Esperanto will definitely be a language that will bind together many nations. It's simple to learn and easy to use.
I, too, thought this. But apparently it's quite a laughing stock in the linguistic area. I think it's a good way to get a feel for the strange rules of foreign languages, or at least a good starting place for them. But for millions of people learning it, I doubt that will ever happen. It doesn't have culture or history behind it. Or a nation, for that matter. Which seems pretty important.
Vietnamese sounds pretty cool. It's crazy difficult, to me. I'b a bit hesitant to learn more about it, but I feel that I probably will learn a bit in the future.
Russian would definitely be on the list, considering it's one of the many border nations to China. I think it is a really cool sounding language, and one of my favorite professors is the Russian teacher here so I'll probably wind up taking at least the introductory course.
I think Latin would be pretty cool as well. But I think it's only useful when you're working in a field that requires basic knowledge of the language. No one really knows exactly how to speak it, so that's gotta be a little odd when you're learning it.
German is somewhere on my list as well. I started out high school learning German, but I was stupid and wanted more of a challenge so I switched to Chinese instead. It actually is fairly easy to learn in my opinion, because it is pretty similar to English in a lot of ways. I would love to go to Germany, but I don't really have it very high on my list of languages to learn. I think I could get by in the country without really needing to be proficient.
Apparently Japanese is being viewed as the future universal business language, similar to how French was diplomatically.
whaaaaat? link?
But Japanese would be cool to learn. In case you haven't noticed I think a lot of languages would be really cool to learn. Asian languages in general are what I want to concentrate my studies in, and Japanese is on the list of Asian languages last time I checked. Don't let the 3 different alphabets turn you away. Japanese sounds really pretty in my opinion. But again it isn't super duper high on my list. I would like to be able to understand basic Japanese, but I don't think I want an academic level of proficiency in this language either.
I've studied Chinese for quite some time, but I haven't taken college classes to push me back into the routine of studying so my knowledge is falling very fast. I'd like to get back into it, but I'm waiting on a new Chinese teacher because äºèå¸ is such a butt. I already dealt with her in high school, I don't need a repeat of it. Nicho, let's start studying Chinese together on twitter again!
Korean is my newest interest. I had a friend live over there for 8 months and he constantly showed me pictures and told me all of these really cool stories and stuff and it sparked my interest. K-pop was a side-effect. Not the cause of my interest.
Aaaaaanyways. I would really like to learn French, now. There are many reasons behind this. The city I live in has extremely deep roots in French. We are the creators of Mardi Gras, after all. I have someone very close to me who is going off to grad school soon for a masters in French, and I would like to be able to communicate with them using the language they are so passionate about. My advisor is also pushing me to learn French, because that is her area of specialty and that's what advisors and professors are supposed to do. Push you to learn what they teach, etc etc. My sisters both took French in high school and college, and a lot of my close friends have chosen French as their target language.
If you could learn 1 and only 1 language what would it be?*
Besides the English thing, I would probably continue to concentrate my studies on Chinese.
What language do you believe is the most useful to learn and which will be the most useful in the future?
Again here I will say Chinese, probably because there are just so many people who speak it and it's a part of
BRIC. Portuguese, Russian, Hindu/Urdu, and Chinese (or Mandarin, whatever you want to say even though the phrases are interchangeable. Mandarin is just 'standard' Chinese) will probably be the most useful. If you are uncertain of what you want to do in life, go study any of these languages and you'll more than likely be able to find a government-supported job translating. Basically any company or agency or institution that participates on the global stage, will hire you for translating purposes.
