Learning a second language

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:01 pm

After talking about it for years, I'm finally going to get off my ass and start learning a second language. Unfortunately, my school only offers French and Spanish, and neither of those fly for me. So, I've narrowed it down to Chinese or Arabic at this point, and I'd like some input from you all on which I should pursue. My intended college degree is political science, and my "dream job" is to work in international affairs. With that in mind, which would you view as the best language to learn? I doubt anyone here speaks Arabic, but Chinese is getting more common; is it as difficult to learn as I hear it is? Any opinions on the matter are welcome, thanks!

Grandmasterjimmy · Post by **Grandmasterjimmy** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:06 pm

What about Japanese? It's much cooler. Plus, you can find pirate games consoles in Japan for cheap. And think about all the game companies

wallydawg · Post by **wallydawg** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:10 pm

I was thinking about learning vietnamese so I could convince people I served in 'Nam

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Wed May 14, 2008 10:34 pm

Either will do you good. They say Chinese is good if you're going into business.

jones · Post by **jones** » Wed May 14, 2008 11:16 pm

Given our country's growing reliance on China for our industry, I would say learning Chinese would definitely be of benefit in the business world.

Arabic probably would be as well to a lesser extent. I would think that would probably be more useful if you wanted to go into intelligence work though.

Since you are looking at it from more of a political standpoint though, I would think that either language would prove to be quite valuable to be fluent in.

gamer2 · Post by **gamer2** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:31 am

I agree with Japanese.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:10 am

Chinese I don't know how hard it is to learn to speak, but writing will be. Chinese writing is setup where one character is one word, you have to learn a large amount of characters to be considered literate.

Also CTF, if you wanted to learn Arabic you're not far from the best place, Dearborn. We have the largest population of Arab people outside the Middle East. So you can look for classes, buy Rosetta Stone, or some other means, after which you work on conversation with other native speakers.

One thing those I have met people that came from Iraq, and don't expect them to still speak their native language as well as they might know English. One lady that was in my psychology class mentioned as guy that was learning Arabic was saying the Alphabet better then she was. So keep that in mind.

nitro2k01 · Post by **nitro2k01** » Thu May 15, 2008 2:32 pm

Arabic: Might be useful in the future, especially if you're aiming for political science. I doubt Arabic culture will influence us less in the future.
Chinese/Japanese: As people have pointed out, Chinese will be useful in the future for business contacts. I'd even predict a shift of power in benefit for China. Japanese on the other hand is a "cool" and useful for gaming and animÃ©.
In case you don't know: Japanese and Chinese speech are different, but the writing share a few things in common.
Japanese consists of kana (Purely phonetic characters divided in hiragana and katakana) and kanji (Chinese characters) Kanji are characters imported from China. They're (generally) pronounced differently and their meaning can differ slightly, but knowing one will help you learn the other.
You can write Japanese using only hiragana, but it's not the right way to go. You'll have to learn Kanji if you're serious about Japanese, anyway.

samus · Post by **samus** » Thu May 15, 2008 5:13 pm

there are way too many different dialects of chinese to learn. you probably know that mandarin and cantonese are the most well-known. chinese is also a tonal language. 5 tones if i remember right. which is extremely difficult to learn for those who weren't raised speaking or listening to a tonal language. "ma" said in different tones mean something <i>completely</i> different. (just so you know, english isn't tonal..) so if you're going for easiness, you might want to choose arabic. the words are also sequenced very odd and when written in roman letters it isn't pronounced phonetically or how you would think it is. there are new sounds that you have to train your ear to hear and mouth to make.

however, everyone is pretty much right about the business thing. chinese is probably a good idea to learn if you want to find a job quick.

from personal experiences, i've found that chinese rolls off the tongue easier.

that's my two cents.

and japanese? who <i>doesn't</i> want to learn it? seriously..

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Thu May 15, 2008 5:33 pm

I'd say between those options, Chinese would be your best option for languages that can be used in multiple situations (foreign relations and general business). Both China and the Arabic countries are (and probably will be for quite a while) in pretty close contact with the US. The one thing is, there are some very minute differences in pronunciations that most American's can't pick up with Chinese.

And, like I've said, UWEC has a good foreign language program

theelk · Post by **theelk** » Thu May 15, 2008 6:23 pm

Don't learn Japanese. It may seem cool now, but you're just one more step down the road to becoming a weeaboo. I stopped my lessons before it was too late.

Chinese, on the other hand, is pretty cool. I haven't learned it, but it's offered as a class at my school. Just don't give in to the Wapanese urges

Bubbles · Post by **Bubbles** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:14 pm

I plan on learning Japanese to play PokÃ©mon Platinum.

I also plan on learning Esperanto so I can translate MacBeth into it, so take that for what you will.

HotDog-Cart · Post by **HotDog-Cart** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:21 pm

Why not learn Russian? :3

Bubbles · Post by **Bubbles** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:30 pm

Latin is a sweet language, savage hard but sweet.

Post by **CronoTriggerfan** » Thu May 15, 2008 8:50 pm

HotDog-Cart wrote:Why not learn Russian? :3

Maybe, it sounds pretty cool at least.

Thanks for all the input, guys. Chinese seems to have a large leg up, especially seeing as instructors are much more readily available, but I've heard that, as samus said, it being tonal makes it very difficult to learn. My friend and his brother moved to China and lived there for about 6 years, and despite immersion and classes all that time, only one is even moderately proficient at speaking alone. That's a bit intimidating for someone who only knows English!

Chinese and Arabic also each have absolutely NO root in any romantic language, so it makes either even tougher. We'll see how it pans out, though.

As for Japanese, definitely sometime in the future. I took lessons for a while, but then stopped due to boredom and being a little kid. My mom's side is Japanese, and I promised my uncles that I'd learn to speak the language and visit them in Japan before they pass on.

Korean might be cool, too. I've already got a bit of a cultural grounding via martial arts, perhaps I should think about that more...