La Lingua Per Tu? If you could learn another language...

[smazzon1]

..what would it be? Would you learn the language of your ancestors or something completely out of your comfort zone? If you are studying/have studied a different language than the one you grew up with, what made you decide to pursue it?

I've been in Italy for 5 weeks now studying Italian. You learn so much more when you actually have to use it outside the classroom. Plus thanks to learning Italian, I'm going to meet a distant relative I met through Facebook!

Ciao a tutti gli italiani sui Nerd Fitness!

[Nuala]

One of my life goal is to speak at least 5 language! I speak French, English and Italian. Learned Spanish at school (but forgot most of it). I'm trying to learn Finnish now and would be interested to learn Danish (I love the country) and an Asian language, Japanese or Korean, I haven't decided.

Lots of work, but lots of fun too!

[bigm141414]

My list of languages I'd like to know:

1) Spanish (because I live in Texas)

2) Japanese (because I have customers there)

3) Chinese (because let's be honest, they are slowly taking over the business world)

4) Latin (because even as a dead language it allows for a wider appreciation of today's languages, plus you get nerd bonus points)

[Shey]

I lost interest in Spanish after being required to take classes from 3rd through 8th grade (during which time I learned very little). In high school I took 2 levels of Latin (the majority of which I've forgotten now, but it does make a very good basis for learning roots for romance languages).

I actually majored in and acquired my BA in Japanese. Which I have yet to use. And now that I've moved back to Oklahoma from CA for a couple years I'm way out of practice with it. After 3 years of language classes and 2 quarters spent abroad, I have a pretty good ear for japanese, and I get tons of compliments on my pronunciation. In high school before I actually studied Japanese, I would spend my free time memorizing and singing along to j-pop music so I developed an ear for the sounds before I knew any of the words. Of course, so long without using the language means that I'm forgetting my vocabulary, although the grammar seems to be sticking. I also read like a second grader Hahah~

I'm finally starting to get more interested in Spanish again, but I'm more of an auditory than a visual learner with languages and I'm not sure where to get started without a teacher to listen to.

[Jcannon98188]

I want to learn a bunch of dead languages. Like Latin, Ancient Greek, read Cuniform Script, things like that

[nightlight]

i would LOVE to speak italian and french. just cuz.

[KAllen]

Irish gaelic, Spanish, and yes....Klingon

[smazzon1]

Irish gaelic, Spanish, and yes....Klingon

My first name is very Irish so unless I'm in Ireland or parts of the UK nobody knows how to say it. Being on this trip has definitely made me think about learning Gaelic.

And Dothraki all the way yo.

[TheOtherScott]

I'm probably going to make a point of learning more Spanish in the future. I'm an ESL teacher by trade, and though I'm not required to know anything other than English, I see no downside to being able to communicate with Spanish-speaking students in their own language.

If nothing else, they'll probably get a kick out of their teacher asking where the beer is.

[Corbab]

At this point, I am conversational in French, and I can get by in Spanish. I really want to learn German and Khmer (Cambodian). I picked up a couple of Khmer phrases spending three weeks in Cambodia, and I really want to go back with a few more words under my belt.

[Oogiem]

..what would it be? Would you learn the language of your ancestors or something completely out of your comfort zone? If you are studying/have studied a different language than the one you grew up with, what made you decide to pursue it?

I'm very slowly learning Welsh, because I raise Welsh sheep, have friends in Wales and supposedly have ancestors from Wales. Plus it's good for an extra beer to ask, in Wales speaking Welsh, for another one. ;-)

[shortstuff]

I would love to learn spanish but after doing a research project on it last year as part of school (something we were all forced to do and pass, well if we wanted to get our hsc), I hated the research project side of things, but I enjoyed the learning spanish side, I just wish I learnt more, and put more effect into that. Now that the research project is over, I haven't gotten around to learning anymore and I think I forgot most of (the very little I learnt) it.

[realbrickwall]

Working on Japanese, and I fully intend to pick French back up sometime. I may decide to grab German some distant day, but probably not.

[leadchipmunk]

The two languages I want to learn is German and Japanese since those two are the two places I most would like to visit. I have a belief that you shouldn't travel without at least attempting to understand the local language, it is just a courtesy.

[alan713ch]

I love learning languages! My mother tongue is Spanish, and I speak fluent English and French. I can read Portuguese and Italian, and I took basic German. At the moment I'm starting Japanese (only because I found out that if I want to use a software like Rosetta Stone I have to be learning a language FROM SCRATCH, like, knowing ZERO) and I will definitely go back to finish german, portuguese and italian. My goal is to know five languages before 30, and eight before 40. After all these, the next one would be russian, and maybe arabic.

Yes, I'm obsessed with languages. No, my profession is not a translator (though it'd be a cool one. You know, like at the UN or something)

[caithnard]

I'd really like to learn Cantonese. It's the language of my mother's family and I really wish I had learnt it as a child, but too late for that.

I'm slowly working on German on Duolingo. Maybe concentrating on that will be a goal for a 6 week challenge later on...

[Ghost]

I'd love to learn Italian. Then I'll run around pretending to be Ezio annoying my friends.

Also Japanese or Chinese, they really are rapidly expanding. Maybe French, it is used in so many countries.

I do have two years of Italian coming up in school. I chose it hoping I would come out with a valuable skill.

EDIT: And some programming languages would be nice, maybe JavaScript or Python

[alan713ch]

Ghost, then you should definitely check up CodeAcademy, they use JavaScript to teach programming... and from there on, is only a matter of learning the basic differences between coding languages. A professor of mine made us learn C just so when we learned MATLab (high-level mathematical code) we wouldn't have any problems with it, which turned out to be true. After the first one (and the more basic, the better) the other ones come in a breeze =P

[Gary Conway]

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[Centurion]

I already know a bit of German but very basic (still leagues ahead of where I am in any other foreign language) so I would love to actually get to a point where I could comfortably converse in German. After that I've always loved the idea of being able to speak French but I've always found the pronounciation quite tricky

[smazzon1]

1) Italian - Love Italy, just got married there woohoo!

Congratulations! Where in Italy?

[Gary Conway]

Thanks! We got married in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast then spent our honeymoon in Florence & Venice. It's such a great country - so much history

[CarlosH]

1 - Russian (like the sound )

2 - Mandarin chinese.

3 - speak better english

I speak spanish and portuguese, and little english

[illc]

I'd do well to improve my French and Spanish. My vocabularies in both are pretty good and I can rattle on pretty quickly once I've been around people speaking for a while and am on a topic I'm excited about though know that my grammar is atrocious. Luckily for me I'm on a 2-3 week project in Quebec at the moment so am having a great opportunity to practice. My co-workers are all form the southern US and not at all francophone / bilingual so I get to talk for 4 in a huge array of situations.

Next? Well, I'm not sure if I will have next languages. In terms of maximum communication Mandarin makes sense. I think either Arabic or Russian would give one access to big parts of the world that not many of us get to go to on our own terms.

[JeffyB]

I'd like to learn more German, French, and Japanese (to build on what I know), and then add in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.