wich language to learn next?

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I'm thinking about learning another foreign language.
I propably won't start right away, because I have to learn stuff for university and also go deaper into the languages already, but I feel like in need to plan somehow.

I'm a native German speaker and at the moment I speak some:
- English (of course )
- French
- Italian
- Hebrew (modern)
- Danish

So those are the languages I'm thinking about:
- Czech
Pros: I visited Prague last year and I really liked that city and my grandpa was from the Czech Republic. I already have two books about it how to learn it.
Cons: It'll be difficult to learn. I don't like that much how it sounds. It's a small language.

- Greek (modern):
Pros: I kind of grew up with it, because my childhood friend is Greek, but we lost contact. So I'm familiar to the culture. I like the way it sounds. Greece has a very interesting culture.
Cons: I was never in Greece myself and it'll be also not that easy to learn for me. I have the same problem with Hebrew, reading with a different alphabet than the Latin one never comes totally naturally and takes more time. It's also not a very big language.

- Portuguese:
Pros: It'll be the most easyest to learn for me, because I already speak some French and Italian. It is the most spoken language of those three languages. I also like the way it sounds.
Cons: I'm afraid I might confuse it with French and Italian because of the similarities. I've never been to Portugal.

So I need some advice how to figure out which language to learn.
Also because I decided to learn one or max. two more languages and that's it, so it doesn't get too much. Because languages need practice to remember how to speek them properly.

Last edited by Raziel on 15 Nov 2013, 6:01 am, edited 2 times in total.

Of these three I'd suggest Greek

Also, I love to learn Finnish. It's so fun to talk in it

I vote for Russian, Mandarin, or Cantonese.

They have little in common with the languages you know (although Russian seems to overlap other East European languages), and learning them will challenge and exercise your mind.

Which country do you think you'll be spending time in the future?

What do you like about it?



At the moment I've no plans going to Russia, but actually in my country are many russian speaking ppl. What's a pro because I could easily find someone to talk to in Russian, but also a con in that kind of way that there is no real need for more translaters than there already are and a lot grew up with russian and german and I'll never reach even close that same level.

Well with Mandarin...
I also wouldn't visit China, at least not propably in the near future and as a child I was dysexic, so the Chinese writing system would be too difficult for me to learn properly I guess. Also I don't know even one person from China in person. So it'll be difficult for me to find someone to talk to.



I actually dunno.
But I actually could imagine all of those countries, what is also a very important reason for me to learn a certain language that I could at least imagine living there. Actually when I would learn any of those languages, I would propably also go and visit the country and spending time getting to know the culture and so on.

I recommend you learn all three at the same time. I'm serious. Don't do all three intensively at first, though. Make a bit of a start with the three of them and familiarise yourself with the basic grammar and vocabulary. You have a bit of a headstart with Portuguese, because you're already familiar with two Romance languages. Practice the Greek alphabet a lot in the beginning stages, it's where the most effort will go to at first.
After that, you can decide for yourself which language you're going to pay more attention to, and which one less. You could even divide your attention equally among all three.
Do not limit yourself to any language learning material like course books or grammars- although it is very important that you get a quality grammar book. ALWAYS extend your grasp toward media in the languages that you are learning, for instance movies, radio shows, news sites, and the like. There's a lot you can find on the internet. Expose yourself to that from the very beginning. Get your hands on novels where you can. It doesn't matter if at first listen, it all sounds like gibberish to you. The mist will clear everytime you listen and read and progress in your knowledge of the language.

I currently only speak Dutch and English, but I have an excellent reading/listening understanding of German and Indonesian, and I'm working on Mandarin. My reading comprehension of Portuguese and Spanish is adequate. I'm currently trying to learn Danish, and I'm making it a bit fun by watching my X-Men cartoon DVDs with the Danish audio on and Dutch subtitles. Aside from that, I'm also looking at Javanese, Sundanese, and Tagalog, though that's more out of curiosity than an actual urge to learn those languages.

