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Forums → The Tavern → Languages
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Hola! Ñ...а Ñ...а Ñ...а.
Translation: Hi! Ha ha ha.
Welcome to the languages thread! Everything language based and how we communicate using a beautiful language will be talked about here. Grammar of languages, best language, translating between languages, and anything that can somehow be related to a language is welcome here.
Now for a few questions to start off the thread:
If you could learn 1 and only 1 language what would it be?*
What language do you believe is the most useful to learn and which will be the most useful in the future?
*In addiction to your first language. If you know more than one language than you can still pick another.
- 54 Replies
African languages feel left out Moon.
Well if I learned French I could get by in some parts of Africa. I wish I knew more about languages there, but I simply don't have that knowledge. I know Arabic is used in northern/desert parts. French is used in some areas, of course. Swahili? What about the language of the clicks... what is that called? That would be cool. English is spoken in Ghana, I know.
If you could learn 1 and only 1 language what would it be?*
German. Having my dad's side be a multi-century long German family It just seems right to learn. Also, I hope to go to Germany with my dad sometime and it'd be nice to be able to speak to my dad (he is fluent due to business there) and the rest of the country. It sounds really neat.
What language do you believe is the most useful to learn
Probably Mandarin... I can see it overtaking English in the near future and if I ever get into foreign business or something it'd be very helpful to learn.
I would learn russian.. people would think I'm a member of the KGB.. xp
I already speak two fluently! Actually I speak neither one really fluently but close enough! If I had to learn one it would be French. Useful it would be and so much chocolate!
No. My parents each had one German parent. That would make them half German. I come from two half-German people and am therefore a quarter German
That math doesn't make sense. If your parents each had one German parent, that means one half of your grandparents are German, and that is the mathematical equivalent of having one fully German parent. Thus, you are half German.
If you could learn 1 and only 1 language what would it be?*
Latin, Portuguese or Catalan. They're the only languages that would help me at this point in time.
What language do you believe is the most useful to learn and which will be the most useful in the future?
Probably castellano (don't know how to say it in English). It's a far dialect of Spanish that's engulfing much of South America and even parts of Africa.
Erp, I guess Arabic would be included as well, due to the Moorish influence and all...
That math doesn't make sense. If your parents each had one German parent, that means one half of your grandparents are German, and that is the mathematical equivalent of having one fully German parent. Thus, you are half German.
He's right. Matt if you had this set of parent:
German/other German/other
Then 2/4 would be German therefore you are half.
I have an ability to use an English accent. Like in American, it is " Wa-ter " and then " Wu-der "
@Saldivan i speak castellano i could teach you classes :P ( it is my national language by the way) ^^
It's a far dialect of Spanish that's engulfing much of South America and even parts of Africa.
Mexican Spanish is the only Spanish.
I have an ability to use an English accent.
I cannot do accents for the life of me.
So if I could have a language insta-zapped into my brain, I'd pick Chinese. Traditional, please. Not just because everyone's saying it'll become the future business language, but because a large portion of my extended family lives in Taiwan, and communicating with them with the limited words I know gets my by, but not really much else in terms of conversation. And my mom's invited my 8 & 10 year old cousins over for the summer, are sending them to the camp where I volunteer (which I think is not that great of an idea because they can't speak a word of English and I wouldn't always be around to help translate). So yeah, I'd choose Chinese for personal reasons, I guess you could say.
But, pretending I already knew that, I'd want to learn either Japanese or Russian, just because I find those to be exciting. (And Japanese because animes and stuff... If Russia ever takes over the world, I think it'd be helpful to know Russian, but it's really because I want to learn Russian because it's an interesting language. I mean sure, a logical choice for future success and other things would probably be either Spanish or German, but who cares about the future...
Hmm. Allow me some comments. And forgive me my pedantry
[quote=Riptizoid101]Esperanto will definitely be a language that will bind together many nations. It's simple to learn and easy to use.[/quote]
Esperanto seems to be no closer to becoming the language of a brother- (or sister-) hood of nations than it never was during the heighdays of the popularity of such notions (say during the -- earlier -- first half of the last century?) No doubt fun to learn, or even useful to an extent, but exactly the most practical, I wouldn't say so.
[quote=pangtongshu]Latin. Especially if you want ease with learning Western languages.[/quote]
Only if you wanted to learn any of the Romance languages (or Roman languages, or Latin languages) -- notably Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Italian. Romanian seems to be commonly included among them, although I'm not sure what ease a command of Latin would give you with it. A further range of local languages or dialects gets classified so, but ditto.
However, it would only be of help if you already happen to have learned it, or be learning it or intend to, for whatever reason. If you want to learn any of these languages, there's no reason not to go directly for them, instead of taking a roundabout way through learning Latin first.
