A second language for an English speaker

[Diraction]

What would be a good second language for an English speaker to learn?

I think that depends on why one wants to learn a second language.

1) You find the subject interesting

In this case, whichever language you find interesting is a good candidate, though obviously instructional materials and native speakers will be easier to find for major language than for more obscure languages.

2) You want a language that will be useful in your country

Then of course that will vary depending on what country you live in. For the United States, that would be Spanish, for obvious reasons. For Canada, that would be French, again for obvious reasons. (Yes, I know that there are relatively few French speakers in Southern Ontario or Western Canada, but even those areas have major corporations and federal government offices that would value being able to speak both English and French). For Britain, I suppose that could be French or German or a few other choices.

3) You have a specific purpose in mind

Is your ambition to become the world's greatest Starcraft player? Are you willing to spend years in Korea training with the best? Then maybe learning Korean is the right choice for you.

4) You want a deeper understanding of English

Here's the controversial one. IMO, if your goal is a deeper understanding of English, then there is no better language to study than French. English and French are so intertwined from centuries of interaction, and have such a huge vocabulary in common, that a study of French will deepen your understanding of English in a way that no other language will.

[Vanero]

Here's the controversial one. IMO, if your goal is a deeper understanding of English, then there is no better language to study than French. English and French are so intertwined from centuries of interaction, and have such a huge vocabulary in common, that a study of French will deepen your understanding of English in a way that no other language will.

Interesting.

When I did the study of modern English and linguistics in college, my professor would bring up German as a language we should take for our 9 credits of foreign language courses if we didn't feel like we wanted to take French, or if our French credits wouldn't count for our college major since they came from an outside source (like an exchange trip, community college course or AP class).

Example that I remember off the top of my head: A majority of irregular verbs in English are also irregular in German. I can only think of a few irregular verbs in French, such as avoir, etre and aller. I know etre is missing an accent mark, but I forgot how to type it. >.>

[Diraction]

Interesting.

When I did the study of modern English and linguistics in college, my professor would bring up German as a language we should take for our 9 credits of foreign language courses if we didn't feel like we wanted to take French, or if our French credits wouldn't count for our college major since they came from an outside source (like an exchange trip, community college course or AP class).

Example that I remember off the top of my head: A majority of irregular verbs in English are also irregular in German. I can only think of a few irregular verbs in French, such as avoir, etre and aller. I know etre is missing an accent mark, but I forgot how to type it. >.>

Être. On a Mac, it's Option-I for the circumflex accent, then the letter (E in this case).

French probably has fewer irregular verbs than English, although in both French and English the handful of core verbs that get used all the time are all irregular.

English "to be" = French "être" = both irregular
English "to have" = French "avoir" = both irregular
English "to go" = French "aller" = both irregular

That actually reminds me of one vary small example - French plurals are formed (in most cases) by adding as "s" to the end of the word, just as in English (in most cases). Thus, e.g., voiture = car and voitures = cars. But the plural of "child" is "children," a plural form one doesn't see in French. Once you study French, you realize that this isn't a random accident of English spelling but a product of the fact that "child" is a Germanic origin word rather than a French origin word. Once you understand that, English spelling doesn't seem quite so illogical.

[Drekker17]

I'm going to secretly learn Vietnamese so I can finally understand what my relatives are saying about me.

[funkhouser]

I always hear Chinese is a good language to learn if you want to be prepared for the future.

[Deleted]

German is pretty similar imo, if you want it to be useful probably best go with Spanish, alot of people speak some sort of Spanish.

[Fibby76]

Right now, in USA, the top three language used are English, Spanish, and America Sign Language (ASL) in that order. If you're frequent in those three languages, you'd be in great demand for many businesses.

[Diraction]

I'm going to secretly learn Vietnamese so I can finally understand what my relatives are saying about me.

That would be a category 3 choice - specific purpose.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 01:54 AM ----------

German is pretty similar imo, if you want it to be useful probably best go with Spanish, alot of people speak some sort of Spanish.

That's category 2 - useful where you live, assuming you live in the United States. French is the better category 2 choice if you live in Canada.