Well, in English people tend to get lazy and jumble their words to the point that they all slur together. In Finnish, you can't do that because just how long you hold a syllable can make it a completely different word. So you cant drone onnnnn your worrrddds because if you do they might end up being completely different chicken (words).

So Finnish speakers tend to speak more clearly.

Also, it's fun how some of the sounds just roll off your tounge

You're a native German speaker? European languages are for wimps; go hardcore and study Russian, Mandarin, or Arabic.

Hm, if I would be finished with university and would have more time, maybe...
But still I guess with this method the propability to confuse words is even bigger. But I guess learning them maybe a half year or one year apart could work pretty well. But I had a similar thought. Reading into all three languages and sticking to this one I kind of like best. I actually kind of favour Greek and Portuguese at the moment and learning the other once a certain time apart also because of time issues. So maybe you are right, but then I would learn them behind each other, because I hardly have any time at the moment and also because I'm learning Danish at university at the moment.



That's the thing, it's really difficult to really speak so many different languages.
I once spoke Italian and French, because I lived in France and Italy for a fiew months, but I forgot a lot, so I would need more practise again, what I would do, before learning another language. I never spoke hebrew fluently and it's sadly more on a beginner level, but I can read it and understand it at a basic level, but I don't want to put too much time into Hebrew and with Danish... I currently started to learn it at university.



Most of the languages I learned, I really like the way it sounds, so I can understand this argument. I also always consider it when learning a new language, because I've to like the language, the way it sounds and so one to be willing to put a lot of effort in it. That's actually a bit my difficulty with Czech. I really like especially Prague, but written Czech is very different from spoken Czech and also it has a very hard sound with a lot fiewer vowels. For example: "Strč prst skrz krk" is a Czech and Slovak tongue-twister meaning "stick your finger through your throat"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strč_prst_skrz_krk
But still, I would like to learn at least one slavic language and I could only really imagine Czech from this group, because I like it most from the slavic languages. But I could first learn Portuguese or Greek and then Czech, so I would learn all of them behind each other, what would need a lot of effort, but could work and the only languages right now I want to learn.



First of all Russian is not even considered as one of the most difficult languages, so this argument doesn't make a lot of sence. It's a slavic language like Czech for example, eventhough Czech uses the latin alphabet, but also Greek doesn't have much in common with German and uses a different alphabet and is even considered more difficult than Russian. So with this argument I should rather learn Greek instead of Russian...

Second of all I studied Hebrew who is also a semitic language like Arabic and so I'm familiar with the word order of semitic languages and so on. So if I would be in the need to proof to you that I'm not a wimp because of a low ego what's implyed of having the need to proof it in the first place, I would propably have to choose a differend language than Arabic.

Third of all China is not really next to my country and I want to study languages from countries I can visit easily and if I would choose a language just to proof to anyone that I'm able to learn a very difficult language, I would propably choose a different one. I'm NOT studying languages to proof anything to anyone exept myself maybe. This argument doesn't make much sence to me.

Last edited by Raziel on 15 Nov 2013, 5:19 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Someone just asked here why I'm not learning Spanish, but deleted it again.

I'm not that interested in Spanish out of different reasons. Spanish is very close to Italian and I know some who learned both and keep confusing them to some degree. That's one of the reasons why I thought about Portuguese who is farther away from Italian and knowing Italian and Portuguese I would be able to understand Spanish very easily anyway who is right in between those two languages. Also it has something to do wich languages I like most and that's complitely a personal choice.

Last edited by Raziel on 15 Nov 2013, 9:45 am, edited 3 times in total.

If its about all the czsch... "snakesounds" out of Czech that seem hard to you, but you definitely would like to learn an east European language, what about Hungarian?

