Learn Language for College: Options for English Speaker

[Skomatth]

I'm a native english speaker who took latin in high school. What language do you think I should learn in college? I'm considering ancient greek because I might go for a classics major, but I'm also thinking about something that would make it easier to travel the world. Other possible majors include philosophy, mathematics, physics and international relations. My school offers French, German, ancient Greek, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. Any advice?

 

[Pyrrhus]

Take Spanish, because it's the language most printed (books, encyclopedias, etc..) [if i remember correctly ]

 

[JamesU]

italian. I learned some sentances in it..I need to listen to those CD's again

EDIT: you don't have italian, so french. I learned some of that too

 

[arildno]

Do not take Chinese; the Chinese language is extremely difficult to learn for a native English speaker. Among other things, there are phonetic nuances used frequently in Chinese that is not present in English.

 

[JamesU]

Why would anyone want to learn ancient greek?

 

[arildno]

Because they are geeks?

 

[JamesU]

oh..that's me...uuhhh...I'm going to go learn ancient greek...NO! MUST RESIST...GEEKINESS!

 

[brewnog]

Spanish or French would both be pretty useful, from a practical point of view.

 

[JamesU]

oh, practical...spanish

 

[jma2001]

Why would anyone want to learn ancient greek?

Some of the greatest literature in history -- Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle -- was written in ancient Greek. Who wouldn't want to learn it?

 

[arildno]

People who don't read great literature, perhaps?

 

[mathwonk]

It depends obviously on your intended use for the language.

Ancient Greek is presumably for reading the classics in the original and impressing some people.

The scientific language of foremost usefulness is English, and after that French and German for reading classic works of the 19th century.

A few 19th century works of science are in Latin, from a wrong guided prediction of what the international language of science would become.

Italy is many people's favorite country to visit, and hence it would be useful to be able to speak to the locals in their own tongue.

Latin America offers a huge variety of destinations where Spanish is the chosen language, and there is a lot of wonderful literature in Spanish.

China is the one of the most populous countries, and with the current rapid decline of US capitalism, may become the most powerful economically in your lifetime, making Chinese a potentially useful language for business as well as travel.

The rhetorical question above reminded me of one i got from an otherwise intelligent parent, when I was trying to advocate teaching French to junior high children at a local private school: "who needs to know French?"

Only a person remarkably untraveled could ask such a question. Having visited France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Chile, and having friends who are Russian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Turkish, etc.. etc.., I have at times wished I knew all these languages.

I have learned more than a few words of 6 or 7 of them, and can accomplish some basic duties in French, Spanish, and German, and read some of these as well as Russian and Italian.

Even back when I was reasonably fluent in Mexican Spanish, I encountered whole villages of indigenous people in that country who could not understand a word I said in it, presumably indians.

I can say thank you to shopkeepers in Korean and for a time in Bulgarian, and goodbye in Mandarin, but it slips away if you don't use it, like math.

My Dutch, Portugese and Norwegian are pretty non existent though.

 

[Skomatth]

Ancient Greek would obviously be for reading original texts, which would be useful in both a philosophy and classics major (two of the several I'm considering). On top of that I'd probably go with German because my course catalogue recommends that people looking into graduate school in the classics would benefit from French or German. If I don't do classics German could still be useful in philosophy or science, since I hear a large number of scientific and technical journals are published in German.

 

[cronxeh]

why learn obsolete languages and other inferior ways of things

study math and physics instead. those obsolete philosophical ideas of ancient Greece - who cares? Its not relevant today - won't be relevant tomorrow or hundred years from now. No matter what anyone tells you - its history, and only those who have no better knowledge of understanding of the Universe around them will study ancient texts of Greek philosophers

 

[jai6638]

Learn Chinese ... Even though its hard, its definitely going to come in use due to its growing importance in the world.

 

[mathwonk]

cronkxeh, I assume you are just kidding.

 

[cronxeh]

im serious

and if you have an argument for otherwise - post specific examples of why learning Ancient Greek will be benefecial for future of humanity?

