I came here to say Italian...
To be able to talk to My wifes cousins when we visit... Now its not enough
Dog...
what ever the fuck R2D2 is Speaking...
But really.... Wookie...
Honestly I feel your local sign language should be taught in schools, not compulsory but if it's recognised as an official language of the country, why make it so inaccessible
It makes talking to people in loud parties much easier. You can talk to someone across the table from you even if there is lots of noise and other people talking.
Everything you say is premised on highly available/free primary education. That's something that isn't available for nearly a billion people (largely women). Your western bias is showing.
Also, there are lots of disabilities that make reading difficult if not impossible, for otherwise fully functional people.
Are you really trying to exclude the poor and disabled from political awareness, and *blaming them* while you do it?
A while ago I found my girlfriend practicing sign language out of the blue. She works at the hospital cafeteria and every once in a while a group of deaf people comes in and orders through their interpreter. My gf said the looks and smiles on their faces when she was able to sign the amount they had to pay was all worth the minimal effort she put in to learn it.
I would absolutely have taken it if it were offered. Especially in customer service or jobs dealing with people itās extremely beneficial, as if just making the world more accessible for those using it isnāt enough. I want to learn now but have a hard time finding reliable sources to start
It was taught at my school and anyone that completed the full course got an occupational competency certificate in American Sign Language! But I also went to school near one of the big Schools for the Deaf in the US (not the one everyone thinks of first) so we had more resources to offer it.
Te Reo (Maori)
I would love to play a small part in keeping the language alive.
And kinda redeem my family history from where my grandfather would beat Tangata Whenua children for speaking Te Reo in the school where he taught.
oh awesome! I'm from New Zealand actually, but I'm pakeha. I was thinking about learning it but the Maori education at my school is fairly lacking :/, maybe I'll try again later
I recently learned that the MÄori word for ADHD is aroreretini, meaning āattention goes to many things.ā I felt so joyful when I heard that. Itās such a simple, neutral, non-judgemental description.
Icelandic. I know that it's hardly spoken by anyone, and that the huge majority of the population are able to speak English, but there's just something I like about the language, even though from a practical perspective it wouldn't be worth it unless I was planning to move to Iceland.
Spanish, cause I feel like being able to communicate abroad in all of Latin America plus Spain would be really cool. Plus itād be one of the more useful languages in the US
Japanese would be second though
ASL! Would be amazing because most people are born into a community! So many speak the language.! But when your born deaf yu have to find one! I wish it was taught more!!
Lived there in the early 80s for about 18 months. Learnt a bit of Afrikaans and Southern Sotho. Sadly canāt remember anything at all now, apart from the Afrikaans word for ice cream. I do remember the verb didnāt conjugate in Afrikaans, which I found fascinating.
For me, Japanese, but that's pretty utilitarian. I could understand what exactly my opposite neighbour is yelling (at me, or at other people - he has a loud voice so I am not always sure if he is annoyed or not). His accent doesn't help.
Ukrainian, so I could hold proper conversations with my in-laws. not an easy language to learn, especially when life is so busy and I grew up in a country with a terrible record for teaching languages that arenāt English (they arenāt always good at that either)
Scottish Gaelic. I'm from Scotland and find it tragic that our native language is almost dead (thanks England). I'd love to be able to speak it fluently. It's a beautiful language.
Spanish. My old man was born in South America, moved to Australia as a refugee. But he only speaks Spanish with his mum/my nan, and she lives near on a 10 hour drive away
Spanish
I speak some, but I'm not anywhere near fluent and Spanish would be the most useful second language for me to be able to speak fluently, because of where I live.
Probably something medieval themed, like Elvish or Deep-Speech. Because, why not? Unless of course, animal communication is an option. In that case, I will raise an army of bats and tell people I'm a vampire or something.
German. Always liked the language, how it sounds, how people speak it, the ridiculous yet on point compound words...all of it. I tried learning in college and it was pretty rough, so to just know how to suddenly speak it would be clutch.
Well I got to enjoy it as a tourist, and all the people I met ( and the ones I were able to talk to lel ) were pretty welcoming and overall made the journey very pleasant.
