Foreign language

[Dr Who?]

I really want to learn a foreign language, but really not sure which language to learn that would benefit me.

 

French seems a little old school, German does not interest me, but would probably be best as I work in finance. I have always loved the Netherlands, but cannot see any reason why I would need it, and this is the same with Italian, Sweden, and Danish.

 

I am toying with Spanish or Chinese.

 

Do you speak a foreign language and what would you recommend?

[bridge too far]

Chinese would be more useful I would imagine but is, apparently, devilishly difficult to learn. If you can speak French you'd probably find Spanish fairly easy.

 

I can speak a little Greek and Russian but I find it very hard going to actually read the cyrillic alphabet.

[Whitey Grandad]

Spanish is straightforward. I am of the generation that did Latin at school as well as French. My wife did A-level French and German and I wanted to catch up with her so I learnt it at evening classes when I was in my thirties. Then some ten years ago we both started learning Spanish in the evenings and if you already have the grammatical structure from your other studies then it's just a matter of hanging the correct words on to it and learning the pronunciation. The same goes for Italian which I'm working on at the moment but that's only useful for holidays there. I would love to have a working knowledge of Chinese, Russian and Arabic one day but I'm getting a bit old for that. From a business or travel point if view I would recommend giving Spanish a try for a while and see how you like it. Just think of all those señoritas that you can impress. :-)

[saints_is_the_south]

I can speak basic Italian. Reading I am good at, listening I find the hardest. I love the language, it's very expressive and passionate. I want to learn to be abLe to speak it fluently but like everything it is finding the time to do it!

[Turkish]

I'd recommend finding one that benefits you and learning that one.

[Alwightmush]

I've been learning Spanish from DuoLingo for holiday purposes and making decent progress so far, quite useful having a mate learning it too so you have someone to compete against.

[Tokyo-Saint]

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?40598-Learn-Japanese-with-Tokyos-and-Hanna-Minx

[eurosaint]

Having spent a lot of time in China, I would recommend Mandarin !

The spoken word is actually not as difficult as you may imagine but the writing is almost impossible to decipher, which makes learning more challenging !

I only speak it a little but it's great fun when you get going !

[Hamilton Saint]

Spanish - very useful and relatively easy.

[RonManager]

Scots.

 

Chibs ya bassa!

[skintsaint]

I spent two months learning Argie Spanish before travelling to S.America and in that time I had enough grasp of the language to have virtually no problems speaking it for my travel purposes. Found it easy to study and normally I struggle to learn new languages having tried French and Germand before.

[Tokyo-Saint]

Germand can be tough. I think to learn any language well, you need a reason why you're learning it, a motive and and application. Otherwise you might as well learn clingon or middle earth or whatever.

 

Once you want to learn the language, my first tip would be to start by understanding the alphabet if it is different from our own, then next memorise 100 words. About 35 verbs, 40 nouns and the rest adjectives or articles or whatever. Make sure these are common everyday words. Once you have done this, you can star to learn the language with lessons or books or however you choose. Trust be, having this base foundation of already memorised key words will help a lot.

[Tokyo-Saint]

Forgot - finally, if at all possible, get a teacher with massive tits. This really helped bletch when I was teaching him Japanese and he is an intelectual ya know.

[John Boy Saint]

I had French from School, which made learning Spanish for holidays quite easy. Not fluent but after a few days in both countries I seem to get better and better. Had a holiday a few years ago in in France and there was a chap opposite who spoke almost zero English, but we struck up a conversation which had the aid of my old French- English dictionary but after a few evenings that was cast aside and we would just chat for ages in French to the point of one day in a shop negotiating a huge discount on something, then commenting to my wife about the little shopping coup I had just pulled off found myself speaking English a la Joey Barton. But weird.

 

I have a smattering of German from working for a German company, there I have mastered, which is the key to learning all language, hearing the gap between words. Sadly I don't have the vocabulary.

 

Mandarin is the one I would like to crack as it would help with work, one of my work colleagues is Chinese and she has been trying to teach me but normally being good at picking up bits of language it just seems to go in one ear and out the other. Maybe at 48 I have used up my allocation for language absorbtion.

 

I would say learn French or Spanish as it opens up your ear to most of southern Europe. But if you want a challenge go for Mandarin but try and make friends with someone who speaks the Launguage as that will make it so much easier.

[shurlock]

Try Chinese (mandarin) - lived on the mainland a few years and been learning it nearly 15 years. Requires serious commitment but not as difficult as people claim. More about whether you have a good ear than are able to drill sh*t loads of grammar. Tutors are dirt cheap too (as well as other things). If you want upfront results and can't spend a few hours every week preparing classes tho, stick with Spanish.

Edited 14 December, 2012 by shurlock

[Turkish]

I am multilingual, i can speak French, Italian, German. So if anyone wants to learn how to ask where the church is, ask for a beer, tell someone they go swimming with their friends on saturdays or learn how to say "f*ck off" in any of those languages i am your man.

[Ken Tone]

I really want to learn a foreign language, but really not sure which language to learn that would benefit me.

 

French seems a little old school, German does not interest me, but would probably be best as I work in finance. I have always loved the Netherlands, but cannot see any reason why I would need it, and this is the same with Italian, Sweden, and Danish.

 

I am toying with Spanish or Chinese.

 

Do you speak a foreign language and what would you recommend?