What positives, if any, can we take from Greek culture?

The centuries of blodshed and what little scientific achievements they've had are obsolete today. Sure they are significant, but not significant enough to be studied. They are obsolete. Plain and simple

 

[mathwonk]

no really, i know when someone is pulling my chain. this is obviously a joke. but I'm not biting. you are obviously a smart guy, so this is a gag, qed.

 

[Poop-Loops]

I took 3 years of Japanese in high school. I am fluent in Polish, though, so the pronounciation of Japanese came much easier to me than someone who only speaks English. However, I forgot 90% of it over summer break. :(

I want to re-learn some of it over summer, I'll get some books and such.

PL

 

[mathwonk]

i spent some time in japan and was surprized that pronouncing japanese is much easier for english speakers than say german or russian, hence presumably polish.

 

[Poop-Loops]

No, Russians have WIERD accents. I'd say Polish sounds a lot like Korean actually. Random fast jabbering. But it doesn't have accents like "oh" in "over" and such. The sounds are exactly like in Japanese, but we have like twice as many added on to it (like rz, sz, cz, e with a tail, a with a tail, etc).

But the reason I said it's like Korean is because we do, in fact, have an L sound. :)

I'd say Germans have the same problem as Russians, since German is painful to listen to. It's like running a car without any oil in it. No offense to German people. Just the language. :)

PL

 

[Huckleberry]

I would recommend Spanish. Many Spanish speaking countries don't commonly speak English as a second language. Travelling in these countries can be difficult unless you stay to tourist areas. If you like to travel learning Spanish is a good idea.

Another reason to learn Spanish is that Italian is almost a gimme. I spent time with some Italians in Mexico and they picked up the language in about a month, while I was still trying to form simple sentences without the use of a book. Portuguese is also very similar. Learning Spanish makes these other languages much simpler and allows you to communicate with a larger group of people around the world.

Learning a language that interests you is probably the best.

 

[brutus47]

I would say learn Fortran, C++, and definitely MATLAB, oh yeah, and Mathematica will help also!

 

[mathwonk]

well there is a big difference in pronunciation by different persons. my german instructor had a beautiful sound to his speech, as did all the radio newscasters in Munchen when I was there.

sort of like the difference between listening to bob edwards, recently dismissed from morning edition at NPR, and the aflac duck guy.

 

[jwsiii]

It seems to me that your time would be better spent reading math books in English than learning another language so that you can read math books in that language. It's not like all the good texts are written in foreign languages or anything. There are plenty of good texts on almost any subject written in English. I'm learning German, but only because I like it, not so that I can read German math books.

 

[neurocomp2003]

it depends on the environment you learn in and what your plans are for the future...china is apparently a growing country and russia is not so far off...and they are relatively close...so maybe studyign both would be beneficial for international relations. Heh C/C++ fortran and MATLAB are also good choices as pointed out above...but seriously speaking chinese isn't as hard a language as most people think. you just have to be willing to immerse yourselfinto the environment and test you speaking skillz in a populous like any other language. The only hard part about chinese is reading...and being chinese Canadian i should know. I wish my french had improved, i was really good at it in school...but like i said if your not immersed into some sort of environment to speak the language it'll be hard to learn. So as long as your willing to speak chinese with people and willing to dedicate more than an hour aday then you should be fine. Also findign the right teacher would help.

things to note about the language:
[1]there are 2 mandarin and cantonese. Mandarin is softer...analogous to french/spanish compared to german/english. Though it can get very high pitched if
old women are talking. Mandarin is the preferred language to learn because its spoken by like 80-90%

[2]there are 5 tones taht you must master for each sound. This is probably the hardest part of the language to master besides reading.(my mom's a teacher and she always tells me this)...though i think it may be the teaching style..you should attempt to use these tones on english words to just to improve your learning of the tone.

[3]chinese is spoken in syllables not words. Each character that you might see represents a syllable. of course like the english language a syllable may make a word.
I hated it when my english teacher said there are more english words then chinese...and i finally understand that he was comparing english words to chinese characters/syllables. "basketball" is comprised of 4 chinese char.

