What language and why?

You can only learn one language to a respectable standard. Which do you choose and why?

I have wanted to learn more German for over 30 years, and just not taken the time – much to my shame.

It was my father’s first language, and while I can understand it quite well, I can’t speak it much beyond ‘survival’ level.

My only excuse is that I think I understand it too well to start at A1 or A2, and I get extremely bored saying ‘Hello. My name is …’. At the same time, I don’t even speak well enough to start at, say, a B1 level. So I know I really just have to buckle down and go through all the basics, and start as if staring from ground zero. But then I balk at the idea, and don’t start at all.

I attended French language school growing up, and felt pretty good when I first moved to Quebec and could live there in comfort. But then I got a job at an art shop, where I was the only one with two languages. Not because I was ahead of everyone else, but because I was behind them. The shop owner was Lebanese-Canadian and spoke French, English, and Arabic; the manager was Greek-Canadian and spoke – as you’d expect – French, English, and Greek. And of my two colleagues on the floor, one spoke French, English, and Spanish. The last one… and this is what felt like a punch in the stomach… spoke French, English, and GERMAN. Was he German-Canadian? No. He just liked the language. I only found out he was trilingual when a German customer came into the shop and the two of them started to talk like old friends. When the customer left, I asked him how he knew the language, and answer was simple: ‘I just like it,’ he said.

Ever since, I have said to myself that I would become as fluent in German as I was in French, but I have never managed to follow through.

TL;DR? I want to learn German because it is my paternal language, I didn’t learn it growing up, and I have made excuses for far too long.

Japanese possibly though I’d be hopeless.

Never been there but it’s a fascinating culture and i quite like a bit of anime on occasion.

I’m a confirmed country boy but id love to see Tokyo.

Irish – my parents were fluent.  I know so little it’s embarrassing.

Welsh, or possibly Irish, but as I struggle to remember stuff in my native language, English, it would be an exercise in utter futility.

as I struggle to remember stuff in my native language, English

I feel your pain there, hugely annoying.

If I were to learn a language that’d be the most use to me today to be fluent in, it’d probably be Python.

I only found out he was trilingual

I got talking to the Asian woman on the customer services desk in ASDA one time.  Turned out she was fluent in seven different languages. 👀

answer was simple: ‘I just like it,’ he said.

I used to work with a guy who was learning Russian.  Absolutely no reason for it other than he thought it looked interesting.

C++, or Java script

Irish Gaelic. My grandad was from a farm near Ventry in Kerry and was brought up speaking it. When I visited where he’s from back in the mid 90s his sister in law was still taking kids in from Dublin during the summer holidays to emerse them in the language living with her on the old farm, apparently it was quite the culture shock for them. Sadly they’ve all passed now, but I’ll still have a million relatives in the area as they were all ‘good Catholic families’ and the farm house is still there and lived in by someone (was looking on street view).

I actually really enjoyed German at school (levels) and had a pen friend, but much to my shock actually failed my o-level.

I did french too, and passed it, did a few exchange visits with a friend kid, and did use it a quite regularly when I used to climb in France, but that was 30 years ago now so I’d be pretty useless now.

Greek.  love our greek island holidays and always like to try and speak to the locals.  its a challenge with the different alphabet but i find the best way of learning for me is with Language Transfer, a free course online.

Foul. I’m pretty fluent already but some days recently I feel I’m not quite there yet.

Fluent French and English, can talk about almost everything in German, survival Spanish. So my regret is about Spanish, I could communicate pretty well after a year working there but didn’t make any effort with grammar and don’t maintain it so each time I go there it takes me a week before the brain starts to find things again. I should just watch Spanish TV but it’s dire. I’m still a TV person who likes to sit in front of the screen for an hour a day. If there’s nothing of interest in French I watch German but should make the effort to watch Spanish once a week however painful.

Dia daoibh a Caher agus Longdog (Madrafada ?).

Irish. My father’s family, proper mountain people from Gleann Chárthaigh (think that makes the third Kerry lot on this thread!) spoke it but I never got around to asking my dad about it (deafness, dementia, death scuppered that). And as of last week all my dad’s family from their townland have now passed, in fact my aunt was the last survivor of any of the families who used to farm that townland.

Various aunts on my mother’s side can speak it in the Ulster dialect and I have a few friends who are native speakers. It is hard to find a decent teacher in London but there are some evening classes. I can sort of hold a limited conversation now but I really have to concentrate – and probably need a days notice!!!!

