Homeric Greek.

I've always wanted to read the Illiad in the original

chochajin Wrote:I just explained this to a Japanese coworker yesterday. The sun is male in Spanish (el sol), but female in German (die Sonne). It doesn't make any sense, that's just how it is.
I guess with a lot of input (reading / listening) you will get a feeling for that quickly though.

That was the plan. Sentence in Anki would take care of that very nicely. Which is a lot better than memorizing which is which.

Modern Greek. I guess I have a thing for strange symbols and alphabets.

What, nobody wants to learn my native tongue Dutch? What a disappointment... it's such a nice-sounding throat-scraping exercise!

I had to learn 4 foreign languages in school: German, English, French, Latin. Then I got interested in Italian through opera. As a teenager I also got into some Persian (another BEAUTIFUL language) and Japanese. I find each language has its own weirdness that makes it difficult:

German: grammar/conjugations (entgegen gegen?ber zuwieder... )
English: spelling (most inconsistent use of the roman script ever)
Japanese: writing (they REALLY messed up the beautiful consistency of Chinese script)
Persian: reading (don't write vowels...)
Chinese: pronounciation (aaarghh...)
French: listening (they don't pronounce half of their words)

The only exception is Italian: that's just beautiful. 100% phonetic, no exceptions, easy to pronounce, no weird grammar, most words you already know if you know any latin-based language... I guess Italian should be the international auxiliary language.

I'm currently learning Korean and Chinese on on top of my Japanese. One of my Korean friends helps me out by explaining stuff in Japanese. I have a Japanese friend who majors in Chinese who will help me out (by explaining stuff in Japanese) when I get back into really studying it as well.

All my English native friends are monolingual or English/Japanese bilingual science majors (useless bastards)

If I was going to choose another language I'd like to learn some day I'd probably say German. Either that or fix up my French that I spent 9 years learning as a kid.

[ファブリス]

I lol'ed at the topic title.

But ok if I DID study seriously Japanese and considered myself fluent in speaking, then... Spanish because it spoken (in one form or another) in many countries around the world (I think?).

Or like TheSpartan I would study Chinese, both for my attraction to the written form, but also because of the vast amount of knowledge in Chinese's literature and history and culture.

eltjopoort Wrote:What, nobody wants to learn my native tongue Dutch? What a disappointment... it's such a nice-sounding throat-scraping exercise!

I had to learn 4 foreign languages in school: German, English, French, Latin. Then I got interested in Italian through opera. As a teenager I also got into some Persian (another BEAUTIFUL language) and Japanese. I find each language has its own weirdness that makes it difficult:

German: grammar/conjugations (entgegen gegen?ber zuwieder... )
English: spelling (most inconsistent use of the roman script ever)
Japanese: writing (they REALLY messed up the beautiful consistency of Chinese script)
Persian: reading (don't write vowels...)
Chinese: pronounciation (aaarghh...)
French: listening (they don't pronounce half of their words)

The only exception is Italian: that's just beautiful. 100% phonetic, no exceptions, easy to pronounce, no weird grammar, most words you already know if you know any latin-based language... I guess Italian should be the international auxiliary language.

Ahh... ...makes me want to try Italian badly! After French, German, and English, I suspect Italian should be a fun language to learn/know...

Personally I didn't like Italian at all, studied it for 1 year in high school (from what I hear, Swedish High School studies is NOT comparable to American High School studies, languagewise, so keep that in mind )

I personally think the language sounds pretty ugly compared to Spanish and Latin (the other two romance languages I've studied) and it also lacks useabiity since Italian is just spoken in Italy (a country which I didn't like much when i visited either...). I can agree that it's pretty easy to learn though, about as easy as Spanish (both being much easier than French and German from what I can see).

CaLeDee Wrote:Japanese is the only language that sounds cool to me. I've never been interested in European languages.. I guess Chinese would be a great challenge but I can't see myself wanting to become fluent in it, like I want with Japanese.

Same here.

I'm lethargic by nature so I'm really having to haul myself into Japanese, but the benefits and motivation of learning it are definitely there.

I'd love to know Chinese but I'm simply not planning to. The effort > results ratio for me would not be even.

I know some people love the journey of learning a language and can't wait to get onto another as soon as one finishes. But for me I honestly just can't wait for the destination, where which I'll just sleep, play games and read manga.

Anyway talk of another language is waaay to premature for me.

zazen666 Wrote:

phoenix Wrote:.

And I'd really like to learn Okinawan. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that one yet

Well, about 90-95% of what they speak in Okinawa is standard japanese, unless you talk to people in their 60's and up, or go to some of the remote islands (even there its still mostly the older generations that speak non standard japanese).

