<p>I am quadrilingual right now</p>
<p>Spanish
Armenian
Russian
English</p>
<p>I plan on taking Chinese in college.</p>
<p>My language skills are very useful as there are VERY VERY few US citizens who have my particular language combo, especially fluency in Armenian and proficiency in Russian</p>
<p>by the way... </p>
<p>Insha'allah usted podria estudiar la lengua que se mas interesa :D</p>
<p>Choose Arabic... I dunno.. im biased towards arabic.. I think arabic will definately come in use compared to french..... Although, you will have to learn the arabic script and hence, it will take some more time as compared to french which kinda uses the same script as english...</p>
<p>French is much easier to learn because it shares the same alphabet as English, and it has a similar grammar. There is also an abundance of important works in many fields that are written in French. In other words, French is a very useful language, and personally, I think it's a very romantic language. :)</p>
<p>Arabic has a completely different alphabet and is in a different language family than English, meaning the two languages are very dissimilar. However, not as many people know Arabic, so it's a lot more exotic. Also, as you probably already know, Arabic translators are in high demand.</p>
<p>If you want to learn something new and completely different, and you are not afraid to take on the challenge, then you should take Arabic. If, on the other hand, you want to learn a (very) useful, international language, you should learn French.</p>
<p>i think you will have a higher chance of getting hired by CIA if u know arabic (i like CIA), and french is definitely declining...
but learning chinese will be better than learning arabic cuz china is growing really fast economically and the world will trade more with china although its human rights/freedom of press records are dubious, at best... we cannot simply resist the lure of money.</p>
<p>This may seem like a trivial concern, but be wary if you take Arabic b/c even in university settings there are painfully few competent instructional materials available in English. Because Arabic has only recently gained popularity as a second language in North America, I don't think anyone has yet really taken the time to develop a clear, up-to-date, pedagogical approach to learning, which can severely hamper your progress--especially in the initially stages. Ironically, some of the best Arabic-as-a-second-language material (that I've seen, anyway) is produced in French.</p>
<p>There's simply not room in my schedule for a foreign language this semester, so I've got some more time to decide. :)</p>
<p>I don't really want to work for the CIA, so French seems to be more useful (and easier).</p>
<p>French is hard to prounounce (I'm fluent in Spanish, and proficient in Italian, and Portuguese, but I have never been able to pick up French) and Arabic is hard to write.</p>
<p>Take Hindi. It's a beautiful language to write, and its very primitive sentence strucutre, its extremely simple verb conjugation, and the fact that the language is, with no exceptions, 100% phonetic, make it the easiest "exotic" language to learn (outside of learning how to write conjunct consonants).</p>
<p>And yeah, I'm biased.</p>
<p>Hindi is not 100% phonetic. My friend is trying to learn Hindi, and his language book lists exceptions in pronunciations. It's also very hard for a native English speaker to pronounce retroflex consonants and distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated consonants. I do agree, however, that Devanagari is a rather beautiful alphabet.</p>
<p>Well compared to Chinese, I definately think that Hindi is easier to pronounce... It is relatively easier than Arabic too.. but thats just me.. Learning Hindi would make it easier for you to learn Arabic ( just as learning Spanish would make it easier for you to learn Italian) ... </p>
<p>Also, Hindi is the national language of a upcoming democratic superpower... Hence, it is significant in its own right..</p>
<p>
[quote]
Hindi is not 100% phonetic. My friend is trying to learn Hindi, and his language book lists exceptions in pronunciations. It's also very hard for a native English speaker to pronounce retroflex consonants and distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated consonants. I do agree, however, that Devanagari is a rather beautiful alphabet.
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<p>Agreed with both, those can be difficult. Though with practice, it get's easy.</p>
<p>Though I have no idea what exceptions you are referring too, and I speak Hindi. There are regional dialects where certain letters are pronounced differently, but it is a language of syllables, not letters. The "exception", which is a rule across every word, is that the inherent vowel is not silent at the end of one sylable words (i.e. "na") and it is silent in the second character of a word whose third character includes a vowel sign (i.e. doosraa) or if it has four or more sylabbles. And there are a few loandwords from Sanskrit that are prounounced differently, but these are not even Hindi words and are not commonly used. Otherwise, the language is purely phonetic outside of regional difference in pronuncuation.</p>
<p>Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish...they're the six official languages of the United Nations--spoken (at least by the elite) in almost every country in the world. =)</p>
<p>
[quote]
The "exception", which is a rule across every word, is that the inherent vowel is not silent at the end of one sylable words (i.e. "na") and it is silent in the second character of a word whose third character includes a vowel sign (i.e. doosraa) or if it has four or more sylabbles..
[/quote]
</p>
<p>damn.. even though I speak Hindi, I find it hard describing the grammatical structure as described above :p ...</p>
<p>take arabic!! Im in my 3rd year of college taking arabic and i love it....yes, it is very difficult but also very beautiful and rewarding. Arabic requires a lot of work and practice, so be prepared to work hard!!</p>
<p>I speak both Arabic and French, and I suggest you go with Arabic. Be warned though -- it's going to be quite a challenge.</p>
<p>As for different dialects, they shouldn't be too hard to pick up when you've got a good grip of standard Arabic ("fusHa"). The only difficult dialect to pick up, in my opinion, is the North African one. It's too *Frenchy<a href="due%20to%20the%20occupation">/i</a> that it honestly no longer sounds like Arabic.</p>
<p>The true challenge, I believe, would be learning how to write using a new alphabet; there's an upside though: Islamic calligraphy. :)</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy#Middle_eastern_calligraphy%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy#Middle_eastern_calligraphy</a></p>
<p>I agree with devious.. The arabic from northern africa is pretty diffrent from that of the arabian gulf.. The further west you go in northrn africa, the more different it is .... I'd recommend learning Modern standard Arabic ( which is whats taught at universities and is I think a.k.a fusha ) </p>
<p>The alphabet might take som time to learn but still.. it's great to know how to write in another script... it enables you to read urdu, sindhi, persian, etc ( although you might not understand it ) </p>
<p>later</p>
<p>no, for sure arabic. Arabic is the most popular language being learned right now at my school. I could name more people taking arabic than any other language.</p>
<p>Spanish is the third most widely spoken language in the world.</p>
<p>Arabic will only do you so much good if you're proficient at it. It will take many, many years or extremely intensive classes over a short period of time to get to the level where it would do you any good in a professional facet.</p>
<p>i've been taking french for about thirteen years so naturally i am biased.. BUT, i think Arabic is a good language to learn, I learned Hindi last summer, and it was interesting, i speak and understand most to all romance languages and Hindi was a new thing for me. Try Arabic or French they both come in handy.. i really didn't help lol..</p>
<p>I would suggest taking Arabic...simply because it'd be more fun to say that you know arabic. lol.</p>
<p>I'm thinking of having double majors in college, with one of them East Asian Studies, for no other reason than I find East Asia incredibly fascinating. How hard is it to learn Chinese?</p>
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How hard is it to learn Chinese?
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<p>I dont mean to sound discouraging but it was pretty hard for me.... Arabic, hindi or french are definately easier or even korean for that matter, is much easier than chinese</p>