I need to take a language class and the choices are Chinese, Spanish, German, Sign Language, and French. Obviously sign language would be useless. But considering I'm working on apps for ipad/iphone and a little bit in the map making which language would be best used? Is english one of the major languages in Europe? If anything I really want to learn japanese but they don't offer it at my college. I read a lot of manga so japanese would be useful for me in that aspect.
English is a relatively well spoken language in Europe, comparatively, but not to the degree that you'd just be able to walk around using it in every day situations and everyone'd understand you, so if you were planning spending on spending any extended length of time in any specific country, I'd go for their language. French is also quite popular in Europe, although not to the same degree, so if you're planning on going around Europe for some time, through many countries, I'd say go for French. Otherwise I'd go for Chinese, which is probably the hardest of the lot, since its not an offshoot of Latin like most European languages, so you'll be starting entirely from scratch, whereas with European languages you can get a grasp of some things without knowing everything, if you see what I mean. But it's the most spoken language in the world, so its pretty useful to have under you belt. Urg, if I could learn Japanese I'd be all over it, no more waiting for translations on manga and anime sounds like my personal heaven... which probably shows what a varied and interesting life I lead :P
From what I've found, German is really only useful in Germany and French only in France. Spanish is useful in Portugal, Spain, half of south-America, mid-America and some African colonies. I think it's the most widely spoken language, even beating English and Chinese on that. Unless you're specifically planning on spending time in a country where they speak French or German, I'd go with Spanish or Chinese.
Keep in mind that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world, though, if not the hardest (here's an informative link that a pall who lives in China has given me). For as far as I know, you can spend four years studying the language and you'll still be speaking it at a child's level. While it might give you an edge, if you want to tap in to globalization then mastering Spanish in those four years seems like a better bet.
I really don't know why everyone is saying Chinese is hard?
It is actually one of the easiest languages to learn. By comparison, English is the hardest to learn due to semantics, tenses, cases, nuances and obscure spelling...
The real problem with 'Chinese' is that it is the most diverse language, mainly due to the vast dialect variance.
Also, cultural difference makes the language a lot harder to 'absorb'. One prefecture-level city neighbourhood might speak vastly differently to say, the city centre of Beijing. But, you will only ever know these differences by living in (any) country.
But, we knew that already didn't we? Anything you learn in a college or school (in terms of 'Language'), will be vastly different to how the language is actually used in its' country of origin.
All these things considered, I would say go for Spanish. Although, with China's recently changing foreign and economic policies, alongside it's privileged status as a BRIC country, it would be my first choice.
I really don't know why everyone is saying Chinese is hard?
It is actually one of the easiest languages to learn. By comparison, English is the hardest to learn due to semantics, tenses, cases, nuances and obscure spelling...
Read the article I linked. That's a student affiliated with the University of Michigan who is coming out and saying stuff like "Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese". Plus, I know a westerner who has lived in China for 20+ years and have talked fairly extensively with him about the country and language; he's the guy that gave me that link in the first place.
I guess I have no personal experience with Chinese, no, but there's two words I'm willing to take for granted when it comes to the subject.
From what I've found, German is really only useful in Germany and French only in France. Spanish is useful in Portugal, Spain, half of south-America, mid-America and some African colonies. I think it's the most widely spoken language, even beating English and Chinese on that. Unless you're specifically planning on spending time in a country where they speak French or German, I'd go with Spanish or Chinese.
Keep in mind that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world, though, if not the hardest (here's an informative link that a pall who lives in China has given me). For as far as I know, you can spend four years studying the language and you'll still be speaking it at a child's level. While it might give you an edge, if you want to tap in to globalization then mastering Spanish in those four years seems like a better bet.
You're right on that - it's just that I never said that German and French aren't spoken anywhere else but in Germany and France. I'm saying I haven't found them to be useful anywhere other than those countries. German is only very, very scarcely spoken in specific regions of Belgium, Luxemburg is a country you'll never have to worry about and you won't be able to get around with regular German in Switzerland. Only Austria is a place where German is useful, but for this specific case I kind of consider it equal to Germany.