Considering the length the okinawans get to live, people in their 60's and up should be a pretty big percentage.

I just think Okinawan looks so cool. Considering that I've mostly learnt dead languages, even a language that still has one native speaker, is a high enough percentage for me to care about it.

I second the argument of Okinawan being cool. Sadly, it's no longer popular among the youngsters of the native speakers. Also the diversity of the language itself: you get different dialects (or maybe languages?) with different islands. Of course, Okinawan (uchinaguchi) is the most popular, this is the language used by the people of the Okinawan mainlaind.

I got to know an Okinawan, and when I tried saying some Okinawan sentences, he chuckled and remarked how even youngsters these days don't even understand that.

By the, I'm aiming for either Arabic or Russian after this.

German and Luxemburgish.

Most likely, I'll go on a Spanish learning spurt like I always do, because I feel like I have to learn it. The neighborhood I live in is almost entirely Spanish and I feel like an idiot because I can't communicate with the customers at work or my neighbors, and yet I go home and study Japanese instead of Spanish. Periodically I start to study it, then get incredibly bored and want to study Japanese or Latin instead.

Can't you do both at the same time?

eltjopoort Wrote:The only exception is Italian: that's just beautiful. 100% phonetic, no exceptions, easy to pronounce, no weird grammar, most words you already know if you know any latin-based language... I guess Italian should be the international auxiliary language.

Also it sounds damn fine.

I will probably pick up Mandarin Chinese and Korean though.

After Japanese, I wish to continue with Korean. I was learning both at the same time earlier this year but decided that Japanese was more important. Korean really is a beautiful language though, and hangeul's a breeze to learn.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Can't you do both at the same time?

Then there would be less time for the other language.

cameron_en Wrote:After Japanese, I wish to continue with Korean. I was learning both at the same time earlier this year but decided that Japanese was more important. Korean really is a beautiful language though, and hangeul's a breeze to learn.

Is it true learning Korean in general is relatively easy for a speaker of Japanese?

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:

cameron_en Wrote:After Japanese, I wish to continue with Korean. I was learning both at the same time earlier this year but decided that Japanese was more important. Korean really is a beautiful language though, and hangeul's a breeze to learn.

Is it true learning Korean in general is relatively easy for a speaker of Japanese?

Well, what I hear from most people, is that the grammar is almost 100% identical.

Well, saying 100% is taking it way too far but from someone who is used to the huge difference between English and Japanese, they are very similar.

Their sentence structure is almost identical. Their grammatical structures are almost always 100% translatable in a litteral sense. However, their grammar isn't the same all the time.

1. Korean has a future tense. Japanese does not. This REALLY messes with your brain when you study Korean using Japanese resources.
2. Their phonology is much more advanced which means conjugations etc are harder to learn and get used to.
3. Where Japanese only has one way to say something, Korean often have several ways, it seems to me than Korean honorifics are almost more advanced than Japanese ones.
4. While they have about the same particles, they use them slightly differently. Where you use a "ga" in japanese, you might use a "wo" in Korean etc.

Now, I'm learning Korean from koreans, so I might not know the whole truth. All the korean I know I've learned from Korean friends and ANKI sentence mining, so while I have a slight feel for simple Korean, I can't say I'm that educated in Korean grammar.

Squintox Wrote:

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:

cameron_en Wrote:After Japanese, I wish to continue with Korean. I was learning both at the same time earlier this year but decided that Japanese was more important. Korean really is a beautiful language though, and hangeul's a breeze to learn.

Is it true learning Korean in general is relatively easy for a speaker of Japanese?

Well, what I hear from most people, is that the grammar is almost 100% identical.

Yes it's relatively easy and I highly recommend it. When I first began Korean, I often mixed up the two languages from time to time, but this seemed to fade away after a while.

An incredible resource for Japanese learners/speakers who want to learn Korean is jpdic.naver.com, the translator on that page is pretty effective and there are tons of accurate Korean/Japanese example sentences.

Fighting!

i absolutely hate the gender words >_< since i know spanish and german use them... i just want to know, do french and italian also you them too??

Hashiriya Wrote:i absolutely hate the gender words >_< since i know spanish and german use them... i just want to know, do french and italian also you them too??

French has male and female

Hashiriya Wrote:i absolutely hate the gender words >_< since i know spanish and german use them... i just want to know, do french and italian also you them too??

Italian and French are like Spanish. They have two genders: male and female.

Chinese, after that arabic.
Arabic will be fairly easy since in my mother tongue (somali) there are a lot of loan words, and my mother is arabian so there.

But that will all happen after I learned Japanese.
I want to learn at least five different languages.
I got three of them down pat. :O