Choosing a Foreign Language
Sep. 22nd, 2013 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebHow do you choose a foreign language to learn? (This post is inspired by Tam who is learning a new language.)
most useful - The obvious choice is to pick the most useful language. I think it's good to know at least one spoken language, one written language, and one sign language. And generally it's good to know the ones that are most spoken in your country. For me that would be Spanish and American Sign Language. It's handy to learn languages used in your business (Japanese for Robin, Italian for opera singers), and the principle language of any country trying to take over yours.
But usefulness not the only good reason to learn another language.
best sound - I think it's most fun to learn a language that's fun to speak. Based on hearing people's accents, I think my favorite is either Italian or Russian. I was surprised to find that I liked the sound of German when I was studying it. Mostly I hear people liking French, but that doesn't do it for me.
favorite culture - If you want to hang around in your favorite culture or subculture, it's handy to know the language. If I were using this criterion, I think I'd pick Dutch. Klingon would be another option.
cultural heritage - It's nice to know whatever your elders are speaking. In my family, that's English. A great grandmother on my dad's side did immigrate from "what is now Poland" (Germany?), but she always spoke English to us, and it never even occurred to me that it wasn't her native language until just now. I don't feel any ties to my Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or German heritage. Oh, I did try to learn Hebrew to understand my then-religion better.
favorite literature - Well, I have bought a British English dictionary to help me understand some of my favorite literature. I don't have a notion on what my favorite foreign language literature is, though.
favorite movies - Probably Japanese. Possibly Cantonese for movies from Hong Kong.
brain exercise - You could go for the most alien language. Maybe one of the African ones with the clicking sounds? Or one with a very different sort of grammar? Certainly not a Romance or Germanic language for native English speakers. What's the most fascinating language?
hot babe - Traditionally the most motivating way. My favorite speaks only English, so I'm covered there.
best language - Ideally everyone learns the best language and then we all use that. English is not the best language, yikes. So many things make no sense or are otherwise crazy. Esperanto was created just to be easy to learn. I like the ones that just add "used to" to the verb to make it past tense and "will" to make it future. I like ones with no genders (Latin manages to have three: masculine, feminine, and neuter). I like how it's easy to spell in Spanish (except for knowing when there's a silent "h"). I like compound words in German.
Well, that's seven languages I have italicized and I hardly know anything about any languages--think how many I'd be interested if I had more data. In real life I suck at languages, but I still plan to work on Spanish and ASL (later) and I do enjoy learning a little something about the principle language of a place I'm going to visit.
most useful - The obvious choice is to pick the most useful language. I think it's good to know at least one spoken language, one written language, and one sign language. And generally it's good to know the ones that are most spoken in your country. For me that would be Spanish and American Sign Language. It's handy to learn languages used in your business (Japanese for Robin, Italian for opera singers), and the principle language of any country trying to take over yours.
But usefulness not the only good reason to learn another language.
best sound - I think it's most fun to learn a language that's fun to speak. Based on hearing people's accents, I think my favorite is either Italian or Russian. I was surprised to find that I liked the sound of German when I was studying it. Mostly I hear people liking French, but that doesn't do it for me.
favorite culture - If you want to hang around in your favorite culture or subculture, it's handy to know the language. If I were using this criterion, I think I'd pick Dutch. Klingon would be another option.
cultural heritage - It's nice to know whatever your elders are speaking. In my family, that's English. A great grandmother on my dad's side did immigrate from "what is now Poland" (Germany?), but she always spoke English to us, and it never even occurred to me that it wasn't her native language until just now. I don't feel any ties to my Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or German heritage. Oh, I did try to learn Hebrew to understand my then-religion better.
favorite literature - Well, I have bought a British English dictionary to help me understand some of my favorite literature. I don't have a notion on what my favorite foreign language literature is, though.
favorite movies - Probably Japanese. Possibly Cantonese for movies from Hong Kong.
brain exercise - You could go for the most alien language. Maybe one of the African ones with the clicking sounds? Or one with a very different sort of grammar? Certainly not a Romance or Germanic language for native English speakers. What's the most fascinating language?
hot babe - Traditionally the most motivating way. My favorite speaks only English, so I'm covered there.
best language - Ideally everyone learns the best language and then we all use that. English is not the best language, yikes. So many things make no sense or are otherwise crazy. Esperanto was created just to be easy to learn. I like the ones that just add "used to" to the verb to make it past tense and "will" to make it future. I like ones with no genders (Latin manages to have three: masculine, feminine, and neuter). I like how it's easy to spell in Spanish (except for knowing when there's a silent "h"). I like compound words in German.
Well, that's seven languages I have italicized and I hardly know anything about any languages--think how many I'd be interested if I had more data. In real life I suck at languages, but I still plan to work on Spanish and ASL (later) and I do enjoy learning a little something about the principle language of a place I'm going to visit.