Learning a Language

[Dabomb18359]

Okay. Well I like to learn languages. I know English obviously, am in German 2 at school, and just started a Russian book.

1. What are some languages to learn that would benefit me the most? I know Chinese is the most widely-spoken language, and French is up there. I'm taking German and Russian because of friends that speak them.

2. What are some good ways to learn the languages. I have heard of Rosetta Stone, which is a few hundred dollars, Pimsleur, which I don't know much about, and some books which I have no way of knowing.
Anyone had success with a certain type of learning?

 

[Urederra]

Don't forget spanish.

 

[Fifty]

1. I've been wrestling around with which language to get a minor in lately. My idea is that since most Europeans have a good grasp of English, it would be more profitable to learn an eastern language. It is also harder, but challenges are not to be feared! I'm thinking Chinese or Japanese might be nice.

 

[aneeshm]

I'd recommend Sanskrit . I'm planning to learn it myself .

 

[Yeeek]

If i could, i would try and learn Mandarin.

 

[SonicX]

I'd go for Arabic and Japan.
Arabic because I do political sciences and who knows is that comes in handy by the time I got somewhere. Japanese because I think it soudns better than Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese) and a company would temporarily send me to Japan, I wouldn't be as pissed as a visit to China (don't like the country)

 

[Mirc]

I would learn (if I know already English, of course) Spanish, German and French.

 

[Steph]

Okay. Well I like to learn languages. I know English obviously, am in German 2 at school, and just started a Russian book.

1. What are some languages to learn that would benefit me the most? I know Chinese is the most widely-spoken language, and French is up there. I'm taking German and Russian because of friends that speak them.

That's not so true.. French is not really "up there". Depending on how you count, it can reach at most the 10th rank. However, I think French and English are the only two languages which are spoken as first language in all the continents

http://www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html

Most spoken languag in the world (figure is million of people)
- Mandarin: 1120
- English: 480
- Spanish : 332
- Arabic : 235
- Bengali : 189
- Hindi : 182
- Russian: 180
- Portuguese : 170
- Japanese : 128
- German : 98
- Chinese, Wu : 77
- Javanese : 75.5
- Korean : 75
- French : 72

French is only 14th.

However, these figures are only estimates, and count only the people who use the language as first language, it doesn't include the people who know it as a second language. Also, the source date back to 1996.

Here is another list, details unknown

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,075,000,000
2. English 514,000,000
3. Hindustani 496,000,000
4. Spanish 425,000,000
5. Russian 275,000,000
6. Arabic 256,000,000
7. Bengali 215,000,000
8. Portuguese 194,000,000
9. Malay-Indonesian 176,000,000
10. French 129,000,000

Another, that confirm the previous one
http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html

Wikipedia gives another list, with more details, and that is also confirmed by other sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_speaker_data
First figure is for first language speakers, second is for total.
Mandarin: 873, 1050
Hindi : 370, 490-495
Spanish : 350, 420
English : 310-340, 510-515
Arabic : 206, 230
Portuguese : 203, 213
Bengali: 193, 211
Russian : 145, 255
Japanese ; 126, 127
Punjabi : 61, 104
German: 96, 124
Javanese : 76
Korean : 71
Vietnamese : 70 ,86
...
French : 67, 130

 

[Steph]

There is an interesting article here.
If you try to make a broader study, and not only the nb of native speakers, to get the most influential language, you can get this (the number is the "influence")
http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm

English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/worldlang.htm

The following list is from George Weber’s article “Top Languages: The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages” in Language Today (Vol. 2, Dec 1997):
(number of native speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
English (330 million)
Spanish (300 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (200 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Portuguese (160 million)
Russian (160 million)
Japanese (125 million)
German (100 million)
Punjabi (90 million)
Javanese (80 million)
French (75 million)
However, in terms of secondary speakers, Weber submits the following list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

