<p>I'm really very excited about learning a foreign language (other than French, which I took in high school) but am really having trouble deciding on which one to take. How did you go about deciding which language you would pursue?</p>
<p>I chose German because I knew I wanted to study abroad, and I thought my school's Berlin program looked the best/most fun. That was basically my only deciding factor (although I might not actually be able to go abroad anymore :(...)</p>
<p>I took Italian, because I visited Italy thought it was awesome and want to study abroad. Not really a great reason considering I took 4 years of Spanish in HS and Spanish is more practical, but I am enjoying Italian.</p>
<p>i took french in high school as well, and while it's a beautiful language, it ended up teaching me one thing:
learn a language that's practical!
and i don't mean practical based on what other people speak. although here in socal, spanish definitely is THE most practical language.
but if you want to study in an asian country, choose an asian language.
or, like others have mentioned, italian or german for studying in europe.
me, i want to study mandarin because a lot of my friends speak it, and it's the second most prevalent foreign language here besides spanish.
...and i really don't like spanish... i've tried learning it before and it didn't click.
so, we'll see how it goes!</p>
<p>u need to tell us more about urself man. are u a hummanities major, science, math, ? what are ur interests, ur values, etc.</p>
<p>hugely challenging: arabic, chinese, latin, greek</p>
<p>moderately difficult: german, russian, japanese</p>
<p>easy: spanish, french, italian</p>
<p>I would learn sign language, it feels great to be able to efficiently communicate with a deaf person/</p>
<p>Chinese! Because a lot of the world will speak it in the future. And you can laugh at how bad the stuff made up for American movies is. =P</p>
<p>"Because a lot of the world will speak it in the future. "</p>
<p>I guess a fifth of the world population isn't a lot...</p>
<p>For me, I am only interested in Europe. I took French in High School and unfortunately, I couldn't sign up for it first semester (damn you upper classmen!). So since I am a physics major, there were two more practical languages (European) I could take, and I chose German. </p>
<p>I would like to take on Italian or Russian in the future.</p>
<p>I would have had a hard time choosing, but I went with Spanish because I only had to take one semester of it instead of four (due to passing the AP test). If I had room in my schedule, I'd either continue with Spanish or take something else, but right now it doesn't look like I'll have the space.</p>
<p>sauron: to answer your questions, I am somewhat limited as I am an incoming junior transfer to (for now) WashU, so I need to pick a language that I can moderately master in two years - I plan on taking a course in the language each semester and will also be participating in the Summer Language Institute program, which basically lets me take two more language courses during the summer in the country where the language is prevalent. I.e., by the end I'll have taken 6 classes in a particular language.</p>
<p>I'm a Philosophy major - French was quite easy, so it is always an option, though I didn't really feel any love for it. </p>
<p>Just wondering - why do you say Latin is "hugely challenging?" I thought it was a very limited language in scope compared to other living languages. As of now, I've always LOVED the Asian languages but don't know if it would be worth it to try them given my time constraints. As far as the study abroad option, I would really prefer a European country over an Asian one as I enjoy Europe a lot.</p>
<p>And of course, I must mention that I am planning on law school in the future so my grades are very important: I don't want to be taking a language that will require so much attention that I will neglect my other 4 classes.</p>
<p>German's not too bad once you get verbs down...it seems more similar to English than French/Spanish especially in terms of word order.</p>
<p>The best language to know though is English--it's got the most exceptions rather than rules of any language, plus if you don't have a good grasp on it you'll flunk all your college papers.</p>
<p>haha well I think I'm okay with English...I've had a lot of practice ;)</p>
<p>Choose Spanish! So useful :)!</p>
<p>Japanese is at least as challenging as Chinese to a native English speaker. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>based on prereqs, difficulty of language, and whether I want to visit the country, I've narrowed it down to:</p>
<p>Spanish (Madrid)
French (Loire Valley)
Italian (Azzero)
Czech (Prague :))
German (Gottinberg)</p>
<p>I imagine those are all similar in terms of difficulty, and I was very capable of handling French in high school, but I'd be interested in opinions.</p>
<p>I chose french because i thought it was pretty. That was stupid. I love french, but the best advice i ever got on perfecting my accent was this: pretend like you have a horrible cold, and you hate the person you're talking to so you want to spit a big one all over their face. My french teacher says I have a great accent. :D</p>
<p>Czech??? Prague IS beautiful but if you're going to Prague to learn Czech, you certainly won't get your money's worth. I have a friend who just finished her semester in Prague and was hugely disappointed in the language program. Her program only called for Czech once a week for 90 minutes! The programs in Prague won't be so keen on teaching you Czech from the beginning since it's such a difficult language that even by the end of the semester, the students will only know just a few words.... Choose something else. Prague will always be there for a visit :) I'm really glad that I didn't go to the program as I planned and was just very happy to spend 4 days there with my friend!</p>
<p>thx tickle that's a good point. I know Czech is the most useless of those languages but Prague is also the most beautiful of those places. I'm really thinking about German now.</p>
<p>I love Prague and I'm also interested in Czech, but I'm planning on Russian in college</p>
<p>German is important in Philosophy. And, it is not hard, really. It just looks hard if you see it in print. This is all my opinion. </p>
<p>Spanish, Italian, and French are like linguistic cousins. If you know one, knowing more is really easy. </p>
<p>I know nothing about Czech at all. Sorry.</p>