Just a random thread.

What languages do we speak?

If you speak multiple in the above poll, just choose your favourite or most obscure option.

And post below - are your other languages your native language, if not then why did you learn it, how much have you learnt by travel, can you speak & write & read each language you know, etc?

For me, I learnt an extremely brief amount of Spanish for when I travelled to Peru. Basically just the Lonely Planet guidebook to help me out of awkward-traveller situations. But I've kept the interest, and plan to learn it more thoroughly from now on. My eventual plan is to completely learn Spanish, then learn German (a language that has interested me since high school) and then learn Croatian because my plan is to retire on the Croatian coastline.

What about you guys?

I want to learn a European language. Which one would be easiest to learn?

Edited by salmonfc: 9/3/2016 03:10:24 PM

English

(probably German)

Don't know about German but of the Romance languages, I'd go for Spanish for utility and simplicity.

Swedish/Norwegian/Danish fluently. Intermediate in German and Icelandic. Basic grasp of Spanish, French,Brazilian Portuguese and Mandarin.

Can barely communicate in English.

Racist Eurocentric thread. What about all the Arabic speakers on here?

Speak Italian fluently.

Have done a couple of years of Mandarin study and while I feel I'm a million years away from fluency I have enough of a grasp of it to travel through China on my own (e.g. read signs, order food, ask for directions etc). The course I was doing is a 4 year course but I had to put it on hold because it became too hard with young kids to do the requisite after hours classes and study. When they're a bit older I'll finish it but I know enough now that I'll still only be scratching the surface. tl;dr Chinese is hard

I'd agree - if you want to learn a European language, Spanish or Italian would be easiest.

Italian is generally quite phonetic. So, as opposed to French you don't have to worry about pronunciation being significantly different to the written version.

I've heard german can be difficult because of the strict sentence structures??? Is that right?

Tbf, Croatian is one particular expression of a broader language, that is, BCMS. Each are mutually intelligible.

German is fairly easy to pick up if you have a solid grounding in English.

Any particular reason you picked up Italian?

Currently learning German and Finnish at the moment.

Have heritage in Austria and Germany but know there are differences between German German and Austrian German.

Finnish I learning just for the fun of it.

Did German for 2 years in school. I'm sure if I refreshed my understanding and went over there I'd be able to hold basic conversations, ask for things etc

Macedonian.

A lot of my family speak Italian and my Italian was not too bad a few years ago but I don't really get very many opportunities to speak it so I have pretty much lost it. I want to try and learn it in the next few years for when I go back to Europe.

Good luck there m80 :lol:

Nothing dramatic, Swiss German is probably more of a unique challenge.

Dutch is the closest european language to english iirc. It's like a funny blend of English and German.

Awesome thread.

I actually spent 5 years learning Mandarin at school and eventually gave up because it felt pointless at the time because no one else I knew spoke it and didn't see myself wanting to live or work in mainland china. Plus having to learn word meaning as well as how to write it in Pinyin (Latin script) and Characters shat me to tears. It's seriously like having to learn 2 languages at once.

I've now mostly forgotten that which is a shame.

I decided later in life as I went travelling that I wanted to still learn a language. So after careful consideration of the merits of learning each language, I went with German because this girl I fancied had moved to Basel whilst i was living over in Europe. Now I'm currently in my 5th year of learning German and I've nearly finished my German major now. I'm hoping that by the time i'm finished, I will actually be capable enough to do my post-grad in German.

Last year I also started French in my spare time and I'm very much enjoying that.

Learnt German in Year 8 and 9 in Highschool, still remember most of it to have a simple conversation.

Wow, great stuff melbourne_terrace.

Flemish, but close enough. And yeah, it's like a weird mix of German and English.

in order of usefulness->

Spanish - reasonably easy
Portuguese - reasonably widespread language, its a bit harder than Spanish
German - because theres german travelers EVERYWHERE you go, except the germans all speak English anyway
French - difficult language, having a good vocab is still not good enough to understand every single word
Arabic - spoken throughout the middle east and the language of the largest religion of the world
Russian - when this language is the language of the world's biggest country its presumed that this is the only language spoken in the whole world


not so useful - Chinese - only people in 1 country speak it plus all the young speak a form of English, its the same rule with Hindi (the language of India), a third of the whole world's population 2.5 billion out of 7 billion speak those 2 languages

Edited by condemned666: 9/3/2016 08:15:35 PM

I've heard someone describe Dutch as "a less angry form of German".

I speak a little Br Portuguese. If I can get fluent enough in that (I've neglected it for a while) my next choice to learn would be Russian or Farsi.

Frisian is the closest alive language to English, mainly because many Frisians immigrated to Britain following the Roman withdrawal, as well as their closeness to angles, saxons and Jutes.

I don't speak any other languages besides English, but I know a tiny bit of Italian and Farsi(Persian), but its always fun to attempt other langauges.

Im more interested in the spread and history of languages, and their relations to eachother.

Particularly interested in the language history of the British isles.


Edited by iridium1010: 9/3/2016 08:25:59 PM

Whoops I forgot to mention Farsi. Have an ex who is Persian who taught me quite a bit. Nice language.

Should add;

Studying French (intermediate). formal fluency in German, fluent in BCMS. Gramatically, found English quite difficult at first. Been told that it is quite a slog to pick up especially for the uninitiated.

My experience living abroad has been that French is by far the most useful of the non-English options. Huge portion of Africa/ME is fairly conversant in French. Much more practical than German.

Less angry. More harsh. If that makes sense.

Loving the responses. Keep em coming. Super interesting to read all these stories!

pretty much everything from the ex yugo mob