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japaneese-its extremely useful, but hard
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<p>As a fluent Japanese speaker, I find that outside of Japan, the language does me very little good outside of impressing people. </p>
<p>I'd go with Mandarin, if you're looking to learn an Northeast Asian language.</p>
<p>well, if you are a buisnessman, its invaluble</p>
<p>Also, i forgot the coolest language of all! Punjabi! who wouldnt want to learn the language of the coolest state in india and proboly the world! (of course both my parents are punjabi so i might be a bit biased lol. still its pretty cool)</p>
<p>haha nice :p Honestly I would very much like to learn Punjabi (not the least so that I can finally translate all those Daler Mehndi songs I listen to! lol), but I figure that Hindi/Urdu is spoken so much more around the world (and I really don't know of the differences between Hindi and Punjabi enough to make a decision about which I would like more :() so I figured I'd do Hindi.</p>
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well, if you are a buisnessman, its invaluble
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<p>That, unfortunately, is still untrue because the Japanese tend to conduct international business in English...</p>
<p>Learn Japanese because it'll be fun. Just don't ever expect to use it.</p>
<p>shark_bite, punjabi is also on my list of learning someday. i also want to learn bengali. i'm not sure which one will come first though...</p>
<p>MANDARIN CHINESE! i've taken it for four years and love it. VERY useful and very interesting. </p>
<p>"Latin and Greek are not dead; they're immortal!"
have to pull for the Latin and Greek; despite what people say about them being "useless", they are basically the basis for English and many other languages (not just Romance languages). great prep for law school, med school, and whole bunch of other professions. looks really different on a grad school app...and plus, Hebrew is very often considered to be in the "Classics" category, so you already have a head start! (can you tell i want to major in Classics...) </p>
<p>i think some people said that Farsi and Urdu aren't very useful, but translators of those languages are very sought-after in government and military. i'm positive of that.</p>
<p>Arabic: if you have a chance, take it, no question. i haven't taken it yet, but i plan to. invaluable in the coming years. </p>
<p>good luck deciding...too bad you can't take everything!</p>
<p>Japanese is bad enough but at least they have a kana system. I have NO desire to learn all those characters right now, sorry :p I'm becoming more convinced of Hindi as I go on...and then Arabic after that...hmmm</p>
<p>well Chinese does have a pinyin (Romanization) system, but yeah if you don't want to learn the characters, don't bother. Hindi's still a very interesting one though. What would you use that for?</p>
<p>Hmm, I like learning languages for the sake of learning them, so admittedly usefulness isn't foremost on my mind. I definitely plan to travel to India some day, though, and between my astronomy career (a field which has many, many Indians) and my frequent trips to Indian restaurants, I suppose I'd get enough use out of it :p Arabic, definitely, as I'd love to travel in the Arabic nations of the Mideast one day, when they're less volatile, and much of my family also speaks a bit of it. And maybe I could help out the government, which would be cool :p</p>
<p>i'm with you on learning languages for the sake of learning them...when i picked mine, i had no idea how 'practical' they would be, lol. but a government job would be a big plus for you with either language, Hindi or Arabic!</p>
<p>lol well, as I see it, I'll only take a government job that can take a side role to the astronomy thing ;) Any more languages in your foreseeable future?</p>
<p>well for me, (if i go to Harvard), i'll want to possibly major in Latin and Greek, and minor in Chinese and/or Arabic. i don't know how competent i can become in either one, but my ideal situation is to continue studying either at the Defense Language Institute when I'm in the Marines, so that i can go into Intelligence as my specialty. (That is, if my plan to be a USMC pilot doesnt work out!) </p>
<p>Arabic's definitely at the top of my list, not just because i can use it, but because it looks SOOOO interesting. but i also REALLY liked Chinese, and i'd love to continue it at some level. haha, maybe part of why i liked it in high school was because sometimes it was completely hilarious to be the only blonde-haired blue-eyed girl in the class, where everyone else is Asian and knows what's going on and they're just trying to keep my up-to-stride, especially with the cultural stuff that's really important to know when learning the actual language. </p>
<p>i've always wanted to learn some really rare language though, like Farsi or something. but everything i hear about the Harvard language departments is good, so maybe i'll just pick a random language and see what happens. i'd never really considered Hindi....have you had any experience with it yet? what is it similar to?</p>
<p>Listen, I think you'll love Arabic. I mean, that's just my personal taste and you do seem to like some languages that I'd be less interested in (Chinese, Latin, maybe Greek), but IMO, Arabic is the way to go ;)</p>
<p>Most of my experience with Indian languages are from Indian music (Punjabi) and movies (the cheesy Mahabharata serial in Hindi). So it's just a gradual feeling I've gotten from listening to them that they seem like great languages to learn. It's probably a mixture between the Middle Eastern and Far Asian languages (from what I've been able to understand of the language from the Mahabharata movie, it seems that the grammatical constructs are similar to those in Japanese, but I'm not entirely sure).</p>
<p>Something very interesting I've noticed: I seem to love a language as much as I love the culture it's associated with. Spanish, Middle Eastern, Indian, etc. Weird :p</p>
<p>I love English. Nuff said.</p>
<p>for some reason i'm not too fond of the english language. i'm just sick of english. maybe because it's the only language i ever hear except my 3 hour weekly escape to bollywood and hearing a few of my friends talk on the phone in hindi and korean (another really cool language). right now in high school i'm taking spanish (no one in my class including the teacher can speak any of it, and i live in new mexico!) and latin (awesome, but i'm done once i graduate). when i have kids someday they'll probably have to be trilingual. english (need to communicate with grandparents), hindi, and the last one is between greek, arabic, punjabi, bengali, and about every other language in the world.</p>
<p>One thing I like about English is that a single concept usually corresponds with a single word, which is often not the case in the romance languages I've been studying.</p>
<p>I love having tons of words in English that mean almost the same thing but have different conotations. I can't imagine not being able to be picky about word choice. haha</p>
<p>But, I definitely want to learn more languages. They come pretty easily to me, and I love to travel, so why not? They would not, however, include Hindi, Chinese, or whatever else you guys are talking about. :p</p>
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Japanese is bad enough but at least they have a kana system. I have NO desire to learn all those characters right now, sorry
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<p>Kana is useful, yes. But, I'd say that if you're not ready for the kanji superchallenge, then stay far, far away from Japanese and Chinese. Especially traditional Chinese.</p>
<p>Yep, that's the plan ;) hehe</p>
<p>i would love to take up arabic. </p>
<p>but i agree that chinese is useful, whats with chinas rise as an economic giant and all. and it isnt THAT difficult to be master it.</p>