This is totally trivial and has been chatted about already, but I find myself constantly making a list of languages I want to learn after Japanese. What's yours? If you could just keep going till you die of old age.

Mine would be, in this order:

Japanese (personal resonance makes it the priority)
French (for untranslated access to books)
Putonghua (Standard Mandarin - because it's cool *and* practical)
Spanish (practical and easy)
Korean (similar reasons for learning Japanese--the movies are awesome, too)
German (so I can learn crazy word combinations and use capital letters mid-sentence, and intimidate ppl in dark alleys)
Standard Arabic (because it's cool *and* practical for when I'm negotiating illegal oil deals for my gas guzzling vehicle)
Hindi (Bollywood)
Russian (so I can read LJ entries... j/k) or Portugese (so I can create an anonymous account and talk trash to the baddest MMA fighters from a safe distance)
On to Southeast Asian, Cantonese, Farsi, Italian, Ancient languages, et cetera......
Swedish (so I can argue with Tobberoth bilingually)

I'll try to alternate writing systems, as you can see. Oh, and various programming and similarly technical or non-spoken languages, as well.

That would be...

Japanese
Korean
Mandarin Chinese
Taiwanese (maybe, because I made some Taiwanese friends in Japan)
Spanish (I love how this language sounds.. only if I have enough free time on my hand. )
maybe other Romance languages if it's actually as easy as I was told for speakers of any Romance language. (A French guy told me they call learners of Italian lazy because it's too damn easy)
Russian (see Spanish)
And of course Hungarian. I consider Hungarian the pinnacle of language learning.

After that.. I have absolutely no idea. Maybe brush up my English.

indeed totally trivial, yet entertaining ^^

日本語 (japanese): to be able to read/watch anime, manga, 三島由紀夫, 夏目漱石, 村上春樹, &cetera.
italiano (italian): for the literature, and teh awesomeness of the language. (Cesare Pavese, Alberto Moravia, Grazia Deledda, Dante Alighieri, &cetera)
官話 (mandarin): because, well, it's all hanzi all the time, so...
हिन्दी (hindi): because devanagari is my second favorite writing system. Thinking about it, संस्कृतम् (sanskrit) would work just as well, plus i'd get to read the veda, not very practical, though.
íslenska (icelandic): because speakers of ìslenska can understand written old norse, and i want to be able to read the edda untranslated.
عربي (arabic): again, because the writing system in awesome, and the calligraphy is the best in the world.
Deutsch (German): Literature and philosophy (Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Engels, Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, &cetera)
русский язык (Russian): Literature and philosophy (Пётр Кропоткин, Лев Толсто́й​, Фёдор Достое́вский), and the cyrillic alphabet is interesting.
??? (korean) <- don't know how to write it: hangul is... hangul, it's pretty.

hm... i'm thinking i'm gonna have to become a translator to have the time to do all those, though...

OK, I'm not really sure about the order but it's just a general idea.

Japanese (off course)
Mandarin Chinese and Korean (the full CJK trilogy, to show the world how awesome I am
German (#1 national language here, I already studied a little bit in school)
Finnish (it's just way too cool to be ignored)
Swedish (Why not?)
Italian (another national language, worth learning, sounds nice and is very easy for a native French speaker)
Esperanto (easy, I like the concept)
Russian (sounds fun)
Klingon (yes, I'm a geek)

And then I can die in peace?

The "in my lifetime" list:

Arabic (want to better understand the middle east, current politics)
French (everyone's allowed one "just because" on this list, right?)
German (my mom speaks German)
Japanese (hey i got this far....)
Mandarin (fiance from Taiwan)
Russian (i want to cross central Asia... plus I work for NASA, so it's useful)
Spanish (i want to cross the Americas)
Tibetan (there are so many works still untranslated)

The maybes:

Cambodian (I *love* ankor wat)
Irish (always wanted to learn a celtic language)
Romani (I love the idea of a real language that borrows from all cultures spanning India to Portugal, plus it sounds nice and the culture is interesting... not very practical though)
Other Germanic languages (If you already know English and German...)
Other Romance languages (If you already know Spanish and French...)

Japanese (obviously)
Korean (My GFs family aren't very good at English, I'd love to speak in their native language)
Mandarin (Just plain useful and extremely awesome. While Japanese is certainly different from the other languages I've learned, Mandarin was the first language to make me go "wow, this is cool". Tones and no conjugations ftw.)

Those are the languages I plan to learn to fluency before I'm 30, and I doubt I will have any time learning other languages until after that, so the rest of the list is of WAY less priority.