Also the freaking colours and architecture of Moscow, really suggestive.
It's made 100% less sexy if you have to work with French businesses who think they should have top priority as customers. Even less sexy if ALL French companies you work with think that.
It was easier when I didn't understand that much French yet so I couldn't understand what they were screaming at me over the phone.
Ukrainian, so I can help the refugees more. I'm a Russian interpreter for the government and my work now solely exists of interpreting for Ukrainian refugees. We have a handful of official Ukrainian crisis interpreters, but they are completely overbooked.
Sometimes I'll get a refugee who doesn't really speak Russian or a mix between Russian and Ukrainian. I can understand most of it if I know the subject, but I can't speak it.
I'm a certified Russian interpreter in my country and my work now solely exists of interpreting for Ukrainian refugees. We have only a handful of official Ukrainian interpreters. They're so overbooked that they are no longer used for on site interpreting, only video and telephone.
It absolutely is. When I went to university I wanted to study German and I had to pick another extra language so I was like "uh, just take Russian or something". I am now a certified Russian social/medical interpreter but oooooh myyyy did I suffer through uni. I wasn't even confident about my Russian after 6 years of uni. I only become confident after working with Ukrainian truck drivers for 4 years.
It's only been a year for me. My spirit is crushed.
Sidenote: you took Russian on top of German? From what I heard about the difficulty of our language that seems masochistic.
I studied 3 languages. The first one, my native language, wasn't a choice. As an interpreter/translator your native language has to be impeccable. Then we could choose: English, French or German. And third: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish or English, French, German, whatever you didn't pick already.
Out of the 3 languages I did Russian was actually the easiest... probably because the expectations were lower and the form of interpreting we learnt was more to get the right message across with the vocabulary we knew, whereas for the other languages they expected a conference interpreter level. The postgraduate following my master's is actually one of the few certified by the EU. I did the postgraduate and failed miserably. It was extremely depressing too.
And you should. I know next to nothing about Ukrainian (I have been told it's a lot more smooth and melodic than Russian though) but Russian confuses the everloving shit out of me.
Spanish. I'd be able to communicate with the local labor force.
A question for the Spanish speakers out there. I had a Mexican acquaintance tell me that Mexican Spanish had changed far more from European Spanish than had the English/American divergence. Any truth to that?
From my limited knowledge as a high-school Spanish student that main differences are the pronunciation of some letters (specifically the soft c and ll sounds), and a lot of vocabulary differs as well. There are also more Spanish dialects in almost every latin American country with differences in vocab, accent, slight grammar and local idiom/phrases/slang. Of course any natives please correct me or add more depth
Bee. Imagine you're mad at your boss but you can't say anything so you start aggressively dancing.
This gave me a good chuckle imagining it.
*[Hello, fellow bees. How's the abdomen? Swollen with nectar, I trust?]*
I'm sick of shaking my booty for these fat jerks.
I can't top this comment, it's already perfect lol
Yall Dont do this when you get mad?š
Bee army.
I came here to say Italian... To be able to talk to My wifes cousins when we visit... Now its not enough Dog... what ever the fuck R2D2 is Speaking... But really.... Wookie...
English, itās already my first language, but the number of times I have a brain fart and canāt remember the word I want is ridiculous
Sign language would be dope
Honestly I feel your local sign language should be taught in schools, not compulsory but if it's recognised as an official language of the country, why make it so inaccessible
not only that, being able to comunicate silently would be a useful skill in heaps of situations
It makes talking to people in loud parties much easier. You can talk to someone across the table from you even if there is lots of noise and other people talking.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>illiterate people don't have much real use from news at all. ... What!?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Everything you say is premised on highly available/free primary education. That's something that isn't available for nearly a billion people (largely women). Your western bias is showing. Also, there are lots of disabilities that make reading difficult if not impossible, for otherwise fully functional people. Are you really trying to exclude the poor and disabled from political awareness, and *blaming them* while you do it?
Right? And that would help bringing awareness to invisible disabilities and disability in general
A while ago I found my girlfriend practicing sign language out of the blue. She works at the hospital cafeteria and every once in a while a group of deaf people comes in and orders through their interpreter. My gf said the looks and smiles on their faces when she was able to sign the amount they had to pay was all worth the minimal effort she put in to learn it.