As for French; it's spoken in a gazillion African ex-colonies that anyone studying right now will probably never have to worry about. Aside from that, it's only spoken in France; hence why I'm saying I've never found it to be useful anywhere else than there. I suppose you could make an argument for Canada, though they do also speak English there in the areas where it's important.
This all is contrary to Spanish, which is spoken in a lot of countries more 'relevant' to the global world than the ones that speak German and French. That is the point I was trying to make. In the end it still depends, like I mentioned, on where the OP plans on ending up, but in a general sense I'd place English as the #1 most important language and put Spanish and Chinese on a second shared place. Spanish probably beats Chinese if we're talking about the right now instead of the 'in 15-25 years'.
Edit: As a little note here, I just realized that part of the reason that Spanish is so important is because people who speak French and German are generally also the people who (try to) speak English anyway.
Thanks for the links though, the more info the better :)
the best choice depend on how you plan to use this know. If you only want to learn a new language i would bet for an occidental language, easier than learn a new alphabet.
If you plan to travel to occident i would bet for spanish or german. As Mozared said, Spanish is one of the most used language in the world and will give you freedom to travel to several countries, but many students learn German because right now Germany have a high demand for graduates
If you want to learn japanese... for god love, don't learn chinese for this reason xD well its true that hanzis and kanjis are similar, but English and Spanish are similar too and "no creo que puedas entender esto sin un traductor" xDD
for my part i'm Spanish, i know English and, as you, i would like to learn japanese but neither offer it at my university (or the whole city). so i'm learning it on my own
problem you can find with Spanish:
1. verbs have a lot of conjugations
2. you read what you write. Put another way, you can say that each letter has a single phoneme
3. european spanish is different from american spanish. It keep being spanish but... is different
problem you can find with Spanish:
(...)
you read what you write. Put another way, you can say that each letter has a single phoneme
Phonemic orthography is a problem? :P I would say it makes a language much easier to learn. You don't need to memorize the pronunciation of every word, you just read them as they're written.
I wish a phonemic language had become the lingua franca of the world instead of English ;( Horrible language, all those pointless double letters that I can never get right (putting? puting? ressurection or resurrection? ARGH!) and I still can't remember how to pronounce the name of that river in London.
Im chinese but born in america. I learned english first then chinese. But I had a chinese speaking family so its kinda why it helped me. It not as hard as you think it is.
Chinese is NOT the the hardest language, there are much more complicated and useless rules to memorize in other languages but chinese is not one of them. I don't understand why people are comparing it with spanish being easier its just not the same view point you are looking at. English was created from parts of spanish and european culture so that why words are similar. Chinese on the other hand has no influence in any of them. In chinese you basically have to memorize about 5k characters and you will be able to read the majority of newspapers and articles. You only have to memorize one character and it will have that one meaning and no other characters will be similar or have any other synonyms or any of that bullshit like in english. 5k words is nothing. Chinese will use those same 5k words and combine them with others to create a different meaning. But you can figure out the combination, usually used for nouns. There is none of this feminine/masculine, grammer, synonyms, puncutation, past/present nonsense you have to learn.
Reason why chinese looks hard is because there isn't a phonetic, however chinese is more about an art than phonetic. Once you learn some of the tricks you can look at a character and figure out its meaning. Basically most of the characters have some sort of story behind it on why it looks the way it is.
English is by far the hardest of the two. There more rules to learn and exceptions and words to memorized.by far. This is coming from someone who know both languages but lived in the USA all his life.
You only have to memorize one character and it will have that one meaning and no other characters will be similar or have any other synonyms or any of that bullshit like in english. 5k words is nothing. Chinese will use those same 5k words and combine them with others to create a different meaning. But you can figure out the combination, usually used for nouns. There is none of this feminine/masculine, grammer, synonyms, puncutation, past/present nonsense you have to learn.
Have you read the article I linked? The main problem with Chinese is, I think, that for a westerner (which I'm going to assume the OP is), all that feminine/masculine, grammar, synonyms, punctuation and past/present nonsense comes naturally. It's the reason why it's so easy for someone from Europe to learn basically all European language. For someone who's whole experience with languages is based on that 'nonsense', diving into a language that doesn't have any of that is downright ridiculous.