Arabic (Tons of people speak it, different, useful in Sweden with all the immigration etc)
German, Hindi, Spanish, Russian (Simply useful)
Latin (Learned a lot of it in high school but stopped caring and lost all my ability, would be nice to regain it.)

I need to add all these languages to my list now. Also: African. Swahili? Oh, and Ojibwe! And Ogham!

Mandarin (love the tones, writing, culture - working towards a career in this)
Classical Chinese (interesting how one written language could have represented so many spoken languages)
Cantonese (awesome dialect)
Minnan/Taiwanese (same)
Japanese (always wanted to learn this, plus there's lots of research on Chinese in Japanese)
French (too easy not to, lots of great literature)
Latin (to read Marcus Aurelius and so many others in the original)
Spanish (love the cultures, food, and music)

I want to be semi-fluent or at least up basic in those languages before turning 28-30
(that are 10-12 years from now)
1.Japanese (on the run)
2.Ukrainian&Russian (things to do for the first, the second it's so cool!)
3.Spanish(without prior knowledge I can follow 40+ of tv...but I have to study)
4.Cantonese(good level)
5.Arabic(intermediate)
6.German(very good)
7.Simpl Chinese(basic in speaking)
8.Thai(I like it a lot)
9.French(very good)
10. English(Native level)

Plan to study on my own and with my time, without rush...probably I'll choose an university that will not have nothing in common with learning languages,it's more like a hobby.
We'll see

Japanese (my one true love <3)
Korean (similar to Japanese, looks and sounds really cool sometimes)
Chinese (Lots of pretty Hanzi, access to countless books and manga and stuff...and people)
French (sounds and looks pretty and it's practical)
Spanish (I've been thinking about learning this for a while...)

Now lets get unrealistic :p
Russian (I saw a crazy movie and really liked the sound, very exotic)
Finnish (Love the sound in some music I have)
Hindi (Bollywood, food, exotic stuffs)

Evil_Dragon Wrote:A French guy told me they call learners of Italian lazy because it's too damn easy)

Once you learn one romance language, the rest are much easier, but particularly for French and Italian. Every single Italian student I met spoke enough french to be able to hold a regular everyday conversation. Most of them also spoke German too, but I don't think that actually had anything to do with them knowing french.

From what I've gathered by looking at Italian texts every now and then is that a lot of the words are essentially spelled the same, or very similarly, but pronounced very differently.

Which leads me to my list.

Italian is probably next on my list just out of sheer ease of learning.

Spanish is probably next after that out of usefulness, I've already (hardly) studied it in school for years, and the longer I'm out of the "school Spanish" environment, the more my aversion to Spanish is subsiding.

Realistically my language conquests will probably end there, but ideally I'd then go for

Ukrainian or Russian or whatever dialect of that my relatives speak
Dutch
one of the Nordic languages

Also, I should note that an Italian accent in french sounds really freaking cool

Japanese
Chinese
Thai
French
Spanish
Norwegian
Irish Gaelic
Scots Gaelic
Russian

Not necessarily in that order, and most are firmly in the 'if I lived forever' category as I doubt I will learn even 3 of them to usefulness, let alone fluency.

But it's fun to think about.

Spanish ( I love it!),
Italian
Japanese (fluent)
Chinese (level that would be enough just for reading)
German
French (love how it sounds)

I would add Russian, but it's my native so I'd add Ukrainian (some words sound funny for Russian).

Japanese (Want to work there, currently beginner)
Chinese Mandarin (Sounds interesting, want to disprove the myth that westerners can't learn it)
Chinese Cantonese (Gotta love tones...)
Vietnamese (Lived in a Vietnamese household for 9 months and fell in love with it)
Scottish Gaelic (My heritage!)
German (Once upon a time I knew it, now I don't )
Swedish (Music made me want to learn it)
Finnish (Hardest Indo-European language [in my opinion] to learn, Hungarian is a close second though)
French (Mother spoke French to a native level)
Spanish (Already know this to an intermediate/advanced level)
Russian (In Soviet Russia one does not learn languages, languages learn you!)
Arabic (Beautiful scripture)
Hindi (Good for future business maybe)

1. Japanese (I've come too far to quit now.)
2. Dutch (Because I said I would.)
3. Norwegian (Too easy not to learn.)
4. Danish (Same reason.)
5. English (Because I hear it's useful.)
6. German (Took it in school, but forgot everything due to lack of interest. Well, now I have the interest.)
7. French (I like berets.)
8. Korean (Hangul is awesome.)
9. Finnish (Because it's weird and interesting.)
10. Tagalog (Same reason.)