[Deleted]

Here's the controversial one. IMO, if your goal is a deeper understanding of English, then there is no better language to study than French. English and French are so intertwined from centuries of interaction, and have such a huge vocabulary in common, that a study of French will deepen your understanding of English in a way that no other language will.

Uuuh, funny you say French, another says German. I’ve also heard that parts of the Scandinavian countries should have quite the importance for English language. At least that’s what my language teachers have told me :P

My father told me he could speak Danish with a western accent to people from Scotland and they would understand him, and they could speak Scottish to him and he would understand them. If one still can do that, I don’t know.

But ain’t English like a mix language of German, French, Latin and Scandinavia and other stuff?

Regarding which language. Hmmm. I think if you want to be in business, German or Chinese would be best. Perhaps Indian.

[Diraction]

Right now, in USA, the top three language used are English, Spanish, and America Sign Language (ASL) in that order. If you're frequent in those three languages, you'd be in great demand for many businesses.

According to this survey, about 26% of Americans can speak a language other than English well enough to hold a conversation:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/abou...-language.aspx

According to that same survey, about 55% of those bilingual Americans speak Spanish, about 17% speak French and about 10% speak German.

In other words, about 4.4% of Americans can speak French (26% X 17%). Multiply that by 250 million Americans (not the whole population but I'm excluding small children) gives you about 11 million French-speaking Americans.

According to this presentation from Gallaudet, there are about 250,000 to 500,000 ASL speakers in the US and Canada combined.

http://research.gallaudet.edu/Presen...04-04-07-1.pdf

In other words, the number of French speaking Americans greatly exceeds the number of ASL speaking Americans. Likewise, the number of German speaking Americans also greatly exceeds the number of ASL speaking Americans.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 02:04 AM ----------

I always hear Chinese is a good language to learn if you want to be prepared for the future.

Of course, that's what they were saying about Japanese 20 years ago. I wouldn't bet on Chinese being the wave of the future.

[Northy]

German. So I can connect with my families ancestry via the language we spoke long ago back in the old country.

[Diraction]

But ain’t English like a mix language of German, French, Latin and Scandinavia and other stuff?

Regarding which language. Hmmm. I think if you want to be in business, German or Chinese would be best. Perhaps Indian.

English is the child of the ancestor of French and the ancestor of German, with a bunch of words from other languages thrown in. Another way of describing it that I read a year or two ago, and which I quite like, is that English is the most Latin of the Germanic languages, while French is the most Germanic of the Latin languages.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

You've already done yourself a favor by thinking about what language to learn instead of just learning whatever is at hand. I know a very little Spanish, but it would be a much more useful language to be semi-fluent in than the two languages (besides English) I can speak on a casual conversation level, Dutch and Czech.

My family is Czech (2 grandparents were born from freshly immigrated Czech parents, 2 grandparents were born in what is now Czech Republic) so there was a lot of it flying around growing up so I picked up the basics. Problem is you're not likely to run into anybody who speaks it unless you are actually in the Czech Republic these days.

I spent some time living in the Caribbean on some of the Netherlands territories there, so Dutch was the common language I picked up. Problem there is:
A) most everyone who speaks Dutch also speaks English
B) if you happen to run into them, all they want to do is practice their English with you

So yeah, I'm conversationally trilingual, and 2/3 of them are thoroughly useless on a practical level in my life atm (and as far as I can see into the future). At best it's a neat thing to break out at a party if there is someone visiting from either of those areas overseas.

If you're going to go through the trouble of learning a new language, make sure it's something that will provide tangible results.

[Deleted]

Here's the controversial one. IMO, if your goal is a deeper understanding of English, then there is no better language to study than French. English and French are so intertwined from centuries of interaction, and have such a huge vocabulary in common, that a study of French will deepen your understanding of English in a way that no other language will.

Latin, though a dead language, gave me a lot of insight into more than just english, as many languages are descendants of latin.

French has influence on more than english, as it was a big cultural influence for a few hundred years, we've loaned a lot of words from it, even in Swedish.