On another note; I don't know if Chinese is 'the hardest language'. I can imagine there'd be more difficult languages to learn, but trying to come up with any is tough - nothing realistic I can think of (I'm ignoring stuff like 'Ancient Scandinavian Runes') would beat it.
Lastly; when did you learn Chinese? At what age? Can you both write and speak it fluently? And are we talking normal standard Chinese, Mandarin?
Wouldn't a person coming from western background have a more easier time dealing with a language that doesn't have restrictions with all the 'nonsense' instead of learning a whole set of 'nonsense' inorder to properly put words together? You basically have to memorize the character, how to write it correctly, meaning, and how to speak it.
As in hardest language, I was refering to any modern languages. Ancient Sandivnavian Runes is not one of them. But they are out there I am sure of it.
I know english, mandarin, and cantonese. Cantonese a popluar dialect from mandarin. Tho I learned Cantonese before I learned mandarin. Started learning cantonese around 8 years old and around 12 years old for mandarin. Mandarin has 4 tones while cantonese had 7. Cantonese used traditional characters while mandarin used simplified. My cantonese is better than mandarin but cantonese is a much harder language than mandarin due to traditional character have more strokes and the 3 extra tones. I can speak both fluently, read a majority of it and listen.
I dont know where you come from, and what plans you have for the future, but I would say either Spanish or Chinese. Only Germany and Austria speak german, and only France speak french, so I wouldnt pick any of those. The only reason to pick any of those, would be if you plan to go to their country, as nobody in there speak english. Spanish and Chinese are both spoken in many countries all over the world, and would be a good choice if you plan to travel to any of those countries at some time.
I hated that so badly during high school. But then again I'm terrible at languages other than English, heck I'm better at English than at Dutch, my native language. (From what I've heard Dutch is also a pain in the ass to learn for foreigners)
It's really great when you suck at languages when you're Dutch and they force you to learn English, German, French, Latin and ancient Greek(??).
I kind of erased all knowledge of them except for English though, probably because of traumatic memory's.
I have started to learn Japanese though, just so I can read light novels and manga without having to wait for translations that may never come.
I need to take a language class and the choices are Chinese, Spanish, German, Sign Language, and French. Obviously sign language would be useless. But considering I'm working on apps for ipad/iphone and a little bit in the map making which language would be best used? Is english one of the major languages in Europe? If anything I really want to learn japanese but they don't offer it at my college. I read a lot of manga so japanese would be useful for me in that aspect.
English is a relatively well spoken language in Europe, comparatively, but not to the degree that you'd just be able to walk around using it in every day situations and everyone'd understand you, so if you were planning spending on spending any extended length of time in any specific country, I'd go for their language. French is also quite popular in Europe, although not to the same degree, so if you're planning on going around Europe for some time, through many countries, I'd say go for French. Otherwise I'd go for Chinese, which is probably the hardest of the lot, since its not an offshoot of Latin like most European languages, so you'll be starting entirely from scratch, whereas with European languages you can get a grasp of some things without knowing everything, if you see what I mean. But it's the most spoken language in the world, so its pretty useful to have under you belt. Urg, if I could learn Japanese I'd be all over it, no more waiting for translations on manga and anime sounds like my personal heaven... which probably shows what a varied and interesting life I lead :P
From what I've found, German is really only useful in Germany and French only in France. Spanish is useful in Portugal, Spain, half of south-America, mid-America and some African colonies. I think it's the most widely spoken language, even beating English and Chinese on that. Unless you're specifically planning on spending time in a country where they speak French or German, I'd go with Spanish or Chinese.
Keep in mind that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world, though, if not the hardest (here's an informative link that a pall who lives in China has given me). For as far as I know, you can spend four years studying the language and you'll still be speaking it at a child's level. While it might give you an edge, if you want to tap in to globalization then mastering Spanish in those four years seems like a better bet.
@Mozared: Go
I really don't know why everyone is saying Chinese is hard?
It is actually one of the easiest languages to learn. By comparison, English is the hardest to learn due to semantics, tenses, cases, nuances and obscure spelling...
The real problem with 'Chinese' is that it is the most diverse language, mainly due to the vast dialect variance.