[quote=daleks]Vietnamese would be interesting. Would help you get a start in Asian languages.[/quote]
Again, only with regards to certain Asian languages, belonging to that class. Presumably.
Re: The predicted prevalence (or not) of Japanese and/or Mandarin, that depends of course on one's prognoses of the global power scale in the near or more distant future.
[quote=MoonFairy]It [German] actually is fairly easy to learn in my opinion, because it is pretty similar to English in a lot of ways.[/quote]
Yes, as would be any of the Germanic languages (with the West Germanic including German, English, and Dutch, and the North Germanic or Nordic languages including Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian). A hindrance to native English speakers will be they don't commonly get exposed to foreign languages as much, or not from a young age, or aren't as commonly required or forced to learn them. So they'll miss some groundwork there. Nonetheless all of these languages should be relatively easy to learn to them. To the one person more so than the other, no doubt (hey, I suck at maths ).
[quote=MoonFairy]Hindu/Urdu[/quote]
Um, that would be Hindi. I did say forgive my pedantry
[quote=daleks]Italian: See Spanish, they are basically the same language.[/quote]
Nope, not by a long stretch. While it is true that knowing one of the (main) Latin languages will help you learning any of the other; and that they are somewhat mutually intelligible, and you will find some people who with some goodwill and patience (yours included) will understand you to a degree across these languages; the keywords here are only "somewhat" and "to a degree," and in fact you'll find by far the majority just won't know what the hell you're on about. Nor then may you be, of them.
(My experience or impression is that again it may help if those people themselves may not speak it as their first language, or may otherwise have been more exposed to foreign languages.)
Well if I learned French I could get by in some parts of Africa. I wish I knew more about languages there, but I simply don't have that knowledge. I know Arabic is used in northern/desert parts.
Yes, generally speaking; but "Arabic" is too generic a description: You'd need to learn the Arabic that is spoken in a given country.
One can learn a "high" Arabic, or Modern Standard Arabic; but my understanding is it's a formalized language, that may be used in the mainstream media, but otherwise when spoken will be understood only by the educated, who will still tend to answer in their native tongue. And that speaking it, apart from being not understood, may otherwise come across as somewhat pedantic, indeed.
It is said that beyond this, Egyptian is widely understood owing to its great influence on (popular) culture (the movies, and so TV, etc.), but that it's still not a safe overall bet to get by just anywhere in the Arab world. I can't comment beyond this, as have never learned it yet, regretfully; if anything, I have trouble grasping foreign scripts, indeed.
[quote=MoonFairy]What about the language of the clicks... what is that called?[/quote]
You're probably thinking of the !Kung, or Ju (Juu), or Khoisan, languages (as spoken by the !Kung San, or Bushmen as they used to be coloquially known), but there are others. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_language#Languages_with_clicks .
[quote=Salvidian]Probably castellano (don't know how to say it in English). It's a far dialect of Spanish that's engulfing much of South America and even parts of Africa.[/quote]
Um, no. I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but castellano (Castilian) and español (Spanish) are (according to Wikipedia) practically mutually interchangeable terms.
It goes on to feature a map of what it's called where, which doesn't match my experience however.
I so far tend to think of it as "high" Spanish; and in my experience South Americans would readily refer to it as Spanish, while in Spain people wouldn't be caught dead doing so, but so refer to it as castellano instead; so much so that one needs to unlearn calling it Spanish, if one is to have an unconfused conversation. (It doesn't seem to be that people resent it so much, it's just doesn't seem to be very idiomatic to most. You will be commonly corrected on it.) It must be said I only know parts of South America and of Spain.
I reckon (but so far it's just an untested and hence unproven gut feeling of mine) it has to do with the many people in Spain who resent the dominance of central rule; and with that dominant culture historically having hailed from Castile and Aragon, ever since the days of the Reconquista (the reconquest of Spain over the Moors, roughly during the Spanish Middle Ages).
I do think there was something about (much of?) everyday South American Spanish being either closer to the formal Spanish of yore -- as may commonly happen when a language moves abroad, and that in an age when contact with the homeland wasn't all that owing to non-existent mass communications and such -- or perhaps after all less so, but I forget the details.
Finally,
[quote=daleks]best language[/quote]
Please, let's not. Pointless proposition, if I may.
Nope, not by a long stretch.
My mom knew a person that spoke fluent Spanish and one that spoke fluent Italian, each not knowing the other ones language. They talked to each other in their native language (Spanish and Italian) and for the most part could understand each other fine.
Please, let's not. Pointless proposition, if I may.
As long as you gave facts and reasons to back up your argument it would be fine.
I'd pick Chinese. Traditional, please.
Oh you, backwards looking, long winded conservatives! >(
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