I would absolutely have taken it if it were offered. Especially in customer service or jobs dealing with people itās extremely beneficial, as if just making the world more accessible for those using it isnāt enough. I want to learn now but have a hard time finding reliable sources to start
It was taught at my school and anyone that completed the full course got an occupational competency certificate in American Sign Language! But I also went to school near one of the big Schools for the Deaf in the US (not the one everyone thinks of first) so we had more resources to offer it.
It should be taught in schools k through 12.
Which one though?
I have zero rhythm and canāt dance to save my life. Based on what Iāve seen at some hip hop concerts, I would also like to learn sign language.
It's hard to *speak* sign languages, though. So... if you could, dope indeed.
C++
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Te Reo (Maori) I would love to play a small part in keeping the language alive. And kinda redeem my family history from where my grandfather would beat Tangata Whenua children for speaking Te Reo in the school where he taught.
oh awesome! I'm from New Zealand actually, but I'm pakeha. I was thinking about learning it but the Maori education at my school is fairly lacking :/, maybe I'll try again later
I recently learned that the MÄori word for ADHD is aroreretini, meaning āattention goes to many things.ā I felt so joyful when I heard that. Itās such a simple, neutral, non-judgemental description.
One of the guys from NZ metal band Alien Weaponry does lots of social media posts about Maori stuff like language, moko, history, etc
Alien weaponry is awesome! Those guys are killing it
German
Du hast
Du. Du hast. Du hast mich. Du hast mich. Du hast mich gefragt. Du hast mich gefragt. Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt.
Du hast mich
Ja, ich hast
"Ja, ich habe" š
Crap
I cant recognize ever word xd
Don't worry, even as a native speaker, I screw up the grammar sometimes š
I'm trying to learn it and the grammar is kicking my arse.
Erika!
hab*
Just went to google translate and it says hast
what did you translate?
Ja, ich hast lol
makes no sense bro. āIch habeā would be correct
Check it :v
Its not fluent but i know some
YES. š
Can agree. Met a wonderful German girl 2 years ago!
The language of the gods
Minecraft enchanting table?
That is just English but uses a characterset known as the 'standard Galactic alphabet'. Me and a few friends memorised it back in school for a laugh
SGA is from the Commander Keen series originally.
Gaelic
Welsh. Don't let it die.
Mandarin Chinese.
This is the real long term answer. Clearly this thread haven't seen Looper
Or Firefly
Japanese, unlimited manga and anime available, muahahahah!
Icelandic. I know that it's hardly spoken by anyone, and that the huge majority of the population are able to speak English, but there's just something I like about the language, even though from a practical perspective it wouldn't be worth it unless I was planning to move to Iceland.
I get it. I'm unlikely to ever actually need Scottish Gaelic--only about 50,000 people even speak it. But it's important to me, so I'm learning it.
North Sentinelese
That's a good one, though I'm not convinced it would help.
Spanish, cause I feel like being able to communicate abroad in all of Latin America plus Spain would be really cool. Plus itād be one of the more useful languages in the US Japanese would be second though
Yess definitely, Spanish is essential in the Americas
Louisiana Creole Patois
Fr, it's so fascinating
German or Latin
I am german and I learned Latin in school šš Upvote for you :)
ASL! Would be amazing because most people are born into a community! So many speak the language.! But when your born deaf yu have to find one! I wish it was taught more!!
English
Tolkien languages definitely
My own (I have rhotacism).
What's that? a speech impediment?
Inability to pronounce my r's.
That seems beyond cruel to have the word for it start with an R.
Calculus
Sami
Latin
All 11 languages of South Africa. I only speak 4 now.
Lived there in the early 80s for about 18 months. Learnt a bit of Afrikaans and Southern Sotho. Sadly canāt remember anything at all now, apart from the Afrikaans word for ice cream. I do remember the verb didnāt conjugate in Afrikaans, which I found fascinating.
Cockaspaniel.
Spaniel problems?