[Diraction]

Spanish would certainly be the most generally useful language for an American to learn, absent special circumstances (e.g. if you want to work for the CIA, it might be better to learn Arabic rather than Spanish), but like my original post points out, general usefulness in your country is only one reason to learn a language, and there are other possible reasons as well.

---------- Post added 2012-08-18 at 02:22 AM ----------

Latin, though a dead language, gave me a lot of insight into more than just english, as many languages are descendants of latin.

French has influence on more than english, as it was a big cultural influence for a few hundred years, we've loaned a lot of words from it, even in Swedish.

Latin makes you think seriously about grammar in a way that a (mostly) non-inflected language like English does not, so it's certainly valuable for that purpose.

[Deleted]

What would be a good second language for an English speaker to learn?

[...]

Here's the controversial one. IMO, if your goal is a deeper understanding of English, then there is no better language to study than French. English and French are so intertwined from centuries of interaction, and have such a huge vocabulary in common, that a study of French will deepen your understanding of English in a way that no other language will.

Interesting.

When I did the study of modern English and linguistics in college, my professor would bring up German as a language we should take for our 9 credits of foreign language courses if we didn't feel like we wanted to take French, or if our French credits wouldn't count for our college major since they came from an outside source (like an exchange trip, community college course or AP class).

Example that I remember off the top of my head: A majority of irregular verbs in English are also irregular in German. I can only think of a few irregular verbs in French, such as avoir, etre and aller. I know etre is missing an accent mark, but I forgot how to type it. >.>

That's interesting, one says German, one says French, I say both roughly equally.

My sister studies anglistics (we're German) and told me modern English was roughly made up of 50% Latin roots (via French, mostly) and 50% Germanic (Anglo-Saxon).
The example which verbs are irregular in what language can't really be used to distinguish, imo; the example I know is a little more descriptive:
In many cases, there are even two "parallel" ways of expressing something, let's say a "hearty welcome" - a "cordial reception". First uses the words rooted in German, the second in Latin, but basically they mean the same - just one of them sound a lot more formal, which is the case in many of those examples.

So, if you want a deeper understanding of English, study Latin and German (or French and German, if you want a language that's actually still being spoken) or one of the two. Dutch, being related closely to the part of German that formed the Anglo-Saxon part of English, is an alternative, too, as well as Italian, e.g. (which is also a little easier than French I think).

OR learn Swahili and impress hipsters with your knowledge :P

[Anakso]

For me I've been trying to learn Korean. I'm not very good at keeping up the study though, can never find the motivation.
Another language I learned a bit of was Japanese, my highschool had mandatory language classes for year 9, but you had 3 options and I chose Japanese, but that was way back about 8 years ago so I barely remember any of it.

My overall goal with languages is to learn those two and French, but like I said. Severe lack of motivation considering very few people I know speak anything but English.

[wickedbastard]

Just learn Dutch, we got a lot of English (and French!) words so its cake!

[MerinPally]

Learning Chinese/Japanese/Korean whilst very interesting, are not that useful. The Japanese do not have great english generally but the rest do. Even then, english is the only language you really need to know for anything as everyone speaks english and I won't see it in my lifetime but I wholeheartedly believe that English will take over the world as the langauge of choice. Learning Chinese... it's a myth, you won't need it. In china, the next big thing is they all want to practise their english. If you go to china and speak english, they won't let you speak chinese, as they'll be too busy attempting to speak english because even they see it as more important than you learning their language. At the moment, irrespective of what country you're in, if you can speak english, your employability just soared so high. Doesn't work that way for english speakers who know another language.

An easy language to learn is Spanish. Very very easy. Pretty useful as well. Depends what you want to do as well. Being a wannabe scientist, learning German is going to be useful and something I will do - now sure, everything is conducted in English nowadays but if there was a second language for science, it would be German. Everything used to be written in German anyway for science.

So in short - don't bother with any oriental languages for anything other than interest, if you want an easy one do spanish, a useful and average difficulty one do french, and if you want to be technical in a field, do German.

[WaitingforMoP]

Spanish is the second most common language in The United States, so.... I think that's the obvious choice for a 2nd language.

Unless you're Australian, British, or Canadian, then I don't know... maybe Spanish is less common there?