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Journal tuxette's Journal: I have the urge... 31

Journal by tuxette
...to learn a new language. But which one? I really ought to learn Mandarin, but Finnish or Sami really tempt me for some sick reason...

If you were to learn a new language right here right now, what would you learn?

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I have the urge... More

I have the urge...

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  • Into modern Persian right now.
  • Because of its utter uselessness unless you spend lots of time in Iceland, which I would, if I knew icelandic. Iceland is really pretty, so it seems only logical that I should learn the language, right? :^)
  • So bf and I could converse in it.
  • then Sami or Finnish would do as well as anything, but I'd pick something more widely used.

    Or to the other extreme learn some tribal language that's in danger of going extinct when all the current speakers die out.

  • Languages (Score:2)

    by Tet ( 2721 )
    In order of preference:
    1. Norwegian/Swedish/Danish
    2. German
    3. Mandarin
    4. Lojban

    I spend a lot of time in Scandihoovia these days, so it'd be nice to speak the language. Yes, so they all speak perfect English anyway, but that's not the point. I already know enough German that I'm not totally lost when I'm over there, but I'd like to be able to speak it properly. Mandarin because a friend of mine will be moving to Shanghai soon, and I'll be going over to see her. Finally, Lojban appeals because of its purity (and

  • While Spanish is probably of more use over here, German is just a cool language to speak.

    Or I would like to learn some Tagalog. I pick up some phrases from my mother in law*, but still the best I can do is a close approximation: Ta-ta-tata-ta-tatata-ta-tata-ta. Meaning, "Hello, how is your poodle? Nice plunger" which makes no sense, but that's Tagalog for you.

    *Mercer for instance plays peeka-bong, which is the compromise of peeka-boo and the Phillipino Tago-bong.

    • German is just a cool language to speak.

      Oh sure, Mr. Gargle-gargle-spit-spit-abend. [slashdot.org] ;-)

      Mercer for instance plays peeka-bong, which is the compromise of peeka-boo and the Phillipino Tago-bong.

      When my brother was a kid, there was a chain of quickie restaurants in the DC area called Hot Shoppes, about the same time McD's became big in the area (early 1960s). For him, such fast food restaurants were universally known as Hot Donald's.

      Somewhat amazingly, my parents still have their outdoor Christmas li

  • Spanish or Mandarin would be the most useful ones.

    Icelandic and Dutch would be nice to be more fluent, though I can at least guess at much of them. Sami or Finnish or Polish would be more of a challenge, but given all the migrant workers from Poland that come around here, it might be useful.

    Or maybe Russian. (cue daft Soviet Russia jokes....)

    • Polish or Russian would be very useful in Norway. More so than Spanish or Mandarin, I think...
    • I'd go for Spanish or Mandarin, too, but I suck so much at learning new languages that at my age I'd never get anywhere.

      If I wanted to learn a language quickly, I'd probably try Norwegian or Danish. I can already read both (at least on a newspaper article level), writing and grammar would take some work, but the hardest part would be to learn how to speak and to understand spoken Norwegian or Danish. Damn, I lived for more than a year in Denmark and never got even close to understanding spoken Danish.

      A

      • Although the written languages are quite similar (Danish reads to me like somewhat old-fashioned Norwegian), spoken Danish is a lot harder to figure out than spoken Norwegian, simply because there is a lot stronger correlation between the spelling and the pronounciation in Norwegian. Not quite as consistent as Finnish, but more so than English; probably about the same as for German or Swedish. The Danish tend to "eat" a lot of the letters upon speaking, and sound like they have a potato stuck in their mout
        • there is a lot stronger correlation between the spelling and the pronounciation in Norwegian.

          I haven't heard that much spoken Norwegian, but I do seem to remember that for me it was easier to pick up individual words in Norwegian than in Danish. Once I can hear the words, my passive vocabulary in Swedish kicks in (yes, I know that one can get things really wrong that way ;). The problem I had with Danish was that often I couldn't hear the individual words at all -- it was like a constant stream of sound.

      • Here's an overview and I encourage you to click on the "How Finnish words are put together" bit to see what an agglutinative language with fifteen grammatical cases looks like. ;)

        Yikes! Scary, yet tantalizingly fascinating... :-)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'd want to learn Japanese for the same reason you want to learn French- mostly so I can pronounce the food that I eat :)

      I know a few phrases/words but nothing impressive.
    • Japanese is supposedly (relatively) easy.

