Well, as a Spaniard, I voted for Spanish, obviously
I don't think Chinese will catch on with the people. It's overly complicated, and they fail at the main language invader: culture. English conquered the world through the books, music, movies, etc that provided a quick way for the people to get a grip of some sentences. The only thing coming from China nowadays are California-designed Beijing-made iPods and businessmen.
Besides, as soon as the slaved Chinese workforce wakes up and starts fighting for their rights, their economy is gonna plunge. It's all based on working a lot of hours and paying merely a dime. That can't last much more. People will rebel.
Besides English (obviously), I learned French in high school (i like it, sounds sexy), and some Japanese (just because drawing instead of writing is fun).
If you want to improve your German, you might want to stay away from Bavaria, Saxony and the Rhineland. Here in the Rhineland, we do not speak German. All forms and facettes of dialects, but you will never hear standard German being spoken around where I live. But, eh, it might help you to "go with the flow", German is actually a rather fast language once spoken by natives.
Guardman: Concerning your comment about German as a forceful language, that is sadly so, though I'm often unsure whether the rest of the world truly recognizes German as a brachial, foceful language because it is or because some rather mean things were done by people that speak German. I am, as of yet, undecided on that matter, but I do have to say that, while I said earlier that every word in the language can be used to insult someone(albeit only if you say so agressively enough), it is also a language that can be rather nice and melodious. It all depends on how you say something, not exactly what what you say. It also gives you the penchant to build really long sentences and be unnecessarily complicated about them ;).
Obv he needs to listen to more opera or Bach-chorals.
I have also heard that about German...that there are no native speakers of German, only native speakers of Schwyzertütsch, bairisch, ostfriesisch, etc. who are taught an idealized form of their native tongue in school. At the same time, regional dialects of German are dying out as kids grow up and spend more time at school and away from home traveling or working. At least there is a fair amount of overlap between the various dialects.
I remember reading in Japanese class that even today there are subtle regional dialects of Japanese, most notably Tokyo voices some consonants that most other Japanese regions don't; and other well-known dialects like Kamigata-go and Okinawan. Some say if you want to hear the best approximation of what Japanese sounded like in the days of Shogun Tokugawa, listen to Kamigata-go which retains a lot of old verb forms and figures of speech.
As with German kids, the Japanese kids after the war usually left to attend school elsewhere, traveled a lot more than their parents, and had a lot more outside influence rebuilding their country and way of life. Japanese was standardized starting in the Meiji period but really only became academically codified after the war, erasing a lot of dialectal differences in the younger generations. Again, at least there is a written common language and a fair amount of overlap.
Chinese shares a written language, but there is little overlap so it really is a struggle. Not just completely different pronunciations of the same word, but different words entirely come to be represented by the same character.
Finally, there is no Indian. India is represented by something like 12 different major language families containing 1000 different languages. The various writing systems for the Indo-Aryan and Sino-Malayan members are lookalike, but represent different things. Then there are the Indo-Aryan languages written in Arabic script, and literary and historic scripts for Sanskrit and Dravidic texts, and finally the various systems of Romanization of all of the above. Then there's English and Hindi. Right off the bat, the average Indian child speaks 3 or 4 languages: his family's language, English, Hindi, and the language of the state where he lives. Add in Arabic or Sanskrit for religious studies, that makes 5.
German. Not because its easy, no, I go with the great reasonings of a)I'm German, and b)the words are incredibly fun to pronounce. I really wish they taught German at school, but I figure I'll take it in college.
Spanish is an easy language to learn that's important to know where I live, and through 2 years, I can speak enough to get me by, though I'd hardly call myself fluent.
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The vast majority of Chinese people know Mandarin. The only immigrants & natives I've ever met who couldn't speak Mandarin are usually the uneducated super market workers that only speak Cantonese.
Chinese, be it Simplified or Traditional, relies on memory. That's why CherryBoom! and I favor Traditional, because its what we grew up around with. It's equally hard for a Westerner to learn either, in my opinion. Traditional isn't that much more time consuming than simplified..unless you really can't save that millisecond it takes to write a Traditional character. As long as you write a character several times, it doesn't matter what form of Chinese it is, you'll remember it equally well.
Now, to Drizzt_522..you do know that there are also a lot of people born in America who can't speak English, right? What's your stance on those people then?