 

They wouldn't like you to speak German in the Netherlands anyway. You'd be better off sticking to English there, even if Dutch and German do have many similarities. i've known Dutch who themselves jokingly call Holland 'germany lite', but woe betide any foreigner who does the same.

 

If you're wanting a language that is spoken by the maximum number of people around the world, then of course yes chinese or spanish are the ones. However , remember there are two distinct forms of chinese ..mandarin and cantonese .. and maybe more signficantly it is diffcult to find lessons or courses in either in the UK. Hardly anyone takes A level for example, except native speakers from immigrant families. Whereas spanish is taught relatively widely.

[PhilippineSaint]

I can order food and drink in seven languages but speak non of them fluently.

 

But both the nippers now speak Arabic and Tagalog (Filipino) due to them going to school in Dubai and Philippines Sadly I have to use them for translating if more than a simple conversation is to be held.

[Turkish]

Why do we need to learn foreign languages anyway? Everyone understands English and if they dont just speak slower and louder FFS

[shurlock]

They wouldn't like you to speak German in the Netherlands anyway. You'd be better off sticking to English there, even if Dutch and German do have many similarities. i've known Dutch who themselves jokingly call Holland 'germany lite', but woe betide any foreigner who does the same.

 

If you're wanting a language that is spoken by the maximum number of people around the world, then of course yes chinese or spanish are the ones. However , remember there are two distinct forms of chinese ..mandarin and cantonese .. and maybe more signficantly it is diffcult to find lessons or courses in either in the UK. Hardly anyone takes A level for example, except native speakers from immigrant families. Whereas spanish is taught relatively widely.

 

Soton is absolutely crawling with foreign students from the mainland and they provide a cheap and reliable source of mandarin tutoring - many even have some kind of basic certification as tutoring is used to supplement their allowance. Cantonese is largely confined to BBCs - british born chinese.

 

If anything, mandarin tutoring can work out significantly cheaper than European languages - simply because it is a bit more rough and ready. If you learn French, Italian or Spanish, you'll likely to get some weird, lesbo spinster who's been living in the UK for years and got every professional qualification under the sun - and they charge accordingly. If you are happy to accept a slight, though not a massive, drop-off in quality (though structure is important when you're starting out), the savings can be significant; and ultimately whether you pick up a language has less to do with the tutor than your own motivation and willingness to put in the time outside class.

[shurlock]

Why do we need to learn foreign languages anyway? Everyone understands English and if they dont just speak slower and louder FFS

 

You don't know what they can open up

[PhilippineSaint]

You don't know what they can open up

 

Si Si Si

[toofarnorth]

I think the motivation point is really important. If you have somewhere you go on holiday more often, or friends in a certain country i'd go for that language. On those days when you are finding it tough and ask yourself why you are doing this it would be great to have a reason to call upon.

 

Also its not easy to do but try and speak the language as often as you can rather than just reading or writing. Even if its just to yourself out loud.

[Whitey Grandad]

I think the motivation point is really important. If you have somewhere you go on holiday more often, or friends in a certain country i'd go for that language. On those days when you are finding it tough and ask yourself why you are doing this it would be great to have a reason to call upon.

 

Also its not easy to do but try and speak the language as often as you can rather than just reading or writing. Even if its just to yourself out loud.

 

That's a good point. Speaking the language is good training for the mouth and its muscles and uses a different part of the brain which helps to memorise the words and phrases.

[JPTCount]

i speak french, and studied latin too, which means i can just about understand most spanish and italian, but can't reply back. i also know a bit of german for lolz.

 

one of my favorite quotes is from chales V of spain, "i speak spanish to god, french to men, italian to women, and german to my horse."

 

i'd love to learn arabic or one of the chineses tho

[knellster]

Depends where you're planning on using your foreign language. If it's South America then Spanish, if it's Eastern Europe then I still find German very useful.

 

I used to work as a translator so I had to be correct, but the best advice I could give you is that whichever language you choose don't be scared to make mistakes. Read some of the stuff on this forum and it's full of spelling and grammar errors but the message gets through. Take the same attitude with the language you learn - the number of times an error turns out to be really embarrassing is small (although I did tell my future mother-in-law that I balls were sore when I meant to say that my eyes were sore) so go for it. The appreciation from the natives makes it worthwhile, and there will be occasions when you'll overhear things you shouldn't because people don't dream that if you're English you'll understand what they're saying.

[John Boy Saint]

Depends where you're planning on using your foreign language. If it's South America then Spanish, if it's Eastern Europe then I still find German very useful.

 

I used to work as a translator so I had to be correct, but the best advice I could give you is that whichever language you choose don't be scared to make mistakes. Read some of the stuff on this forum and it's full of spelling and grammar errors but the message gets through. Take the same attitude with the language you learn - the number of times an error turns out to be really embarrassing is small (although I did tell my future mother-in-law that I balls were sore when I meant to say that my eyes were sore) so go for it. The appreciation from the natives makes it worthwhile, and there will be occasions when you'll overhear things you shouldn't because people don't dream that if you're English you'll understand what they're saying.

 

That is a real giggle cos it keeps the buggers on their toes. I have a few customers who speak Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu as their first language and having a Grandmother and Father who can speak Hindi through being brought up in India until 1947 when the British Raj came to an end, and many years of calling on these folks I have picked up certain words, when I comment on something they have said in their own tongue to keep me out of the loop it certainly stops them giving me the run around.