[4]there exists a chinese alphabet that china tends to ignore, in favor of learning the much harder to learn characters. Its called the "tzoo ing foo hau"(accepted by taiwan though), its 37 letters total and represents EVERY sound in chinese(except to which represent vowel concepts with the long and short) unlike the english language which has 26 but has more sounds then that(5 vowels are 10 sounds at least)

[5] of that english to chinese translation...only 6 chinese sounds cannot be mapped to english letter sounds...also becareful that todays learning style of chinese is pinyin which maps english letters (not necessarily sound) to chinese sounds...some employ
eg. things like X to represent ch and eng to ung...it may be confusing to some

...finally i'd say the english language is harder to master than the chinese language. Because of the multitudes of sounds to the limited letters.
But like any language there's always somethign to twist the sstomach of adults who try to learn a new language...french its those damn verb conjugations...english its the sound:letter ratio...chinese its the characters..but with chinese you don't need the characters to speak, you need the alphabet...characters only if you plan to travel to china/taiwan/malaysia.

To learn the characters though you nee dto study the history and how similar meaning syllables arise from similar fundamentals..its like to draw a standard house how you need to think about drawing teh triangle roof.

 

[ktpr2]

neurocomp2003 - How would the diffuculty of learning Japanese compare to that of Chinese? If you feel this is offtopic, feel free to repy via PM.

 

[neurocomp2003]

couldn't say...don't know much about the jap lang. except that the languages use similar/identical characters with different meanings. AND the anime songs are awesome.

I guess it all depends on what you want to do with the language. Are you planning to speak or read? Speaking will prolly be the same...itsa ll about memorizing words and sounds write? Reading is prolly a lot different...??

it comes down to the style of learning you prefer and the tools. Do you prefer to learn with a teacher or just go ask everyday people what certain phrases are. are you going to be learn speaking through the respective alphabets or those english styled tables. I personally think that its a bad idea to use english methods(like pinyin) because when that alphabet has a totally different sound to how their using it...it may confuse the learner...especially when there is already and available alphatbet. I prefer for the learner to write their own sounding methods with teh english method.

ALso i can't read without the alphabet...i detest teh characters though it is one beautiful peace of work. But i grew up in Canada so that's prolly why.

...1 thing to note...if you can master the 5 tones( i hope its called tones) of mandarin i think you can master the language.

 

[mathwonk]

i myself have had great difficulty learning to say even a couple of phrases in chinese without seriously insulting someone, although I grew up around and learned from many chienese speaking friends who were from malaysia and china. japanese on the other hand was no problem at all with virtually no practice; when i visited tokyo and kyoto everyone understood me immediately and i got around fine with only a few minutes study and a book.

that may have no relevance to what it means to learn to read.

 

[neurocomp2003]

mmm maybe you should have started with people growing up speaking english and chinese in teh western world =]...knowing both alphabets is a big help.

btw which version of chinese were you learning M or C?

 

[cronxeh]

how about portuguese? I am thinking of picking up a new language and it sounds good, especially considering all the hotness down there in Brazil

 

[Ouabache]

well there is a big difference in pronunciation by different persons. my german instructor had a beautiful sound to his speech, as did all the radio newscasters in Munchen when I was there.

sort of like the difference between listening to bob edwards, recently dismissed from morning edition at NPR, and the aflac duck guy.

I've heard German spoken by native Germans and also spoken by Austrians. It sounded to me that the Austrian German pronunciation was softened, no guttural sounds.

 

[Ouabache]

i myself have had great difficulty learning to say even a couple of phrases in chinese without seriously insulting someone, although I grew up around and learned from many chinese speaking friends who were from malaysia and china.

Are you musically inclined? I inherited this trait and find it easier learning to speak chinese correctly.

 

[mathwonk]

well most of my friends spoke foo chow (7 tones), but they taught me, or tried, mandarin.

 

[mathwonk]

i agree the best civilian language speakers i heard in germany were austrians.