What language should I learn?
For the last couple of years I’ve been wanting to learn a new language. There’s really nothing in my life pushing me to learn a new language, it’s just something I’ve wanted to do. I took 3 years of French in high school but really took the opportunity for granted. I really saw it as something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. As a result, I remember very little French. I think the most I could probably convey to a French speaking person is that I don’t know much French.
Lately I’ve been checking out Rosetta Stone. They have a very impressive client list of companies and organizations that use their software for training in foreign languages. I think I’ve decided that I’ll use their software rather than enroll in a junior college class. The software is nice because I’d be able to learn at my own pace and I don’t have to worry as much about being able to fit a class schedule in with my work schedule.
So now I have to pick a language. I could go back to French, which might be interesting from the standpoint of seeing how much I can remember. On the other hand, I live in California…making Spanish a good, logical choice. Neither language is particularly exotic from a location, standpoint, though. Rosetta Stone offers languages like Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and Russian. I’m not certain I’d really use those languages much in life, though…so there’s some question of practicability.
What do you think? If you were going to learn a new language, what would you learn and why? If you know another language, would you recommend it and why?
March 4th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language
March 4th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Definitely Python.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Evidently I should have been more clear and mentioned that I’m talking about spoken languages, not programming languages.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:03 am
I would learn a language that you will have the opportunity to use. For me, if I don’t get a chance to practice in the real world then it usually doesn’t stick. I vote Spanish if you are in California. Or if you travel outside the US a lot pick that country’s language.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:44 am
I could help you to remember your french if you help me help to complete my english…
I think you know who I’am and what’s about we could talk :o”
March 5th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Chris, yeah…I’m with you there. I work with some folks in Bangalore so I was thinking learning Hindi might be interesting. Spanish, as we both mentioned, would be good for living in California.
Olivier…je ne suis pas tres courament en Francais.
Or something along those lines.
March 5th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Le sugiero aprender el español.
I would suggest you Spanish. Spanish is such a beautiful language, moreover it’s spoken in so many contries and is quite useful in California.
My native language is French (I’m from Belgium) but I also speak Spanish, Dutch, English, Portuguese and a little bit of Italian. And Spanish is the language I prefer, I love Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries,
March 6th, 2007 at 1:36 am
It’s a must for me to learn European languages like Spanish and French because most of my friends are from there…
Learn more languages if you can… It’ll open a lot of opportunities for you…
Cheers!
March 6th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
dude, challenge yourself and learn chinese!! mandarin or cantonese, doesn’t matter. both are cool. and since you’re in california…and the bay area, you’d get some good use out of it too.
March 12th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Try Japanese. It’s easy, and it’s actually useful.
March 31st, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Tu devrais réapprendre ton Francais*
*You should catch up on that French
January 29th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
You should learn somali…
french and spanis are so cliche