My problem is deciding which one I want to sign up for next semester.

These are the languages I'd like to learn:

French
Spanish
German
Japanese

I'd like to learn French because they seem like my kind of people. Artistic, comic books and video games are popular over there. Because the French know how to relax. I'd like to take a vacation to Paris after I am finished with college.

I'd like to learn Spanish because it's the second most dominant language in the USA. It would be easier to do business with people here in CA due to the amount of people who speak Spanish. It always helps to be able to speak to someone directly than having to go through a translator.

I'd like to learn German because Germany is an interesting place full of people who know how to party. The German public are very social and some very good art films have come from Germany.

I'd like to learn Japanese because of how interesting their graphic design is compared to the western world. They are probably one of the more high tech societies in the world, along with South Korea.

Yeah, I wish at my age I could be a polyglot. But, it's harder to learn more than a couple of languages the older you get.

I took French in junior high, 3 years of Spanish in high school, then the army saw fit to send me to Germany. Of those you will find that grammatically German is the most similar to English and will therefore be easier to learn. Even many of the words are very similar to English such as water = wasser. Spanish would be probably the most useful language to know domestically, and French would probably be the best choice overall if you plan to do much world travel. Japanese might be interesting but i have no experience with it.

Yeah, I would like to see the world and how specific countries do their art. Especially their fundaments in graphic design. Mostly because a lot of the great foundries(in typography) have come from Europe.

Mandarin would be useful so you could talk to your overlords.

I'm learning Thai since that's my wifes native language and I'd like to be able to say more than "I love you", "sorry", "yes dear" in Thai.

I've had pretty good success with Rosetta Stone software ... it's a bit different than your traditional learning methods, but once you start to use it it makes sense in how it works.

I say Spanish, it's so handy in day to day life. I learned as a kid working with Mexicans, then when I took it on JH and HS it was a breeze for me, got all A's. The funny thing is, there is Mexican and then there is Spanish, kinda like our English and the Queens English. I'd like to learn how to type!!!

Japanese is a very cool language and once you know some kanji (the Chinese characters that they adopted) it opens some doors into the various versions of written Chinese that are out there so you're kind of getting a twofer. And there is the manga factor.

But it seems like Spanish would be the most useful. That's the one I want to try next. I love Mana and Cafe Tacuba, and I think I'd get a lot more out of our occasional trips to Mexico if I didn't have to rely totally on English.

I'm leaning towards French or Japanese at this point.

Both would be really useful. Also Japanese is probably one of the easier Eastern languages to learn due to how the structure of their language works.

Take French.

It's pretty easy, most of the words are close enough to English as to not be too nebulous and it's an easy bridge from French to Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese. I'm between conversational and fluent in my French and I'm teaching myself Spanish and Italian, it's a fairly small jump.

I already have plans to learn Chinese (both major dialects), German, and Japanese, in that order.

Rosetta Stone works well if you just want to be between basic and conversational; I'm finding it very helpful as I learn Spanish and Italian but you have to consider that I already have firm footing in French.

The most important thing is to have realistic goals and not to fret too much if you don't reach them when you want to. Learning a language is difficult especially if you've been monolingual into adulthood.

Each language has it's own mouth confirmations that you need to learn if you hope to pronounce things correctly. Basically, learn how to sound right first and how each basic group of letters is pronounced.

Good luck to you.

Vous devez apprendre le Francais. C'est la plus belle langue du monde.

Actually Japanese is much more difficult than Chinese.

You have to learn three character sets. Kanji (which is more or less the Chinese characters), Hiragana and Katakana, the latter two are both alphabets.

There are no homologues between Japanese and English to help you along like with Romantic languages.

At least with Chinese there is a single character set that will help you greatly when you start learning Japanese.

The other cool thing about Spanish and Italian as they are so close, you can still converse, my horseshoer is fluent in Italian, and we can talk just fine.

