Once you get down below that top layer, there's about 300 languages(before even getting into dialects) spoken in India, each Provence more or less has it's own regional language, each city their own, and the more remote villages each their own. Language is also a in-group marker of caste in India, where certain castes are not allowed to speak certain languages(which is why India is a hotbed of Calquing research).

Blah blah blah, wiki article is actually pretty good on the subject http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

China on the otherhand has significantly less linguistic diversity compared to India, though you're right that there's no "Chinese" language, just like there's no "Hindu" language as well though(least not in the unified sense you meant).

May as well just leave this here too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languag..._United_States