what language?

At the daycare where my daughter goes to, they watch sign language videos and some spanish videos. I, being a part time real estate agent, have dealt with enough spanish speaking customers to learn a bit of spanish. This got me to thinking. Which language would someone like to learn?

For me, I would like to learn Latin. Mainly, because its a dead language (it never changes). Other than that, I like the flow of it.

Spanish, it's the most practical of the options listed for me. French would be useful if I lived in Canada or Europe, Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time, and sign language will only get used if you run into a lot of deaf people for some reason. Spanish, however, is probably the most useful second language for an American to learn, especially if you live in the southern US.

But practicality aside, the languages I would most like to learn would probably be German, Russian, or one of the major Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, all for different reasons).

German intrigues me the most because of its harsh sound. Someone with a deep voice who speaks german frequently sounds like they're angry even when they aren't. As a result of that, it's the perfect language for harsh sounding music. dracula_16

true; i guess its the perfect language for the song 'Du Hast' then, huh?

Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time

gameguy6700

Learining Latin is an incredible help to your English skills and is very useful to know in a medical field. Also if you work with animals.

[QUOTE="gameguy6700"]

Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time

Theokhoth

Learining Latin is an incredible help to your English skills and is very useful to know in a medical field. Also if you work with animals.

Agreed. All species have scientific names, which are in Latin.

Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time,[...]gameguy6700

Croatian, because it's my father's native language.

Swedish... I really don't know why...XD

I am currently learning Japanese but would like to learn Mongolian since I do plan on actually going to Mongolia one day.

[QUOTE="gameguy6700"]Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time,[...]foxhound_fox

No language should be mandatory in schools. If you aren't interested in the language, it's near-impossible to learn it. It's the golden rule of language-learning.Vanadium2k8

[QUOTE="gameguy6700"]

Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time

Theokhoth

Learining Latin is an incredible help to your English skills and is very useful to know in a medical field. Also if you work with animals.

[QUOTE="gameguy6700"]

Latin is just completely useless and a waste of time

Theokhoth

Learining Latin is an incredible help to your English skills and is very useful to know in a medical field. Also if you work with animals.

I disagree. My major is neuroscience so I encounter just as many biology terms as the average pre-med and I've never had any difficulties. A lot of the latin terms you encounter just simply build off of several very common latin root words. After taking intro biology I was pretty much able to figure out what new terms meant in the rest of my classes before they were even explained.

And as for learning English, I think people just need to study the damn language better. If you think about the words you use on a daily basis it should become clear that a lot of them are actually just combinations of different prefixes, suffixes, and root words. I myself have never had any issue with picking up a large vocab and grammar skills without taking latin, at least if the awards from national vocab competitions, test scores, and the constant praise I've earned for my writing have anything to say about it. But then again I also have a 129 verbal IQ so perhaps I'm a bit atypical in that respect.

No language should be mandatory in schools. If you aren't interested in the language, it's near-impossible to learn it. It's the golden rule of language-learning.Vanadium2k8

[QUOTE="Vanadium2k8"]No language should be mandatory in schools. If you aren't interested in the language, it's near-impossible to learn it. It's the golden rule of language-learning.foxhound_fox

Why would you want to waste their time and ruin their potential interest? IMO, a lot of grown up people would be learning language voluntarily if it weren't for schools. All those textbooks, assignments, forced output, clearly didn't get me anywhere in my mandatory 8 years of French. Am I fluent as an 8 year old? Hell no, I'm hardly as fluent as a 2 year old.

Yet, in my 3 months of voluntary Japanese, I probably matched the 8 years of French in my first month. All by watching J-Dramas, listening to J-Pop, playing butt loads of video games. I've probably learnt 2,000 words in 3 months, as opposed to the 500 I learned in French for 8 years. My daughter is already half-fluent in Korean after 5 months of study. All voluntary. You will learn next to nothing in a forced 2 years of Latin.

If 2 years of Latin was enforced, no one would grow up to learn languages. It would be seen as a difficult, boring task. Why force them to learn languages when they can grow up to learn 4 or 5 voluntarily? Same thing goes for being forced to read books in school. How many of us actually grow up to write book reports about every chapter?

I've been learning Latin for almost five years now. It's a fascinating, beautiful, and highly logical language. It's also very complex. I really like it. I hope to become as close to fluent as possible someday. I'm also interested in learning Italian and Greek.t3hrubikscube

And another fact: English indeed is much influenced by latin but also in turn latin is influenced widely by ancient greek! Did you know that? I can proveit :!

The main reason that I listed sign language was because several daycares are teaching it to the infants and toddlers. For example, my daughter could sign 'eat' and 'more' at 9 to 10 months old. Which, that helps because she could sign a lot of words long before she could speak.

I've learned some japanese, quite a bit of spanish and some german too. But i'd really love to learn russian...don't lnow why, but that's one language that has always fascinated me.peicher

I've been learning Latin for almost five years now. It's a fascinating, beautiful, and highly logical language. It's also very complex. I really like it. I hope to become as close to fluent as possible someday. I'm also interested in learning Italian and Greek.t3hrubikscube

apparently there's a Latin word for blue-jeans: bracae línteae caerúleae

and the latin word for Steak doesn't sound too appetizing: caro costālis assa

source

I've learned Spanish and Japanese. English is my native language. I would really like to learn Chinese. And I would like to improve my Spanish...I live in the USA, and it's a fact that the Spanish speaking population of this country is growing more so than any other. The most widely spoken languages in the world are, in descending order by population, Chinese, Spanish and English.

I can speak, read and write pretty good ;) in English, but I think getting better at Spanish and learning Chinese would really help me.