Hi Kilo and Caher.  Thought of Caher when I was typing before as the little hamlet my grandad was from near Ventry is called Caherboshina. As they were O’Sullivan’s when I tried to do family history stuff I gave up as there are gazillions of the buggers!

Cockney rhyming slang, understood all around the world.

C++, or Java script

same thing different compiler 😉

Cockney rhyming slang, understood all around the world.

I tried to teach a Lebanese guy some once, he just thought I was taking the piss.

For me it would be French, my brother is now a french citizen (thanks to Brexit) and has a french wife, plus my ancestry is very slightly french from c1800

Italian, I can get by as a tourist but would like to be able to converse more. I’ve spent more time on holiday there than any other country and love the place (as a visitor). I’ve tried evening classes (dull), Duolingo (OK but not really useful at the start) and some Michel Thomas CDs. Those worked best for me as it was conversation focused but I didn’t invest the time. Being in Italy was always helpful, particularly on bike tours with Italian guides as they’d help with teaching useful phrases.

I was pretty good at German when I was 16, but have barely used it since then. I remember having a conversation with a Danish kid when I was 15, he didn’t speak English, I didn’t speak Danish, but we both had enough German.

Hard to see beyond English. If I lived in China or Japan or somewhere else where another language was dominant, I’d probably think differently.

As a second language, pidgin FORTRAN has done me pretty well. You can write FORTRAN code in any computer language.

Spanish, just because I love how it sounds.

Caher, kilo, longdog, Dia dhaoibh a chairde. Glad to hear you’re having a go at the Gaeilge. I have a friend who recently started doing it on Duolingo, just for fun and to get an idea of pronunciation. It’s only when I’m asked now, I can see how fiendish a language it is. The collections of consonants 😂

Another half Kerry man here. Mum was from between Tralee and Castleisland and summer holidays as kids were mostly on the Corca Dhuibne. It’s difficult to describe the beauty of the landscape there.

Mum was a primary school teacher and was a fluent Irish speaker so we’d have Gaeilge weeks where we’d speak nothing but Irish at home. So it’s all in there somewhere, but I’d struggle to have a conversation now. I’d love a few weeks of immersion to dig it back out again. So much of the culture and bleakness of life on the west coast(s) of Ireland is intertwined in the language.

Gàidhlig na h Alba /Scottish Gaelic for me my maternal grandmother spoke it. I have been learning for donkeys years , I àm somewhere in the vast hinterland that is post- beginner but nowhere near fluent. Duolingo is my friend

Also Scottish Gaelic.

I have what might be called “hillwalkers” Gaelic, whereby I can determine the meaning of many places names. This can actually be useful while navigating, knowing the difference between your Stobs and your Mealls for instance.

A comment I made recently was that I was taught OS map reading as part of the Geography curriculum at school whereas I now think it should have been covered under History.

Gubbi Gubbi as the local language where I live.

Choosing just one language would be a tricky one for me…

English is the only language I’m fluent in but I know a small amount of Hebrew and Yiddish, with a tiny smattering of German, Dutch and (even less) French.
I have family in Israel, the Netherlands and France.

Hebrew should probably be the top choice. Dutch I’d like to learn but seems rather pointless – not widely used worldwide and most Dutch folk speak English anyway.
French also seems like a top contender for usefulness, I have family there, it’s close, we go on holiday there sometimes, it’s widely spoken as a second language, plus not many people in France speak English. Trouble is I find it really difficult, not to mention my embarrassingly horrible French accent 😆

Language I’d most like to learn though is Welsh. Simply because I really like the sound of it.

I got talking to the Asian woman on the customer services desk in ASDA one time. Turned out she was fluent in seven different languages. 👀

I knew a Scandinavian girl who was fluent in 5 and “could get by” in another 3.
It’s not uncommon in Scandinavia apparently to be fluent in at least 3, usually 4, languages.

I’m terrible at languages. Would love to speak better Spanish, I can pick up the essentials once I’ve been out there for a week or so but then I come home and forget everything.

Chinese. If nothing else because of the job opportunities it would bring.

What’s the point – you can just shout.

same thing different compiler 😉

JavaScript isn’t complied, it’s interpreted.

not many people in France speak English.

That’s not my experience at all. In all my visits – I say that like it’s a lot, I’ve been maybe three times – I came across two people who didn’t speak English, an elderly woman running a corner shop in the arse end of nowhere and a bloke running a mini-mart near the campsite complex we were staying at.

It was actually a little frustrating, I wanted to try and speak French with the hope of improving it (plus it seemed polite) but as soon as I opened my mouth everyone switched to English.