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Its been an uphill battle learning German for the last few years but my German lecturer has been a great help and is very good at teaching it. She is Bavarian and I understand her the best, (she speaks pretty much only German in class) so Munich is where I'm planning on going. The troubles I've had with German are primarily in Irregular/regular verbs in past and simple past z.b - Gemacht, machten und machen oder geflogen, flog und fliegen. So many stem changes that very from verb to verb make it hard to remember them all. I'm pretty good with the cases but sometimes get Akk/Dat mixed up if there is no preposition (Z.b - mit always takes Dat / fuer always takes Akk) or I don't know the case the verb takes. The other pain in the *** is adjective endings, there are so many factors deciding the endings. I can't remember all the charts so usually just put 'e' on the end or leave the adjective as is.
Apart from all of that I can read and listen to German pretty good just making the sentences is grammatical acrobatics. I'm hoping when I live there people talk to me in standard Hochdeutsch as opposed to their dialects so I can understand it and improve.
I get a bit of flak learning German, heaps of people tell me I'm wasting time and even some Germans tell me I will never learn it, it's too complex. I think it's important to stick at something once you start and the rewards will pay off.
Guardman: Concerning your comment about German as a forceful language, that is sadly so, though I'm often unsure whether the rest of the world truly recognizes German as a brachial, foceful language because it is or because some rather mean things were done by people that speak German. I am, as of yet, undecided on that matter, but I do have to say that, while I said earlier that every word in the language can be used to insult someone(albeit only if you say so agressively enough), it is also a language that can be rather nice and melodious. It all depends on how you say something, not exactly what what you say. It also gives you the penchant to build really long sentences and be unnecessarily complicated about them ;).
I first became interested in German because of Rammstein. It has a very rhythmic sound to it that lends it a energetic air.
I agree with you. The worst thing that can happen is that in the end you never used your German and forget it all. But even then, if you ever plan on learning another language, it will help you immensely.
I haven't forgotten all of it yet, but I'm getting there.
However, having learned it does help in laying out structure and tracing root meanings of non-German words. Since it has such structure, and you have to learn it, it's much easier to bring that structure to bear on other tasks. And, it is a fun language to learn. Heh, maybe I'll pick up some software or something to help me retrain my German speaking brain bits into recognizing they exist. I miss watching Duetche Welle and understanding all of it.
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Is there any use in learning Mandarin then? Or is it good enough to understand most of what they say.
Honestly, speaking it is much more important than reading/writing it, in my experience. It's pretty rare that I have to ever read or write in Chinese, but speaking it is something that I use quite often.
Of course, as with all languages, learning them both together is often more effective than just trying to learn to speak it. One good resource is Chinese TV or music videos, as captioning is almost universal on Chinese TV.
Also, I think Mando-pop is the best music in the world, so I encourage people to watch the music videos even if you don't want to learn Chinese
That's right, you should stick to it. I wouldn't say that you'll never learn it, but I would say that going to Germany is a great idea for truly learning a language. Also, don't worry about mixing up the Akkusativ and Dativ, there are a lot of German speakers who do so as well(not to mention slaughter the Genitiv. "Dem sein Haus", where I live "dem sing huss" is quite commonly used and oh SO SO wrong^^).
My lecturer informed me that people in Berlin are particularly bad at getting the cases right. I'm pretty sure that its bad if i'm around people who don't get the cases right because if I hear a German say or write something different to the grammatic rules i've been taught I automatically assume there is a) an exception to the rules and in some situations what i've been taught doesn't apply or b) I myself have memorized the cases wrong and will change to how they said it and question my ability.
Hopefully when I'm living there I can find people who don't speak very good English (preferably no English) and speak good German so I can pick it up quickly.
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I don't think Chinese will catch on with the people. It's overly complicated, and they fail at the main language invader: culture. English conquered the world through the books, music, movies, etc that provided a quick way for the people to get a grip of some sentences. The only thing coming from China nowadays are California-designed Beijing-made iPods and businessmen.
Besides, as soon as the slaved Chinese workforce wakes up and starts fighting for their rights, their economy is gonna plunge. It's all based on working a lot of hours and paying merely a dime. That can't last much more. People will rebel.
Besides English (obviously), I learned French in high school (i like it, sounds sexy), and some Japanese (just because drawing instead of writing is fun).