May I suggest Chinese? After all, they basically own us and if we don't get this mess taken care of, they may be our masters.

Its always good to know the language of the dominant culture.

... not that there aren't good reasons to learn Chinese...

Rottmom--I love Chinese food! I think they're waiting to get even with us for the building of the rail roads back in the 19th century. I welcome them with open arms, as long as they build more restaurants, and we get to keep our freedoms, might be tough for them to let us...

OK, ignore all of that, except the part about the food.

You think I'm joking? I'm serious. That's what I've been telling any whiner who dares give me that tired old excuse of how they can't vote for Obama because.........

You have a problem with blacks? How do you feel about Chinese?

yeah, we busted our asses on those railroads (okay, the Irish helped) and what do you do? Neglect them underfund them and run them right into the ground. Don't expect any more help from us.

Funny story, little OT, one night we went to a chinese restaurant, the girl at the counter was a very nice looking Chinese girl and while we were waiting for the food, nature called, so I asked to use the rest room, it was a take out only joint, well I walked past the kitchen, and lo and behold in the kitchen...all Mexicans!!! I thought those lucky bastards, they get to eat great Mexican food at home, and great Chinese food at work, son's of bitches have the best of both worlds!!! I thought it was funny, but I was soooo jealous!!!

Don't worry, you won't need to help us at all, we'll be working for you! This time you get to pay us back for the railroad (and many other) abuses.

So, do I get some credit since I am part Irish?

srsly

then they go and outlaw us in America

screw you guys

I would like to learn Mandarin. It would be nice to be at least semiliterate in a language that so many people in my city know. A friend and I (who is fluent in Mandarin) keep saying we are going to take another language, but we never do. For a while it was a tossup between Arabic and Tagalog. I'm not that good at languages (which is why I never became a programmer or followed one of my undergrad mentors into Comp Lit). With Tagalog, I thought, at least we wouldn't have to learn a new alphabet.

Err...

For another take on German, read this. Parts of it are hilarious.

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html#x1

I think I've pretty much decided French. Although I can kind of see myself being made fun of for that decision around these parts.

The best way to learn a language, if you can do it, is immersion.

My mother was French, so my extended family communicates in French/English. One young cousin basically learned most of her speaking English from MTV, in addition to school. Then she visits all over the states, for months at a time. She is very fluent down to slang, but of course with the charming French accent, they all have. My little sister is fluent because she went to French kindergarten when we were stationed there; at that age, it took her 6 months to perfect accent and enough fluency for her to begin to be the translator for routine outtings, in spite of the fact that the older kids were learning French in high school.

My daughter taught herself Hindi, by studying the script and sort of calligraphing the names of things which she pasted on items around the house. But that was still primitive ability until she went to live in India for 6 months. Immersion.

My nephew studied Eastern medicine in college, but then went to Beijing about 8 years ago. Shades of the MTV experience. He learned Mandarin by immersion and now is part of a Chinese hip-hop band, and acts in soaps.

Conversely, non-immersion seems not to stick so well. I had an intensive summer German class to pass the GRE language requirements years ago, and scored better than my French, but have forgotten it all. And when drafted in 1969, they sent me to 10 months of Vietnamese language school, but I never deployed to theater, and that has evaporated completely also.

Yeah, the immersion method is the best. Too bad I don't have the time or money to take a(very long) vacation in France.

Host an exchange student? Or be one?

Well, I guess I could always try that route later down the road when I at least get an AA. Exposure to different countries is a good thing for an art student.

If you're still on the fence about which to try and you want to dabble in some conversational-level language lessons, try some podcasts. If you haven't already, you can open an account with iTunes (it's free) and there are TONS of language learning podcasts. I have a whole bunch from the Radio Lingua Network: Coffee-Break French, Coffee-Break Spanish, One Minute Irish, and One Minute Polish. I'm going to try One Minute Russian next. They're fairly pedestrian, but it might give you an idea of what language you gravitate toward.