<p>^how is it not practical? You may not use it to converse but knowing it would be beneficial to studying so many languages.</p>
<p>@yawn Okay. Then you can hardly call me dogmatic without being hypocritical. I believe in practicality, you believe in…fun? Case closed.</p>
<p>
There are thousands of languages out there. Latin is probably more practical than 85% of them. :)</p>
<p>
No, I believe a person has a right to choose whether he or she decides to choose a language for fun or practicality.</p>
<p>Case closed.</p>
<p>Latin can be pretty useful, rachael525</p>
<p>I’m self studying Chinese.
[url=<a href=“http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/chinese]Learn”>Learn Chinese - Free online mandarin audio courses]Learn</a> Chinese - Free online mandarin audio courses<a href=“im%20african%20american”>/url</a></p>
<p>Why?
-practical
-unique on college app
-i like languages
-so i can watch asian dramas =D</p>
<p>^Good, that’ll get you far. Your best bet would be to sign up for Mandarin at your local community college, though. Learning Chinese without a teacher is impossible.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say it’s “impossible”.</p>
<p>If you want resources for learning Mandarin, check this out:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062642138-post7.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062642138-post7.html</a></p>
<p>Note that knowing a little bit of latin makes French, English, and Spanish a whole ton easier. The passing knowledge I had of Latin made French so much easier and improved my grasp of English vocabulary tenfold.</p>
<p>Lol, never mind then.</p>
<p>woah woah woah to whomever was talking to me!
Vietnamese shares a considerable amount of vocab with all the languages that are in its proximity. With a few morphological sound changes, the majority of the lexemes are the same. Moreover, Vietnamese grammar is a perfect stepping stone for learning the grammars of the neighboring languages due to the fact that most of them are in the same language family. That would be like saying that knowing spanish doesnt help you learn french or romanian or portuguese!</p>
<p>One could even do it this way:
learn Vietnamese, then learn Mandarin then Korean/Japanese</p>
<p>HOWEVER, there is a problem with going from Mandarin to Korean or Japanese; Mandarin only will help with the VOCAB, the grammar is to simple to help learn the complex grammar that Korean and Japanese use. Grammar is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than vocab will ever be! Any one can memorize words, learning grammar is the difficult part. SO, saying that, Vietnamese would help you learn more languages than would Mandarin. Just pointing that out.</p>
<p>PS @the reach:
shut up. case closed</p>
<p>Your logic is fail, your reasoning is flawed, your argumentative abilities are on the same level as a 4th grader’s. Just pointing that out. Case closed.</p>
<p>A case can only be closed so many times.</p>
<p>Once, actually. You were the one that broke the limit. =)</p>
<p>Nah, it has to be a multiple of two. Otherwise, it doesn’t provide for proper counter-closings.</p>
<p>Oh, I see. Since I closed it fourth, the next person to close the case must be counter-closed immediately.</p>
<p>I need back-up.</p>
<p>I’ve tried self-studying a language (Japanese, did about 2 hours a day every other day for 2 months), but lack of interpersonal stimulation led me to drop it. It’s really boring when you’ve nothing to use it for…</p>
<p>Well, when I said I was continuing Japanese, I meant I was finishing up my third year of high school level and there is no fourth, so I’m continuing it on my own. xP</p>
<p>Anyway, I might just get some good practice games on my computer and some of those DS language games and then stick with a book for learning and reference.</p>
<p>@moodrets: one of the things you can do is help anime sites sub the RAW animes. It’s a good way to sharpen your Japanese as well as help others :D.</p>
<p>@theReach: self-studying/learning Chinese is not impossible. Generalizing isn’t a good thing to do. Being born Chinese-neglected, I took time to teach myself Chinese. After 5 years, I know more than my other siblings, who were raised in China and knew Chinese as their first language, me, my third.</p>
<p>Self-studying IS not impossible. But having someone to help you use it will make learning it MUCH more, like x12938190381 times easier to memorize as well as practice your enunciation.</p>
<p>Right now, i’m self-studying Japanese as well as Korean, through just watching dramas as well as listening to language disks + songs + anything that I can find. I find that learning the alphabet of the language is really easy. But since Chinese has like 2000+ characters, it gets confusing at first, so learn the basics :)</p>
<p>Latin may not be practical but it definitely is incredibly useful. I love it.</p>
<p>I self-studied a bit of Arabic (transliterated. I’m too lazy.) about a year ago and still remember it, and maaaaay take classes in college. I want to do Italian in college though because I used to know a bit of it… no grammar or anything.</p>