Best foreign language to learn?

[KokomoGST]

I think it really depends on your plans with the language... for me it'd be Mandarin and Spanish. I wish I remembered my French... woulda came in handy a few times I was in Canada.

Considering how much of Asia speaks Mandarin... it's very useful if you travel there. Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, China... not to mention a lot of people in the US have Mandarin as their first language as well. Heck, in certain parts of Japan you can use it.

 

[AUMM]

i know Hindi, Spanish , and i'm learning Japanese right now, so far I have found Spanish to be the most useful

 

[Insomnium]

I'll have to say Spanish, it's really useful and easy to learn, esp. when you can turn on the tv and watch spanish shows, cartoons, and the like for more practice. Spanish will definitely come in handy in many parts of the U.S., not to mention other places you might consider traveling to ( like vacations somewhere in South America or Spain).

I took Spanish in HS and am taking German now in college and am not too fond of it. It's not that difficult, but the grammar can be very annoying and untidy at times. I wish I'd taken Russian instead

 

[deftron]

Your're going to learn a language on your own ?

Good luck!


I'm in my second semester of Spanish in college and learning a foreign language is hard as hell..

Couldn't imagine trying to learn it on my own...

Anyways,

I'd recommend any of the reomance languages first (French, Spanish, Italian)
then maybe German or Japanese (really difficult.. lived there for two years)

 

[lowtech1]

Spanish, French & German is a good choice with an English background. I find Spanish is incredibly beautiful compare to English or German, and it is more useful than French since much of your neighbours (central/south America) uses Spanish or Portuguese.

An extremely easy language to learn is Vietnamese, because of the well define/logical structure. But, Vietnamese it isn?t widely use in world except for Vietnam, Little Saigon, and Little Vietnam Village.

Sign language is another useful & extremely easy to learn that you might want to look into.

 

[Nemesis77]

Finnish of course . Think about it:

Curious for opinions about what the best foreign language would be to learn, from several perspectives:
- level of difficulty (preferably not extremely difficult, e.g., Chinese (from what I hear))

This is the only downfall of finnish. It can be pretty difficult.

- level of use / uniqueness (i.e., not as rare as, say, swahili, but would be nice to learn something that not everyone and their mother seemingly already knows (e.g., spanish))

It's pretty damn unique. Basically, the finnish family consists just three languages: finnish, estonian and hungarian (with hungarian being pretty different from the other two)

- 'sound' of the language (i.e., italian = beautiful, german = ugly)

Finnish was the inspiration to Quenya (the elvish spoken in Lord Of the Rings), 'nuff said.

- practicality / business use (i.e., german is probably a useful language, from a business perspective)

If you ever visit Finland, it is useful

 

[Wheatmaster]

i definitely recommend learn chinese if your looking to go into business or already are in it

 

[ed21x]

farsi

 

[IGBT]

Castilian Spanish. Great fun correcting the grammer and pronunciation of south of the boarder spanish speakers. Little do they realize they are speaking an anglo language.

 

[Zugzwang152]

took 4 years of russian in high school...best damn language EVER totally serious, not just making it up because of those stupid in russia one liners.

 

[LukFilm]

Czech hands down