<p>Spanish is very similar to Engilsh.</p>
<p>Hindi and Chinese, they aren't easy to learn, but they certainly will make your life alot easier in the upcoming century</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure India has the second largest English speaking population in the world and will overtake the United States within a couple of generations due to international commerce.</p>
<p>While there may be cultural advantages, learning Hindi isn't really necessary if it's simply for the "future opportunities"</p>
<p>to bad i forgot hindi. I can understand it, but can't say a word of it to save my life.</p>
<p>
[quote]
how would chinese make learning Vietnamese easier than Italian? Vietnamese, unlike other asian languages, uses the latin alphabet just like European languages
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, not so much because of their alphabets (Chinese has pinyin anyway, which uses Roman letters), but because they're tonal languages. In English, changing your tone to change the meaning on the word level is pretty foreign and thus makes these languages more challenging for native English speakers. However, someone who already knows a tonal language--e.g. Chinese--will find another tonal language somewhat easier than would an English speaker.</p>
<p>And then of course, there are the other similarities between the two because of mixing and such.</p>
<p>On another note, Esperanto would not be the best choice. The goal of a constructed language is to simplify communication, both by eliminating irregularities and by facilitating easy construction. Esperanto accomplishes the former, but not the latter -- the complicated rules and linguistic bias of influence (drawing heavily on some languages and not on others) make it a mutt of a language whose mechanics somewhat destroy the point of a conlang.</p>
<p>If you really want to go for a conlang, go for Lojban.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lojban.org%5B/url%5D">www.lojban.org</a></p>
<p>"I think all languages but English should be abolished"</p>
<p>I disagree, English has basically no set rules or anything.</p>
<p>example: close is read differently in:
1. Close the door.
2. He is close to the door.</p>
<p>example: these words while both ending in -anger, don't rhyme.
1. I like to watch Texas Ranger.
2. Learn how to use a coat hanger.</p>
<p>example: these words are basically exactly the same except the last two letters but the whole stress and pronunciation of the syllables is different:
1. I like to study economics.
2. I want to be an economist.</p>
<p>I'm sure you can think of 10000 more things like this.</p>
<p>मुझे हिन्दी पसन्द है. मैं सीख रहा हुँ.</p>
<p>I really like Hindi. It's quite logical and a lot of fun.</p>
<p>Of course, if you didn't want an easy language, you could try my mothertongue, Kannada:</p>
<p>ಕನ್ನಡ</p>
<p>So much fun, but SO IRREGULAR.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I just know American English. I only need 1 year of it, and wekll dont want to take it but have to. I think all languages but English should be abolished, and English taken as the world's language. I refuse to learn Spanish as I will not help the Hispanics take over america. </p>
<p>Thats why I was thinking of ASL.
[/quote]
well..what other languages are commonly spoken in your area? i suggest sticking to western languages.</p>
<p>why would you take sign language?
think of all the people that can you have met that can only communicate using ASL</p>
<p>in my case I've never met a person that speaks sign language in my life and it is unlikely that I will see very many in my lifetime if any at all</p>
<p>chinese is def a hard language to learn...</p>
<p>Why not the international language of white nationalism? German!</p>
<p>I'm not trying to offend anyone else, but I found the OP's comments offensive as someone who believes international influence improves every country in the world.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's highly dependent on what your native tongue is.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Agreed, just as others have already agreed with this in the thread. I grew up as a monolingual speaker of General American English, taking my first foreign language class (German) in fourth grade. Over the years, I have learned (in approximate decreasing order of proficiency) Modern Standard Chinese (I have worked many years as a Chinese-English interpreter and translator), German (for reading), Taiwanese (for family conversations), Biblical Greek (for reading), Biblical Hebrew (ditto), Literary Chinese (ditto), and rather worse proficiency in Japanese, Russian, Cantonese, and Hakka, with moderate reading knowledge of Latin, Aramaic, and most western European Indo-European languages. A language is easier to learn (especially for reading) if it is much like your native language. Each language is easier to learn than the one before, because someone who learns a lot of languages also learns about language learning, usually. </p>
<p>See </p>
<p><a href="http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html%5B/url%5D">http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html</a> </p>
<p>for some specific advice. </p>
<p>On Esperanto, see </p>
<p><a href="http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/%5B/url%5D">http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/</a> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.rickharrison.com/language/bloated.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.rickharrison.com/language/bloated.html</a> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.zompist.com/kitespo.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.zompist.com/kitespo.html</a> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.christopherculver.com/en/writings/esperanto.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.christopherculver.com/en/writings/esperanto.php</a> </p>
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<p>That's a lot of languages to keep straight in your head, Tokenadult. I speak American English primarily, but have moderate/intermediate proficiency in German. I also know a bit of French and Russian. The only thing I find difficult to keep straight is something like learning German and Danish at the same time. I don't really like how Danish sounds, so I stopped learning it. ;)</p>
<p>Usually, when I attempt to SPEAK German, it comes out with Chinese word order, which makes for very difficult to understand German. I had occasion to speak German when I lived in Taiwan because I look German (no surprise given my ancestry) and German students would walk up to me and start conversations in German.</p>
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<p>I have no idea what the word order of Chinese is, but I can assume the word order isn't indicative of bunching verbs up at the end. German vocabulary is pretty easy, it's just the grammar that can be tricky. People like to say that German is easy, but I think they only mean the vocabulary. Syntax can be very mean sometimes.</p>
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