Esperanto,used to read Stainless Steel Rat novels and it sounds easy but my brain wouldn’t compute.

Currently working in a minimum wage warehouse environment with a fair few east europeans where Polish seems to be the go to language. Lots of others or their families are from the sub continent and its not unusual for them to be fluent in 4 languages.

Some folk say my accent is proper Black County whereas others say Brummie but Im 15 miles away from both.

JavaScript isn’t complied, it’s interpreted.

C++ is massively complex. It seems to have a thousand ways to skin a cat, but then you’ll need to skin an octopus and there’s a thousand ways to genericise the code to do that too. I learnt some of it quite deeply as a hobby, barely scratched the surface of other parts of it, and now forgotten most of it.

German, because I reckon (perhaps incorrectly) it’s the one I could most easily get to a reasonable standard in.

Russian so that I can understand what the little cyberscrotes are saying without having to use Google Translate.

Also, Scandinavian languages… Kinda, but not quite. Norwegian is, to me at least,  like drunk Swedish and Finnish has the same letters, but is just different in so many way. Danish is, well, like trying to speak with a mouth full of gravel and Icelandic is the oldest of them all. It’s similar, but just out of reach for me. Estonian is kinda like Finnish, sorta and I have no idea bout Lithuanian or Latvian.

“Finnish has the same letters, but is just different in so many ways.”

I hate to be that guy (I don’t, actually), but Finnish isn’t Scandinavian. Scandinavian languages are all north Germanic languages, whereas Finnish is Urgic (like Estonian and Hungarian). In other words, Finnish is not part of the Indo-European language family.

If I were to learn a language that’d be the most use to me today to be fluent in, it’d probably be Python.

No, it might be useful but damn it’s ugly.

Anyway bilingual English/Spanish, and I’m currently doing German on Duolingo. But after visiting Berlin in March I’m thinking of changing from German to French, as everyone there seemed to speak near perfekt Englisch. So probably French. Or Golang.

Maybe Spanish because South America is big and not much English is spoken.

Maybe a Nordic language so I could get a job there.

Maybe Korean because some K-Dramas are quite good and I think lot of content is missed when you read the subtitles.

Noachdem i scho fünftzen Joahn in Bayern glebt hob, kon i Boarisch scho recht guad redn. Nebn bei hob i a Deitsch glernt.

I mog italienisch bessa redn könna. Konn mi scho a bissl auf italienisch unterhoidn aba I kimm ganz schnel an moana Grenze.

Im Vagleich zu deitsch is italienisch oanfach a scheene Sprach.

It’s not uncommon in Scandinavia apparently to be fluent in at least 3, usually 4, languages.

In northern Australia it’s common for English to be a 3rd or 4th language for Aboriginal Australians. There are so many local Indigenous languages that they need to know first.

Wish I could do more but am a typical Brit and know next to nothing, and it isn’t helped by not really being taught English properly (what is a past participle?).

I went out with a Norwegian girl many years ago and did start an evening class at Edinburgh uni, that all petered out and I only remember a few sentences. Also know a few sentences in Italian which I’d like to learn a lot more – if I was allowed to work from home full time I’d love to go and do that from Italy for a few years. As it is being forced into the office two days a week makes it impossible 😣

Pragmatically it would be Chinese (although thats a somewhat difficult idea getting into when does a dialect become a language. The if it has an army line is fairly convincing to me with my poor linguistic skills) or Spanish (likewise) but I am slowly trying to relearn some French. No good argument for it beyond thats the one I got poorly taught at secondary (plus a year of German but lets not go there) and I just want to give my mind a workout.

I guess Irish Gaelic would be next although its at least a couple of gens back since despite my dad being born and living in Ireland for his childhood his Gaelic skills are replaced by his ability to swear in English about those who half-heartedly try to teach him.

On the ““hillwalkers” Gaelic, ” comment. Something which would be really hard but is really informative is understanding all the ancient languages which gave placenames throughout the UK

It was actually a little frustrating, I wanted to try and speak French with the hope of improving it (plus it seemed polite) but as soon as I opened my mouth everyone switched to English.

I find that quite often as well. English is pretty much a generic European language now. And most Europeans speak far better English than English people can speak their language!

The mention of Finnish above is interesting – as noted, it’s closer to Hungarian than anything else Scandinavian but the sort of accepted polite manner is to greet people in Finnish, they’ll be delighted that you’ve made an effort and then they’ll speak to you in perfect English. That’s mostly what happened when I was there! On the other hand, failing to make even a basic effort to say hello or please in Finnish would elicit a more surly response.