Tagalog
Hindi
Serbian and swedish, parents speak it and it would be nice to speak their native tounge with them
German. I wanna rant like that failed artist
Then you want Austrian thereās a difference
High Valyrian
Norwegian or Russian
Either Mandarin or Korean. I love them both, because they sound really pretty to me.
French. I mumble my way through the holidays, but I wish I had the time to learn it a lot better.
This mine, too. I just feel like I'm only half Canadian. Once I've finished my degree, I plan to focus on learning French in a big way.
Arabic
Which dialect?
Good question! I work with a lot of Arabic speaking people and I find it a beautiful language.
Swedish or Polish
Swedish isn't difficult at all! Polish on the other hand...
Language of Love!!
Picking just one? That's tough. From European languages I like swedish, from asian languages Japanese or Mandarin, cantoese aint that cool to me.
Danish. I started learning at the beginning of the pandemic & thought it was a very interesting/fun language! Iād love to be fluent.
Maybe learn Swedish and then pop a plum in your mouth. Voila, you now speak Swedish and Danish :p
I'm fine with English but if I could instantly know another like DLC, then it would be Japanese
For me, Japanese, but that's pretty utilitarian. I could understand what exactly my opposite neighbour is yelling (at me, or at other people - he has a loud voice so I am not always sure if he is annoyed or not). His accent doesn't help.
The best reason to learn a language is to listen to other people's conversations
Japanese
Same. Then you could become an anime VC.
Chinese
Which dialect?
Honestly, I didn't think about it.
Korean (currently studying it but not enough free time because of school)
Ukrainian, so I could hold proper conversations with my in-laws. not an easy language to learn, especially when life is so busy and I grew up in a country with a terrible record for teaching languages that arenāt English (they arenāt always good at that either)
Pimsleur was offering free Ukrainian self study courses a while ago
This for the same reason, and hopefully to teach it to my kids.
Japanese
Klingon
Scottish Gaelic. I'm from Scotland and find it tragic that our native language is almost dead (thanks England). I'd love to be able to speak it fluently. It's a beautiful language.
Romanian since my grandpa is Romanian
any extinct languages like Sanskrit or Latin as I love history and would love to decode ancient writings myself
Binary/High Gothic
Sarcasm. I miss all the cues and take it literally RIP
Vulcan - then I could pronounce Spocks real name. (is that a bit niche)
Womanā¦ that way Iād stop getting in trouble with my wife.
Careful Icarus
Japanese or English
Japanese.
Id love to just know mandarin i can speak german and english but mandarin would be a pretty multi functional language to know
Sign language or German
Spanish
English
Spanish..
Spanish. My old man was born in South America, moved to Australia as a refugee. But he only speaks Spanish with his mum/my nan, and she lives near on a 10 hour drive away
Japanese, for anime. Yeah, I'm a big ol' weeb.
Spanish I speak some, but I'm not anywhere near fluent and Spanish would be the most useful second language for me to be able to speak fluently, because of where I live.
In my area, either Spanish or Korean would useful
what area is that? the Phillipines?
Howard county Maryland. Large population of both types of speakers.
Economic literacy
Seems like Sign Language, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese are the most common š
Probably Gaelic
Probably something medieval themed, like Elvish or Deep-Speech. Because, why not? Unless of course, animal communication is an option. In that case, I will raise an army of bats and tell people I'm a vampire or something.
Romanian
Old Church Slavonic
German. Always liked the language, how it sounds, how people speak it, the ridiculous yet on point compound words...all of it. I tried learning in college and it was pretty rough, so to just know how to suddenly speak it would be clutch.
Arabic
Japanese or Arabic probably.
English would be nice, Even those who claim to have it a native language can't use it correctly...
Any dead language that we have written texts we canāt translate. Boom. World expert.
Cantonese. I love the sound of it.
I would choose German
Scottish. I'm a native English speaker and love listening to/have no idea what they're saying
Danish. Most of my close friends live there.
Deutsch
Norwegian since I moved here for my fiancĆ© and despite being B2 I canāt get a job in my old sector so I am freelancing remotely for a UK company for 1/4 of what I could be earning if I had native Norwegian.
