Choosing a language! (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Choosing a language!
Tags: Difficulty \| Choosing a Language
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37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 Next >>

eXtreme Newbie Australia Joined 4784 days ago 20 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*	Message 1 of 37 12 April 2011 at 1:27pm \| IP Logged
	Hello, I am currently looking for a suitable language to learn. I am 14, and my goal is to learn at least one foreign language by the time I'm done high-school, to an advanced level. I'm currently intermediate in German, but I don't really have any wish to continue with it. So I will list some things I'm looking for an maybe you can be kind enough to post some suggestions for me :) Some things I am looking for are: Easy to Pronounce - I think the biggest obstacle I will face when learning a language would be pronunciation, so, obviously, I would prefer a language which is rather easy to pronounce. Latin alphabet - I don't want to start with something overly complicated and unfamiliar, so a language that uses the Latin alphabet (I'm of course okay with some special letters), would be vastly preferred. Similar/same word order as English - Again, I want to keep it nice and simple for my first, so a word order that's recognisable would be great. An abundance of resources - I don't particularly want to scour the web for hours at a time to find some learning resources, so this is also rather high on my "list" I don't really find learning grammar/vocabulary too daunting, if that helps. I understand that I may be being very "picky", but I just want to know which languages would best fit my criteria, with some knowledge from some experts :-). Thank you for reading (if I need to edit anything, tell me). 1 person has voted this message useful
arturs Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 5080 days ago 278 posts - 408 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English	Message 2 of 37 12 April 2011 at 5:11pm \| IP Logged
	Dutch or Swedish 1 person has voted this message useful
tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4800 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian	Message 3 of 37 12 April 2011 at 5:57pm \| IP Logged
	Spanish. Abundance of resources, abundance of speakers, startling similarity in word order, a zillion cognates. For an English-speaker, this has to be the easiest language to get going on. 1 person has voted this message useful
LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5575 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian	Message 4 of 37 12 April 2011 at 9:46pm \| IP Logged
	My instant thought when I read this was French, but neither its pronunciation nor its spelling are simple. I agree with tbone - there are loads of resources for Spanish and lots to read and listen to once you get good at it, it uses the Latin alphabet and the pronunciation is pretty simple. I would give you one piece of advice though - you shouldn't pick a language because its ease of learning. You should pick it because you're interested in its culture, its literature, telenovelas, or something like that. I have been known to pick languages before just because I like the sound of them, the fact that they're complicated or just because they're different - and my interest in them fizzled out or hit a plateau at some point - making it much more difficult to continue. Good luck, whichever you choose. Jack 2 persons have voted this message useful
eXtreme Newbie Australia Joined 4784 days ago 20 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*	Message 5 of 37 13 April 2011 at 12:35am \| IP Logged
	Yeah, I realize that, but I thought if I knew some choices on which would match the things I'm looking for, I could look a little more in-depth in them and see if it's a language that I would be interested in learning. Thank you for all the replies so far :). 1 person has voted this message useful
ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5951 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian	Message 6 of 37 13 April 2011 at 1:17am \| IP Logged
	Spanish sounds like it would be a good choice for you because it meets all of your criteria, as does Italian. Swedish might be another good option if you'd like something different, but there isn't exactly an "abundance" of resources for it. If you already know some German, Dutch should also be extremely easy for you as they are very closely related. Anything that might pose a problem for you in Dutch, such as the word order, you will have already encountered in German. :) I personally never thought that the pronunciation or spelling of French or Portuguese were difficult but they might be for some people. You could look into them and see what you think and if they don't seem too hard you have two more options. 1 person has voted this message useful
eXtreme Newbie Australia Joined 4784 days ago 20 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*	Message 7 of 37 13 April 2011 at 2:04am \| IP Logged
	Thank you for your insight :). I actually was considering Italian since I heard it's easy to pronounce, and I like the culture (and the food of course :P). I guess it would also help in the learning of other romance languages later on. 1 person has voted this message useful
WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5160 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese	Message 8 of 37 13 April 2011 at 10:05am \| IP Logged
	I think Spanish or Italian would be the best languages of your criteria, but since you already know German it shouldn't be too hard to learn Dutch, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. So you actually have a lot to choose from :) Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful

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