Good language to start?

[Diraction]

Heya!

So, since the start of my first semester in the university, I'll have to pick another language to study.
So far my only foreign language has been English (not counting my mother tongue). I tried a short course in Spanish few months ago, thinking it was a very good and fun to learn language, but the teacher was a total douche and kind of made me build up a bad attitude/feel towards the language.

Anything will help!
Thanks!

If you're already learning English and Spanish isn't an option because of the idiot/douche/racist instructor, then I would recommend French over German.

Both French and German are widely spoken in Europe, but French is much more widely spoken outside Europe. French is widely spoken in Africa, and is an official language in Canada. There are not many French speakers here in the United States, but there are more French speakers here than German speakers.

French and English are very closely related. If you already know English, that will make learning French easier. Yes, English and German are obviously related as well, but French just seems to resemble English more closely than German does.

To an English speaker, having gender for nouns makes no sense at all. If you're going to have to memorize the gender of every noun, at least in French there will be only two genders, instead of three as in German.

Spoken German sounds quite harsh to an English speaker. French, on the other hand, is quite melodic and beautiful, especially when spoken by a woman.

French just has a certain cachet in English that German does not have.

German isn't a bad choice, I just think French is a better one.

[helma]

Some people said Dutch,
Dont learn dutch! it's the hardest language in the world.
me personally i'm going to learn swedish soon but yeah to be fair i would go learn chinees. mandarin why?
Yea china is in an uprise the're going to get rich some people moving the the other side of the world and they can barley speak english.
Could help you alot. and chinees isnt to bad for instance say , tok is tree (isnt true but meh) then toktok is forest and toktoktok is rainforest , pretty funny.

Good luck on your choise!

[Deleted]

Some people said Dutch,
Dont learn dutch! it's the hardest language in the world.
me personally i'm going to learn swedish soon but yeah to be fair i would go learn chinees. mandarin why?
Yea china is in an uprise the're going to get rich some people moving the the other side of the world and they can barley speak english.
Could help you alot. and chinees isnt to bad for instance say , tok is tree (isnt true but meh) then toktok is forest and toktoktok is rainforest , pretty funny.

Good luck on your choise!

Please ignore all of that "advice".

[helma]

Please ignore all of that "advice".

oh sorry , that's what they told me !

[denegaar]

Isn't Dutch quite similar to German?

[Bwutty]

Well, it will be either French or Italian, decided by what I get my hands on (books/programs/videos). Most (if not all) of you have been of great help!

Much lovin' <3

[Earinn]

I would advice you to study the language you like, not the one that is most beneficial, unless you care more about your career (which is totally fine and good) than your own personal goals.

As far as "useful" languages go (and I use the term loosely, as you broaden your horizons with any regardless of # of speakers) it will depend entirely on where you want to work/go as well as your field of study. For example, studying law or literature Latin is the way to go. Medicine will depend on where you want to work and what is the most frequent second language there. With engineering it's useful to learn the language of "money" like English, Mandarin or German.

But there are other kinds of "usefulness" when it comes to languages. Ask yourself: How many languages do you want to be able to speak fluently? If your goal is, say, four, then ask yourself a second question: How different do you want them to be from each other? I personally chose to go with what I love the sound of, which are romance languages. Spanish and English are my native languages, so I moved to Italian and Romanian.

If you want your languages to be similar (and suffer the headaches of which word belongs to which language) I'd suggest going to Spanish for Romance Languages (it's the hardest one and all others become a breeze after you master that one) and Mandarin for Asian. Likewise German for European.

If you want them to be wildly different from what you already know consider Arabic or Mandarin/Japanese/Korean, etc.

If you want something more exotic, why not Latin or Greek?

Also, if you want to study the most useful language in terms of number of people you will be able to communicate with, that would be Mandarin. But you encounter the difficulty of most speakers being in the same place, whereas Spanish has a great number of speakers and they are spread over many more areas of the world. Third would be English, but you are already there In this aspect Hindi and Arabic are good contenders, too.

Overall, it largely depends on your views and uses of language as well as your goals. Knowing these would make giving advice easier, as would be knowing what languages are actually available at your school, and how far you would want to go (i.e. Introductory courses, or all the way up to culture and literature in the middle ages, or something more conversational-oriented)

Sorry for the lengthy post and good luck!

[Deleted]

Isn't Dutch quite similar to German?

Dutch differs from German because the Dutch people speak with their tongues in their throats :P

[Larynx]

Arabic.

[Diraction]

Arabic.

Useful if you want to live in North Africa, or work in foreign relations. On the other hand, it's written backwards in a really hard to read script and doesn't sound particularly pleasant so if esthetics matter, stick with French.

[CipherAgent]

I'd go with French or German since you live in Europe. They would be the 2 most useful to know.

[Vladinator]

learn norwegian... Its the easiest of the the 3 nordic languages and that way you will understand all 3 of em :P

Learn Norwegian and understand Swedish and Danish, yet won't be able to talk to 50% of Norwegians that speak a dialect. Irony?

[dabros]

wish i could've learned japanese or korean in high school, only choices were french or spanish.