<p>I'm having trouble deciding whether to study latin or chinese in high school.</p>
<p>Does anyone have advice on the matter? pros/cons? personal experience?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Latin Pro: you can apply it to the modern english language and find out a word's meaning if you don't know it.
Latin Con: it's a dead language.</p>
<p>Chinese Pro: most spoken language in the world (helps in business).
Chinese Con: it might be considered difficult to learn for some people.</p>
<p>Just some thoughts. If you asked me for my preference, I'd be a bit biased, obviously... ;)</p>
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Chinese Pro: most spoken language in the world (helps in business).
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<p>Only in numbers, though there was a bit of diaspora throughout Asia. But I think English is still spoken the most widely.</p>
<p>Latin is probably less applicable to your daily life, but is a fantastic study for the classics and understanding Western language roots.</p>
<p>Chinese is probably more of a "wow" language, but is more challenging.</p>
<p>It's about time someone agrees with me in spanish because alot of people think that spanish is more common and useful. This is not the case because they're so many spanish speaking people. I mean it's useful, but it's not an "oh wow" language that'll make you stand out. Asian languages are mostly the "wow" language esp. Japanese. :D</p>
<p>The wow factor is huge, even in Japan.</p>
<p>Especially Japan, actually.</p>
<p>Chinese will be very useful in the upcoming 50 years as China goes on the rise and plays a larger part in global affairs.</p>
<p>I personally wouldn't learn Latin just because I'll have nowhere to use it. I prefer modern languages, but again, that's just me.</p>
<p>Why is Japanese the "wow" langauge?</p>
<p>Also, Chinese sounds really ugly. That's my opinion. (Japanese is superior grammatically an just the overall way it sounds, imp) </p>
<p>Latin would be amazingly fun, but I would choose something different. How abotu Ancient Greek? Or how about something like German? </p>
<p>Ewww@ Chinese</p>
<p>Japanese gets more "wow" from most people because it's rarer and it's seen as "exotic."</p>
<p>But the more important question is how on earth did you conclude that Japanese is "superior grammatically?" After studying both, I concluded that Chinese grammar is much simpler, more logical, and far less weighed down with difficult conjugations and rules.</p>
<p>And Mandarin is so not ugly. Please don't try to start some flamewar on this thread, it's not what we need.</p>
<p>It really depends on your field of study. If your doing history, or plan to learn any of the other Romance languages, then maybe Latin is better.</p>
<p>If you plan on going into International Business, or International Affairs, Chinese would probably be the single most important. On the other hand, if you are going to do international affairs/business in Latin America, then ofcourse Spanish is better. Same if you want to go to Europe, then German is better. Etc.</p>
<p>If you're non-asian knowlege of an asian language will really help your college applications.</p>
<p>You really think so Bill? I was thinking about it too, because Chinese is really a tough language, and if you can learn it, and then even take the SAT II's, AP test, and even do some EC's in Chinese, that can really benefit.</p>
<p>Personally, the three langauges I would like to learn, besides what I am learning now in school (spanish) would be Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. However Latin and German is also on my list. </p>
<p>The problem is, I dont think I can learn 5 nations in 3 years before college. :P</p>
<p>Only somethng like 26,000 non-asians speak chinese in this country. I've seen several such people here apply to top schools and it helped them a lot.</p>
<p>How long on average does it take to learn the language anyways? (Chinese)</p>
<p>I've heard around 2-3 years for some basic functional Mandarin, and upwards of 5-7 for near-native fluency. This of course is also dependent on the time you spend speaking with natives, time spent in immersive environments, your own ability to learn, and your willingness to work your butt off.</p>
<p>I would learn Latin. It just gives you an incredibly firm foundation of grammatical concepts; this will help you with any language you want to learn in the future, not just Romance languages (I marvelled at how my English and German seemed to get more structured and how my vocabulary increased the more Latin I knew). For me, it made me truly appreciate the logic behind languages, and also gave me a great intro to ethymology. Also, even though I would never, ever make this a deciding factor, Latin helps you a great deal on the CR section of the SAT. I could also imagine that learning Chinese in college would be easier, because I was told that it is one of those languages that you can only really grasp if you speak with natives - a lot. College would provide you with this opportunity, not to speak of foreign exchange opportunities etc.</p>
<p>I was thinking to just learn CHinese in college aswell, with an IR major. I still like the idea of self-studying it though. I wonder how I would be able to find native-Chinese to talk to though...</p>
<p>I haven't taken Chinese, but I have taken Latin. I loved Latin, but I would agree that it's not as practical as Chinese. If you were trying to take an easy language you wouldn't be interested in Chinese or Latin to begin with as both are difficult and gramatically different from English, so I would go with Chinese. My blonde, blue- eyed aunt lived in China for 5 years and became fluent, and she got stopped on the street to take photos multiple times by Chinese in awe of her ability to speak the language. Definitely a "wow" factor. :P</p>
<p>Not to take over the thread, but I have a couple of questions.</p>
<p>I'm only 13 years old, so I have a lot of time on my hands to laern a new language. I'm interested in Modern Greek, French, Spanish, and maybe German.</p>
<p>I want to learn Greek because my dad's side of the family is Greek, and I want to communicate with them in their native language.</p>
<p>I want to learn French just because it's an awesome language. My dad lives in Ottawa, Canada, a bilingual city. Knowing French isn't absolutely necessary, but it'd be nice to know.</p>
<p>I want to learn Spanish because so many people in the U.S. speak it. </p>
<p>I want to learn German because I may consider going into business in college, so knowing German would be helpful.</p>
<p>So... my questions are:</p>
<p>How long would it take to learn those languages? (No, not all at the same time. Just one language).</p>
<p>Do you reccommend any software to use? Any special methods, etc.?</p>
<p>Which do you think is the most useful?</p>
<p>Thanks for your help. :)</p>
<p>I'd go with Chinese, especially if you're not Asian, because Latin is pretty useless.</p>
<p>If you're thinking of taking it to do better on your SATs, don't. Just..read books. And if you're thinking of taking it because you want to go into medicine, don't. You can definitely succeed as a doctor without having taken Latin. My mother has been a nurse for..almost 30 years, I think, and at many different places (hospitals, ob/gyn, hospice, Red Cross, etc.). She took Latin in high school and regrets it because she's never, ever used it.</p>