<p>Ok, here is my story: I came from China, and am a native speaker/reader/writer(lol) in Chinese; I learned English in four years, and I'm completely satisfied with my current level of English proficiency.
People say that I have a talent for languages, but I'm very unsure about that. Since I've learned English in an immersed environment, so I believe that I have just naturally picked it up.
Next year I will be attending a university, and it has a broad range of language classes from which I could choose to study. I'm just wondering about language should I learn next!
Arabic, French, or Japanese?
I'm fascinated with French because of my bourgeois perception of French language!
I'm also interseted in Japanese because of their poisonous cultural contamination through anime and other cool stuff.
Arabic sounds good, and it seems attractive because I want to have a career in either military, government, or academia. (I'm probably going to do the ROTC)</p>
<p>See, with Japanese or French, there remains a possibility to gain native fluency..
but with Arabic, haha, I don't know about that!</p>
<p>Wow, this is a tough one. Japanese would be the easiest for you to learn. Though it’s a hard language, it’s much easier for a native Chinese speaker to learn it than a native English speaker. In that regard, you’ll have no trouble.</p>
<p>French wouldn’t be impossible for you to learn, either, and I think French is quite fun. There is a lot of good French literature, and there are several countries that speak French that make great vacation destinations.</p>
<p>Arabic would probably be the hardest language for you to learn. It’s completely different from English or Chinese. It would be useful if you want to do military stuff, and perhaps government stuff too. The academia award would have to go to French, not Arabic. You also must remember that it won’t be easy to gain native fluency if you’re not constantly hearing the language. I have a Chinese friend that became fluent in English in only one year, but she’s having a much harder time learning Spanish. I doubt you could gain fluency in Arabic without living in an Arabic-speaking country for some time.</p>
<p>My vote here is French. Not only is it useful in literature and academia, but it’s also the language of diplomacy (in a manner of speaking). French, Chinese, English, and Arabic are all official languages of the UN, so any of those would be useful. Good luck!</p>
<p>arabic and french. you’ll cover a lot of the world that way. arabic is especially valuable now; think about it: you might be conversant in two of the most sought after languages right now (arabic and chinese).</p>
<p>^Uh…Some sensitivity, please? I believe Spanish is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world, and twenty countries list it as an official language.</p>
<p>seriously if the OP is in the united states, he/she should be learning spanish not arabic or french unless the op plans on working for the UN or being an ambassador to the middle east.</p>
<p>Spanish? idk
I would like to learn languages that can enable me to talk and write, that is, good for both a career in professional setting and personal life. I know Spanish is a beautiful language, and it is not a hard language at all, but there are so many people in u.s that speak Spanish pretty well, and the demand of Spanish in professional setting is really limited.</p>
<p>btw, I do plan to be an ambassador, officer in the army, work for the UN, or professorship. :D</p>
<p>Spanish is still useful, depending on where you work. I used to work at a meat market, and not one of the twenty-some employees could speak Spanish. It usually worked out all right, since most of the Hispanics here speak English, but every once in a while, someone came in that couldn’t speak English very well. You may find yourself being the only person at your workplace that can speak Spanish, which makes it useful. This would, of course, be much more common at a smaller employer.</p>
<p>Would it really be that hard to learn Cantonese if the OP is already fluent in Mandarin?</p>
<p>Not really. Arabic is extremely different from country to country (or in some cases region). Some wouldn’t even consider them the same language, let alone dialects. </p>
<p>So you basically have to choose one country, learn the dialect there, AND learn Modern Standard Arabic (which is used in the news) which is also very different. And you’ll have to learn even more if you want to be able to read the Quran. If you still decide to learn Arabic, the Egyptian dialect would be best because most people understand the dialect as a result of Egypt’s large movie industry. </p>
<p>Chinese also has its dialects which are quite different, but Mandarin is the pretty obvious choice there. I think the characters make the language a bad choice though. It’s just a terrible writing system. </p>
<p>Spanish is a GREAT choice. Almost an entire continent speaks it, as well as Central America. Portuguese would be a great business language since Brazil its the economic leader of Latin America. </p>
<p>French, bleh. I hate eurocentricism with a passion, so I won’t go into it. Learning French for Africa would interest me though, not sure that it would interest you. </p>
<p>Take this however. I speak Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Arabic (Egyptian). </p>
<p>I am illiterate in Chinese, but I enjoy writing in Arabic.</p>
<p>^How easy was it to learn Arabic? I have a cousin that learned it in college, and she’s very good at it, and she’s able to get any job she wants because she’s fluent in it.</p>
<p>People usually rate it up there with Chinese as far as difficulty goes, but I found it easier than Chinese but still much more difficult than Romance languages. </p>
<p>It can be done with a bit of time dedication though.</p>
<p>well he came from china so he’s already fluent in chinese lol. yeah i realize there are a lot of different arabic dialects, but a good grounding in Modern Standard Arabic (which no one speaks) will probably help you a lot with learning one of the dialects.</p>
<p>jeez, Cantonese is so easy. I can learn that in a month.
Writing in Cantonese is exactly the same as mandarin, and the dialect is not hard to speak at all if you live in the environment. Seriously, sometimes I would just pick up words and phrases by just listening to Cantonese ppl talking. But Cantonese accent just annoys the hell out of me. I came from China, and I can already understand all the dialects from South West region, excluding Tibet.
Arabic sounds really hardcore… I mean. I thought standardized Arabic is like mandarin Chinese.. lol
btw, i want to learn French precisely because French ppl think they are higher than God. :D</p>
<p>i came from china and the only dialects i fully understand are Beijing and Tianjinese accents… besides, HK canto writing is different from chinese writing. but i agree canto sounds ugly. Even cantos i know say that.</p>
<p>oh and if you want to learn a really beautiful language, learn hebrew. I remember they had like 1000 words for “sunset” or something like that using different ones to describe the hour of the day, the colour of the sky, etc.</p>