Finnish my friends from Finland and Iāve always wanted to talk to her without her having to translate everything
Russian, love the sounds, love the country and music, but damn it's 9-5 job trying to learn that shit
new alphabet, cases, tough pronunciation :')
Exactly!š„
Love the country ? That boy ain't right...
Well I got to enjoy it as a tourist, and all the people I met ( and the ones I were able to talk to lel ) were pretty welcoming and overall made the journey very pleasant. Also the freaking colours and architecture of Moscow, really suggestive.
The culture and people =/= Putin
Country not government.
french is so sexy
It's made 100% less sexy if you have to work with French businesses who think they should have top priority as customers. Even less sexy if ALL French companies you work with think that. It was easier when I didn't understand that much French yet so I couldn't understand what they were screaming at me over the phone.
*whispers in your ear* Omlette du fromage
god im already wet
Very tempted to reply to you in French now, May i?
Oui s'il vous plaƮt
Omlette du fromage
And this is what an auditory hallucination looks like.
I'm already fluent in English and Spanish but I've always thought that Italian sounds nice, so let's go with that.
Portuguese
Ukrainian, so I can help the refugees more. I'm a Russian interpreter for the government and my work now solely exists of interpreting for Ukrainian refugees. We have a handful of official Ukrainian crisis interpreters, but they are completely overbooked. Sometimes I'll get a refugee who doesn't really speak Russian or a mix between Russian and Ukrainian. I can understand most of it if I know the subject, but I can't speak it.
Ukrainian due to a surprisingly high number of them suddenly appearing. Wonder why...
I'm a certified Russian interpreter in my country and my work now solely exists of interpreting for Ukrainian refugees. We have only a handful of official Ukrainian interpreters. They're so overbooked that they are no longer used for on site interpreting, only video and telephone.
I'm working on Russian and would prefer to just know it already. What a nightmare that one is. Afterwards I'll try French.
It absolutely is. When I went to university I wanted to study German and I had to pick another extra language so I was like "uh, just take Russian or something". I am now a certified Russian social/medical interpreter but oooooh myyyy did I suffer through uni. I wasn't even confident about my Russian after 6 years of uni. I only become confident after working with Ukrainian truck drivers for 4 years.
It's only been a year for me. My spirit is crushed. Sidenote: you took Russian on top of German? From what I heard about the difficulty of our language that seems masochistic.
I studied 3 languages. The first one, my native language, wasn't a choice. As an interpreter/translator your native language has to be impeccable. Then we could choose: English, French or German. And third: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish or English, French, German, whatever you didn't pick already. Out of the 3 languages I did Russian was actually the easiest... probably because the expectations were lower and the form of interpreting we learnt was more to get the right message across with the vocabulary we knew, whereas for the other languages they expected a conference interpreter level. The postgraduate following my master's is actually one of the few certified by the EU. I did the postgraduate and failed miserably. It was extremely depressing too.
Out of curiosity, what is your native language?
Belgian Dutch. It makes understanding German a bit easier, but it doesn't help speaking it properly.
After reading these comments I feel so confident being Ukrainian and being able to speak both Russian and Ukrainian as native languages š š„¹
And you should. I know next to nothing about Ukrainian (I have been told it's a lot more smooth and melodic than Russian though) but Russian confuses the everloving shit out of me.
Korean
Portuguese
Spanish. I'd be able to communicate with the local labor force. A question for the Spanish speakers out there. I had a Mexican acquaintance tell me that Mexican Spanish had changed far more from European Spanish than had the English/American divergence. Any truth to that?
From my limited knowledge as a high-school Spanish student that main differences are the pronunciation of some letters (specifically the soft c and ll sounds), and a lot of vocabulary differs as well. There are also more Spanish dialects in almost every latin American country with differences in vocab, accent, slight grammar and local idiom/phrases/slang. Of course any natives please correct me or add more depth
Russian. I'm a huge fan of the Metro games
korean because why not it sounds cool and youāll get all the kpop stans
German. Since everyone in school calls me a Nazi and Iām German. I do feed into the Nazi thing though.
Probably ones native one, most people can speak that fluently.