      I need to refresh my French. French is a difficult, but beautiful language...

      • Apparently not [idge.net]

        keep in mind most japanese don't learn much but the modern usage... it's kinda like how most americans only know about 10,000 words of english, and there are somewhere over 200,000 words in a complete, unabridged dictionary...
      • French is a difficult, but beautiful language...

        So people tell me. Personally, I didn't find it that difficult to learn, but I do find it an incredibly ugly language. How people can claim it's beautiful is utterly beyond me. I freely admit I'm in the minority here (I also think that German is the most beautiful language in the world, closely followed by Polish), but I just can't understand the majority view here.

      • French isn't that difficult. Not to learn to speak it. Learning to write right, that is an art.

        Of course this comes from someone who masters five languages. Still, I never learnt a language that I didn't need. What I would like to be able to speak is (in order)

        • Spanish
        • Japanese
        • Russian
        • Mandarin

        If I could all of these, including those I already know, I'd have no problem communicating anywhere in the world :-)

        Still, for those wanting to learn strange languages: try Luxembourgish. Only abo

  • I so want to learn mandarin, but I'm having a hard time finding a teach where I live.
  • Mandarin. I'm convinced that those little orange segments are mocking me.

  • Hmmm (Score:2)

    by Arker ( 91948 )
    Mandarin is a lot of fun, with the tones. I took it for a year, a long time ago, don't remember much. But it's really fun. The syntax and grammar are refreshingly simple and easy. The phonology is a little harder, what with too many 'sh' sounds and of course the tones. But the hardest part is that unlike every other language I've ever tried to learn, there isn't any significant base of recognisable cognates - the vocabulary is all new.

    I'm still fighting hard every day to improve my Swedish. Really need to g
    • What's your story? Are you a foreigner in Sweden? If so why are you there, and for how long? Is TISUS some kind of test of Swedish as a foreign language to indicate a certain minimum of proficiency? (Kind of like the Bergenstest here - I piss a lot of people (Western expats) off by telling them I never took it and nobody has ever asked for it.)

      Swedish is relatively easy to understand but a pain in the ass to read. Danish is easy to read but a pain in the ass to understand. Norwegian is...well...Norwegian.

      • Well at the moment I'm a foreigner in Berlin.

        I lived and worked in Sweden 2.5 years. Unfortunately, my employer ran out of money and I had to leave. They flew me back for this conference, and it looks like I might be able to stay for a month or so after at least.

        Tisus is Test I Svenska för Universitets och högskoleStudier - and it's the last of three hurdles I had to leap to go to school in Sweden.

        Perhaps Norway is more relaxed about such things, but none of the Swedish Universities I have

        • Very interesting.

          In Norway you typically need the Bergenstest to study at the universities, if you're a foreigner, but I found a way around that. And yeah, I know what you mean about not getting anything out of the classes. I ended up learning Norwegian the "kamikaze" way - going to proper (Norwegian) university classes and taking the exams ;-)

      • Swedish is relatively easy to understand but a pain in the ass to read. Danish is easy to read but a pain in the ass to understand.

        I agree with what you say about Danish, but how could Swedish be hard to read if you know Norwegian? That's odd.

        • Most of the Swedish I tend to read is heavy-duty legal texts, and I encounter a lot of complex terminology that is quite different from Norwegian/Danish.
    • Pass that test first, then start with Norsk afterwards. The difficult thing with Svenska vs. Norsk is that there are many identical words with quite distinct meanings between the two languages.

      Icelandic is less similar as it is a direct descendant of the old Vikings' language, whereas Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish has had a lot more influence from the so-called "Low German".

      • Re:Hmmm (Score:2)

        by Tet ( 2721 )
        The difficult thing with Svenska vs. Norsk is that there are many identical words with quite distinct meanings between the two languages.

        A few years ago, a bunch of us were in Norway for some summer skiing[1]. One of the party was a Finn who spoke Swedish as his native language. Consequently he did most of our translating. We were in a shop, looking for stuff to eat. We found some sausages and asked him from what they were made. On looking at the ingredients, he said he could tell us what it meant in Swed

  • It will help in understanding any romance lnguage as well as English.

    I had a year of Latin in Junior High and it made later years of Spanish and to a lesser extent French easier. After a knowledge of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are easy to understand.

    If I was to try to learn another language, I would probably learn dutch, but only because of a desire to learn more of my ancestry. Gaelic would also be interesting for the same reasons (well the Scottish form of Gaelic).

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