People who want to learn Swedish may feel free to contact me, I love helping out ^^

Not necessarily in this order, but the ones at the top are definitely more pressing ;-)

Japanese (really now? =O)
Italian (that one song with that Italian chorus was so pretty...so I'm learning it now)
French (always liked the way they spoke)
Spanish (...necessary...plus I love those darn soap operas @.@)
Irish Gaelic (because I love celtic mythology and...Irish seems like the way to go haha)
Korean (once upon a time...their movies are awesome!)
Chinese (always loved Chinese...seems reasonable =P)
Russian (darn russian singing groups...getting me all obsessed with the language)
German (all that knowledge from five years ago, gone...so I'll have to start that up again)
Arabic (because everyone says it's useful...plus my name looks so pretty written in Arabic)

日本語
Mandarin Chinese (a logical step after Japanese, plus it and China in general increasingly fascinates me)
Korean (because becoming Korean is the only way I'll ever stop sucking at Starcraft)
Sanskrit (the script looks amazing, the language sounds fascinating and it's a dying language I'd like to preserve)
Swedish (ancestral roots and all that, but mostly because of the fine ladies. Also, the few metal bands that actually sing in Swedish.)
Norwegian (because after Swedish, why not? plus the fine ladies.)
Finnish (see: Swedish and Norwegian, plus: holy hell this language looks crazy, how could I not study it?)
German (see: Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish)
Arabic (badass script, another supposedly difficult language for a native English speaker to learn = a challenge!)
Russian (let's be honest here: fine ladies.)

I can see myself learning three or four of these to a high level before my dirt nap, but I won't tempt fate.

Japanese - top priority.

Esperanto - almost too easy and extremely useful to travel the free. See passporto servo.

Maori - my countries "other" native language. Basically, I could so I should.
Then if I got a job working for the goverment I'd practically be Satan in their eyes. Raising KFC prices and taking all thier land. The list of accusations goes on.

Chinese - well I love kanji. The Chinese are the second biggest population in this country. It's spoken more than Maori. Way more.

Spanish/Italian/French. - One of them, one day.

Sanskrit - Devanagari is bad ass. So was Krishna. Go read a book about it.

Latin - Of course. How dead can ya get? Cool for oldschool reading though. Fast cos reading is all you'd need to learn. Unless you want to speak it or live in Vatican city.

Did I mention Esperanto!? I know I did but this is a fully functional language that can be churned out in a month and used to travel the world.!!!

mezbup Wrote:Esperanto - almost too easy and extremely useful to travel the free. See passporto servo.

Why not simply couch surf? Unlike passporto servo, there's actually a huge amount of people in couch surfing.

Tobberoth Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Esperanto - almost too easy and extremely useful to travel the free. See passporto servo.

Why not simply couch surf? Unlike passporto servo, there's actually a huge amount of people in couch surfing.

I assume because passporto servo guarantee's you'll be able to understand your host. For native English speakers I'm sure couch surfing has plenty of options for english speaking hosts but for people with more obscure language backgrounds I definitely see the advantage of passporto servo and Esperanto.

And passporto servo has a built-in barrier to entry which probably makes people feel safe and secure in using it, I imagine.

Still, a heck of a commitment to just couch surf. Besides, you'd be surprised how much global coverage you can get with some of the other major languages. Besides English, you can always find someone that speaks or at least reads/writes Chinese, and almost always someone that speaks Spanish. Probably true of one or two other languages (Arabic?) as well. Know any one of these languages and you can you can get by just about anywhere.

Japanese (Many many reasons)
Spanish (One of the most spoken languages and easy)
German and Russian (I love their pronunciation)
Chinese and Korean (COol!!)

But I have to work on my English cus I'm still far from fluency.
Despite being a native Arabic speaker, honestly I'm not fluent in grammar, so I can't truly enjoy Arabic literature and poetry (which are the best thing about it)
Hebrew (I wanna know what common it has with Arabic)

I shouldn't be, but I'm actually surprised how many similar reasons we have offhand for learning these languages. Pretty cool. Well, I'll say what we're all thinking: I want to learn a tonne of languages as part of my plot for conquering the world. You can admit it too, now. (Anyone read Mx0? Can't believe it ended so early.)

Japanese (business and personal enjoyment purposes -- work in progress)
Western Lombard (my family is from Poschiavo, in Switzerland -- work in progress)
Latin (work in progress)
Classical Greek
Koine Greek
Hebrew
German (High German, Swiss German)
Italian (standard)
French
Russian
Sanskrit
Literary Classical Chinese

I would like to also make a study of the Japanese language historically. I find things like Early and Middle Japanese interesting. I have an interest in historical languages mostly, as can be attested by my list.