I have also heard that about German...that there are no native speakers of German, only native speakers of Schwyzertütsch, bairisch, ostfriesisch, etc. who are taught an idealized form of their native tongue in school. At the same time, regional dialects of German are dying out as kids grow up and spend more time at school and away from home traveling or working. At least there is a fair amount of overlap between the various dialects.
I remember reading in Japanese class that even today there are subtle regional dialects of Japanese, most notably Tokyo voices some consonants that most other Japanese regions don't; and other well-known dialects like Kamigata-go and Okinawan. Some say if you want to hear the best approximation of what Japanese sounded like in the days of Shogun Tokugawa, listen to Kamigata-go which retains a lot of old verb forms and figures of speech.
As with German kids, the Japanese kids after the war usually left to attend school elsewhere, traveled a lot more than their parents, and had a lot more outside influence rebuilding their country and way of life. Japanese was standardized starting in the Meiji period but really only became academically codified after the war, erasing a lot of dialectal differences in the younger generations. Again, at least there is a written common language and a fair amount of overlap.
Chinese shares a written language, but there is little overlap so it really is a struggle. Not just completely different pronunciations of the same word, but different words entirely come to be represented by the same character.
Finally, there is no Indian. India is represented by something like 12 different major language families containing 1000 different languages. The various writing systems for the Indo-Aryan and Sino-Malayan members are lookalike, but represent different things. Then there are the Indo-Aryan languages written in Arabic script, and literary and historic scripts for Sanskrit and Dravidic texts, and finally the various systems of Romanization of all of the above. Then there's English and Hindi. Right off the bat, the average Indian child speaks 3 or 4 languages: his family's language, English, Hindi, and the language of the state where he lives. Add in Arabic or Sanskrit for religious studies, that makes 5.
Spanish is an easy language to learn that's important to know where I live, and through 2 years, I can speak enough to get me by, though I'd hardly call myself fluent.
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Chinese, be it Simplified or Traditional, relies on memory. That's why CherryBoom! and I favor Traditional, because its what we grew up around with. It's equally hard for a Westerner to learn either, in my opinion. Traditional isn't that much more time consuming than simplified..unless you really can't save that millisecond it takes to write a Traditional character. As long as you write a character several times, it doesn't matter what form of Chinese it is, you'll remember it equally well.
Now, to Drizzt_522..you do know that there are also a lot of people born in America who can't speak English, right? What's your stance on those people then?
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Apart from all of that I can read and listen to German pretty good just making the sentences is grammatical acrobatics. I'm hoping when I live there people talk to me in standard Hochdeutsch as opposed to their dialects so I can understand it and improve.
I get a bit of flak learning German, heaps of people tell me I'm wasting time and even some Germans tell me I will never learn it, it's too complex. I think it's important to stick at something once you start and the rewards will pay off.
I first became interested in German because of Rammstein. It has a very rhythmic sound to it that lends it a energetic air.
I haven't forgotten all of it yet, but I'm getting there.
However, having learned it does help in laying out structure and tracing root meanings of non-German words. Since it has such structure, and you have to learn it, it's much easier to bring that structure to bear on other tasks. And, it is a fun language to learn. Heh, maybe I'll pick up some software or something to help me retrain my German speaking brain bits into recognizing they exist. I miss watching Duetche Welle and understanding all of it.
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All my Decks.
Honestly, speaking it is much more important than reading/writing it, in my experience. It's pretty rare that I have to ever read or write in Chinese, but speaking it is something that I use quite often.
Of course, as with all languages, learning them both together is often more effective than just trying to learn to speak it. One good resource is Chinese TV or music videos, as captioning is almost universal on Chinese TV.
Also, I think Mando-pop is the best music in the world, so I encourage people to watch the music videos even if you don't want to learn Chinese
My lecturer informed me that people in Berlin are particularly bad at getting the cases right. I'm pretty sure that its bad if i'm around people who don't get the cases right because if I hear a German say or write something different to the grammatic rules i've been taught I automatically assume there is a) an exception to the rules and in some situations what i've been taught doesn't apply or b) I myself have memorized the cases wrong and will change to how they said it and question my ability.
Hopefully when I'm living there I can find people who don't speak very good English (preferably no English) and speak good German so I can pick it up quickly.