Also, cultural difference makes the language a lot harder to 'absorb'. One prefecture-level city neighbourhood might speak vastly differently to say, the city centre of Beijing. But, you will only ever know these differences by living in (any) country.
But, we knew that already didn't we? Anything you learn in a college or school (in terms of 'Language'), will be vastly different to how the language is actually used in its' country of origin.
All these things considered, I would say go for Spanish. Although, with China's recently changing foreign and economic policies, alongside it's privileged status as a BRIC country, it would be my first choice.
Read the article I linked. That's a student affiliated with the University of Michigan who is coming out and saying stuff like "Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese". Plus, I know a westerner who has lived in China for 20+ years and have talked fairly extensively with him about the country and language; he's the guy that gave me that link in the first place.
I guess I have no personal experience with Chinese, no, but there's two words I'm willing to take for granted when it comes to the subject.
Some fixing is required:
German: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/In_what_countries_is_German_the_official_language
French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_French_is_an_official_language
Spanish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_Spanish_is_an_official_language
The most spoken languages in the world:
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html
Spanish is second after Chinese Mandarin.
@RandomNoExit: Go
You're right on that - it's just that I never said that German and French aren't spoken anywhere else but in Germany and France. I'm saying I haven't found them to be useful anywhere other than those countries. German is only very, very scarcely spoken in specific regions of Belgium, Luxemburg is a country you'll never have to worry about and you won't be able to get around with regular German in Switzerland. Only Austria is a place where German is useful, but for this specific case I kind of consider it equal to Germany.
As for French; it's spoken in a gazillion African ex-colonies that anyone studying right now will probably never have to worry about. Aside from that, it's only spoken in France; hence why I'm saying I've never found it to be useful anywhere else than there. I suppose you could make an argument for Canada, though they do also speak English there in the areas where it's important.
This all is contrary to Spanish, which is spoken in a lot of countries more 'relevant' to the global world than the ones that speak German and French. That is the point I was trying to make. In the end it still depends, like I mentioned, on where the OP plans on ending up, but in a general sense I'd place English as the #1 most important language and put Spanish and Chinese on a second shared place. Spanish probably beats Chinese if we're talking about the right now instead of the 'in 15-25 years'.
Edit: As a little note here, I just realized that part of the reason that Spanish is so important is because people who speak French and German are generally also the people who (try to) speak English anyway.
Thanks for the links though, the more info the better :)
Propably all eastern languages (chinese, hindi, russia etc.) are most useful in future. Especially in business.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Number_of_Chinese_characters
i think its obviously easier learn 26 letters and 500 rules than 4000 hanzi with 200 rules
the best choice depend on how you plan to use this know. If you only want to learn a new language i would bet for an occidental language, easier than learn a new alphabet.
If you plan to travel to occident i would bet for spanish or german. As Mozared said, Spanish is one of the most used language in the world and will give you freedom to travel to several countries, but many students learn German because right now Germany have a high demand for graduates
If you want to learn japanese... for god love, don't learn chinese for this reason xD well its true that hanzis and kanjis are similar, but English and Spanish are similar too and "no creo que puedas entender esto sin un traductor" xDD
for my part i'm Spanish, i know English and, as you, i would like to learn japanese but neither offer it at my university (or the whole city). so i'm learning it on my own
problem you can find with Spanish:
1. verbs have a lot of conjugations
2. you read what you write. Put another way, you can say that each letter has a single phoneme
3. european spanish is different from american spanish. It keep being spanish but... is different
Phonemic orthography is a problem? :P I would say it makes a language much easier to learn. You don't need to memorize the pronunciation of every word, you just read them as they're written.
I wish a phonemic language had become the lingua franca of the world instead of English ;( Horrible language, all those pointless double letters that I can never get right (putting? puting? ressurection or resurrection? ARGH!) and I still can't remember how to pronounce the name of that river in London.
@Tolkfan: Go
Thames is pronounced "Tems".
Just be glad that it was English and not Scottish that became the Lingua Franca, och ye dinnae ken wit am takkin aboot, dae ya?
Im chinese but born in america. I learned english first then chinese. But I had a chinese speaking family so its kinda why it helped me. It not as hard as you think it is.