I live in Austria at the border, and we have lot of Hungarian coworkers. Beside some typical phrases that are nice to have for 0815 contact ( Benzincut = Tankstelle, numbers, ...) I dont speak it myself, but as far as I can relate (Czechs are as well neighbor of us) they have far less "scz"-louds, and their language is as well more similar to the way you read it.

Another pro might be for you, that they are unlike most european languages, not part of the indo-germanic language family but share their language-family with the finns. Because of them for long being partners with indo-germanic Austria and so sharing the latin alphabet with them, that gives you the advantage of learning a language that offers you on one side new structural rules and language family but offers you on the other side the benefits of them having adapted the normal latin alphabet and similarities between the way you write something and you say something.

I'll think about it.
I don't have that much experience with Hungarian and first would need to read into it befor I make up my mind.



Yes I heard that too, but also that eventhough Finnish and Hungarian are related, they still can't understand each other.



Having a latin alphabet is really nice having, but also about Czech I read that they speak "Böhmisch", but write czech. That is because the country decided at one point to get rid of the German and other influences and being a total slavic language again. I dunno that much about it, but so that's it why they don't really write and speak to 100% the same language. It's propably like swiss-german who write german I could imagine but don't know it for sure. So that's also another point about Czech, but maybe that's could even be seen as a plus point to kind of learn a different system or learning one language kind of "twice".

So but I kind of made up my mind I think. I'll first repeat French and Italian, because I once was able to speak them properly and even read normal (but not too hard) books in those languages and so I will easily learn it again and also I just started to learn Danish at university a while ago. Then I'll propably first learn Portuguese were I'll get into it fairly easy and then Greek what will need a lot more time and last but not least an East European language were I'll think about it again wich one. From the Slavic languages Czech is my only choice, but Hungarian would be also a nice choice who is from a totally different language family.

Last edited by Raziel on 16 Nov 2013, 5:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hi,
I am not sure what you are writing about. Czech language is very close to me, because I am from Slovakia and now studying in Czech republic (our languages are very alike ).
For me it is normal to read Czech and I understand spoken language as well. I do not think they have two languages or so. Yeah, there are also some dialects in Czech republic, but it is the same in every country (some years ago I was learning about German dialects and it was quite difficult for me).

I think you should learn language you like. I started to learn Chinese some weeks ago just because I was interested in that. If you like Czech language, just go for it

Yeah you are propably right.

Well you could propably call it a dialect, but so far I read it's still "unique". In other languages, one "dialect" is considered as the "standart language", usually this one spoken in the capital city or the biggest "dialect". In Germany this "dialect" was choosen as "standart German" where Martin Luther translated the bible in.
But in the Czech Republic it wasn't that way. Probably the differences aren't that big.
Yeah, I'll probably go with Czech, since I wanna learn it and already have some good material about it, so I'll end up with all three of those languages, since I wanna learn all of them. But I wouldn't learn them at the same time, because that's the best way to confuse them. Like I wrote above, I'll first repead mainly French and Italian and will get more fluent in Danish what I'm learning right now and then I'll first learn Portuguese because it'll be the easiest one of those three and after it Greek and then Czech.

I see. Now I understand.

It is true that spoken language in Prague is a bit different than the "standardized Czech", but as you wrote, I think about it as a dialect. It varies with some word endings and I am sure you will be understand them after learning standardized language very well.

Anyway, good luck with learning languages. It's a fun and well spended free time!

Thanks Matt Foxiss

It might sound a bit spontanious... and yes it is, but it suddenly hit me and I started to read into Japanese. I can't really tell why.

I'm also repeading Italian at the same time. Because of the fact that Japanese and Italian aren't simmilar at all, I don't see any danger of confusing them, also because I already know some Italian. I bought an Italian work book (mostly grammar) with an A2-B2 level and the beginning is fairly easy for me, so I guess I'm level A2-B1. I guess that's not that bad, but my problem is (also in French, but my French is a bit better than my Italian) that I didn't speak it for quite some time.

Thank's so much for everyones help.