French (190 million)
English (150 million)
Russian (125 million)
Portuguese (28 million)
Arabic (21 million)
Spanish (20 million)
Chinese (20 million)
German (9 million)
Japanese (8 million)
Thus, if you add the secondary speaker populations to the primary speaker populations, you get the following (and I believe more accurate) list:
(number of speakers in parentheses)

Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million)
French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million)
The following is a list of these languages in terms of the number of countries where each is spoken. The number that follows is the total number of countries that use that language (from Weber, 1997):

English (115)
French (35)
Arabic (24)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
German (9)
Mandarin (5)
Portuguese (5)
Hindi/Urdu (2)
Bengali (1)
Japanese (1)
The number of countries includes core countries (where the language has full legal or official status), outer core countries (where the language has some legal or official status and is an influential minority language, such as English in India or French in Algeria), and fringe countries (where the language has no legal status, but is an influential minority language in trade, tourism, and the preferred foreign language of the young, such as English in Japan or French in Romania). For a complete breakdown of each and an accompanying chart, click here.

After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of the world's ten most influential languages:
(number of points given in parentheses)

English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)

 

[Taliesin]

Cool, so I could communicate with three-quarters of a billion people. That's not too bad.

 

[Steph]

Cool, so I could communicate with three-quarters of a billion people. That's not too bad.

Probably a lot more. I've been in China several time. In Chengdu. Were very few Chinese speak English or French, and I don't speak a word of Chinese.

Sign language and drawings are almost universal.

Of course, you cannot have philosophical discussion, but you can communicate almost everywhere.

 

[aneeshm]

If you learn Sanskrit , 6000 years of philosophy , literature , and culture will be open to you . It is also the most "perfect" language linguistically , because

a) It is pronounced excatly as written - thank god for phonetic scripts
b) Its grammar is completely internally consistent - no exceptions to the rules

 

[Syntherio]

1. If you want to learn some european languages more, it can be helpful to learn Latin first.

2. I have no special tips for learning a language, but for improvement it is useful to watch movies on that language and listen to music from that country.

 

[Steph]

If you learn Sanskrit , 6000 years of philosophy , literature , and culture will be open to you . It is also the most "perfect" language linguistically , because

a) It is pronounced excatly as written - thank god for phonetic scripts
b) Its grammar is completely internally consistent - no exceptions to the rules

Unfortunately, it is plagued with declination. I hate declinationk, that's one of the reason I did not to well in latin, and later dropped German

 

[jamiethearcher]

you should learn italian. it seems like a cool language, and from what I have heard, its similar to spanish and french (romance languages), so once you learn it, the other 2 should be easier. I guess, learning any of the 3 would have the same result.

 

[Steph]

you should learn italian. it seems like a cool language, and from what I have heard, its similar to spanish and french (romance languages), so once you learn it, the other 2 should be easier. I guess, learning any of the 3 would have the same result.

I disagree. You can speak Italian only in Italy. It's better to learn French or Spanish first if you want to be understand in more place.

 

[Reno]

That's quite suprisingly lot of German speakers.

 

[aneeshm]

If your wish is to communicate with more people , then Sanskrit is the lanst language you should learn . The language is effectively dead .


As for declination : if that means that words which come after one another are concatenated , then yes , Sanskrit has declination . But even in that it is perfect - the rules of declination are derived from the science of phonetics - how words combine is self-obvious after some time , because the combination is perfectly natural-sounding ( by the rules of how sounds combine in the mouth ) .

 

[CartesianFart]

It depend on the OP question of what is his 'intention to gain' in order to learn a new language.Learning another language as a tool only values for your capital labor worth,or unless his motivation is a scholarly one.

 

[Fifty]

The problem I have with learning a European language is that most Europeans already have a good grasp of English.

If you're trying to learn a language "for profit" I'd say go with Chinese. Everybody is flipping out lately over what a huge economic power china is becoming, and most Chinese don't speak a lick of English.

However, if you're just wanting to learn a language for the helluvit, or because you find the language interersting, you can do anything you want!