@Mozared: Go
Chinese is NOT the the hardest language, there are much more complicated and useless rules to memorize in other languages but chinese is not one of them. I don't understand why people are comparing it with spanish being easier its just not the same view point you are looking at. English was created from parts of spanish and european culture so that why words are similar. Chinese on the other hand has no influence in any of them. In chinese you basically have to memorize about 5k characters and you will be able to read the majority of newspapers and articles. You only have to memorize one character and it will have that one meaning and no other characters will be similar or have any other synonyms or any of that bullshit like in english. 5k words is nothing. Chinese will use those same 5k words and combine them with others to create a different meaning. But you can figure out the combination, usually used for nouns. There is none of this feminine/masculine, grammer, synonyms, puncutation, past/present nonsense you have to learn.
Reason why chinese looks hard is because there isn't a phonetic, however chinese is more about an art than phonetic. Once you learn some of the tricks you can look at a character and figure out its meaning. Basically most of the characters have some sort of story behind it on why it looks the way it is.
English is by far the hardest of the two. There more rules to learn and exceptions and words to memorized.by far. This is coming from someone who know both languages but lived in the USA all his life.
Have you read the article I linked? The main problem with Chinese is, I think, that for a westerner (which I'm going to assume the OP is), all that feminine/masculine, grammar, synonyms, punctuation and past/present nonsense comes naturally. It's the reason why it's so easy for someone from Europe to learn basically all European language. For someone who's whole experience with languages is based on that 'nonsense', diving into a language that doesn't have any of that is downright ridiculous.
On another note; I don't know if Chinese is 'the hardest language'. I can imagine there'd be more difficult languages to learn, but trying to come up with any is tough - nothing realistic I can think of (I'm ignoring stuff like 'Ancient Scandinavian Runes') would beat it.
Lastly; when did you learn Chinese? At what age? Can you both write and speak it fluently? And are we talking normal standard Chinese, Mandarin?
@Mozared: Go
Wouldn't a person coming from western background have a more easier time dealing with a language that doesn't have restrictions with all the 'nonsense' instead of learning a whole set of 'nonsense' inorder to properly put words together? You basically have to memorize the character, how to write it correctly, meaning, and how to speak it.
As in hardest language, I was refering to any modern languages. Ancient Sandivnavian Runes is not one of them. But they are out there I am sure of it.
I know english, mandarin, and cantonese. Cantonese a popluar dialect from mandarin. Tho I learned Cantonese before I learned mandarin. Started learning cantonese around 8 years old and around 12 years old for mandarin. Mandarin has 4 tones while cantonese had 7. Cantonese used traditional characters while mandarin used simplified. My cantonese is better than mandarin but cantonese is a much harder language than mandarin due to traditional character have more strokes and the 3 extra tones. I can speak both fluently, read a majority of it and listen.
IMHO, if a place doesnt speak english..... its really not a place I want to be.....
I second the japanesse, watching and reading raw anime/ manga would be FTW.... but they dont offer it....
Chinesse maybe.... but thats a pretty hard one to learn from my understanding.
Math, while many don't think of it as a language it really is, and honestly its universal so seems like it should be the top one to learn imo.
I think that Latin would be useful.
Reason: Once you figure out the origin of a word, you can figure out the word itself :)
I dont know where you come from, and what plans you have for the future, but I would say either Spanish or Chinese. Only Germany and Austria speak german, and only France speak french, so I wouldnt pick any of those. The only reason to pick any of those, would be if you plan to go to their country, as nobody in there speak english. Spanish and Chinese are both spoken in many countries all over the world, and would be a good choice if you plan to travel to any of those countries at some time.
@LongLivetheTalDarim: Go
I did Latin in High school and you are right it's proved invaluable for that reason alone.
@LongLivetheTalDarim: Go
I hated that so badly during high school. But then again I'm terrible at languages other than English, heck I'm better at English than at Dutch, my native language. (From what I've heard Dutch is also a pain in the ass to learn for foreigners) It's really great when you suck at languages when you're Dutch and they force you to learn English, German, French, Latin and ancient Greek(??).
I kind of erased all knowledge of them except for English though, probably because of traumatic memory's. I have started to learn Japanese though, just so I can read light novels and manga without having to wait for translations that may never come.