If you could learn and speak another language what would it be?

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SparksMarioWiki

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I don't know if there's already a thread about this subject, and if there is I'm sorry about that.

Anyways, if you could learn and speak another language than your primary language what would it be?

I'd choose German because I would want to move to Switzerland one day, and German is the most common language there. I also like saying "Hallo!" (hello) and "Hallo Freunde!" (hello friends).
 
Ich möchte mehr Deutsch lernen. Eineinhalb Jahre sind nicht genug. Ich will zweisprachig sein aber manchmal muss ich Google Translate nutzen.

(I want to learn more German. A year and a half isn't enough. I want to be bilingual but sometimes I have to use Google Translate.)
 
Third person in a row to answer German here, I'm currently in the process of learning it and I've made some good progress but still very far from fluent. If I could instantly become fluent right now that'd be really cool. The reason I chose this out of any language is because I like how it sounds, how it works, the fact that it's very close to English, the fact that (besides English) it's fairly high ranking in terms of being widely-spoken and useful to know (and who knows, maybe one day I may live/work in a German-speaking country). Another factor leading into this was that one of my school mentors I was close to ran a German class - which I still regret not signing up for at the time - and that some of my close friends and even love interests spoke German.

Other than that, I'm also slightly getting back into Spanish (which I took in my earlier years of high school but have largely forgotten since then), which like German is close to English and is very useful and widely spoken, but I don't really like the sound of it or the way it works as much as German. Funnily enough one of my mentors I have right now is a native Spanish speaker so that mirrors the German too haha.

Out of any language which I've never learned at all and don't know any of, I would probably chose Japanese because of Nintendo/Mario, e.g. I can go to Nintendo/Mario-related things in Japan without worrying about not speaking the language, I can watch announcements/directs in their native language, I can play Japanese versions of Mario games which sometimes have unique features or glitches or are better for speedrunning (e.g. SPM), I can use websites that are in Japanese and don't have a direct equivalent in English (I remember this being the case for the TTYD remake at one point), etc.
 
French for me, mostly because of my geographic location and French heritage (and I'm ACTUALLY going to France in a couple weeks💀)

I've been on and off learning it on Duolingo, but I really want to pick up the pace and get serious about it. I should probably already know French at this point lol
 
I would quite like to learn Mandarin. For one thing, I think that the wide net of dialects and varieties that "the Chinese language" encompasses are fascinating in and of themselves, with so much history, culture, and geography behind their distribution, and right now that information is less accessible to me than it is for, say, the Romance languages. For another thing, the process of learning it would be a good challenge, a means of keeping my mind sharp. Most importantly, though, it'd give me so many more people I could converse with! You're looking at a means of communicating with over 900 million more people (theoretically, ignoring things like geographical constraints, and that I can probably already converse with a sizeable proportion of native Mandarin speakers who know English as well)! That would be a wonderful thing in my book, so many more life stories and perspectives I could hear!

It couldn't hurt me to engage in more practice with Spanish. That's another good way to keep my mind sharp, and it would also open up the possibility of conversation with a massive number of folks. I could probably get by with what I know of it, and would be confident in getting by if I had a means of writing it rather than speaking it (I really need someone to, y'know, speak it with), but I'm far from fluent in it.

I admit that I also wouldn't mind learning Japanese, in large part because of videogames, though that's less of a priority than the other two.
 
French and Japanese. I learned French throughout elementary and high school, but the way they taught it was so outdated, I lost my knowledge of it as soon as I left school. Japanese I'd like to learn so I can one day travel to Japan without the hassle of trying to learn the language while I'm there. I also know a bit of Spanish from Dora the Explorer, which I watched a lot as a kid, but my uage of it now is virtually non-existent.
 
Hooded Pitohui said:
I admit that I also wouldn't mind learning Japanese, in large part because of videogames, though that's less of a priority than the other two.
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Besides if you learn Mandarin you'll basically learn a chunk of Japanese vocabulary since kanji is just straight up Chinese characters.

The same goes for Korean despite the hangul looking different. Korean language is built upon Chinese as well, and they have a category of Chinese based characters too, called hanja.
 
Я говорю по-Русский. Не очень много, но я говорю на этом.

I'm well aware the language itself is grammatically a complex mess of hard stem vs soft stem, six declensions, three genders, and perfective/imperfective verbs that are highly irregular. I still love it though and I really want formal education on it. I have been immersing myself in it and slowly picking up vocabulary from doing so.
 
TheBlueCatMenace said:
French HEHEHEHOHOHO
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French is a very romantic language. Because of that, women love hearing you speak it. So I guess it would be good for dates and such. You know, like greeting your special someone for a romantic dinner or something.

By the way I like French myself and in high school wanted to learn it but got stuck learning Spanish instead, and I HATE Spanish LOL.
 
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Duolingoで日本語を勉強しています。(I am studying 日本語 / Japanese with Duolingo)

The game-yness really encourages you to keep playing. It gives you the good feeling of playing a fun game and also learning something practical. Plus it's free if you can deal with Temu ads. I currently have a 1.5yr streak.

I'm interested in 日本語 / Japanese because I like a lot of Japanese media and culture. I've visited the country once before knowing anything and relied on friends to translate. I'm keen to go back and practice speaking, along with seeing some things I missed the first time. As for reading, I'm not sure how to describe it, but I find the text really nice to look at? For example, I love that カタカナ/Katakana is a writing system that also doubles as a sick font for logos.

I like collecting retro games. I find the Japanese versions really good because they're 60hz and the boxart often looks nicer than the English ones. They're also way cheaper. I've got a few games already and I'd like to get better at the language so I can read them better.

I'd also like to learn Italiano/Italian and Nederlands/Dutch because I want to visit their countries. I've got them loaded into Duolingo. I find it a bit much trying to do multiple languages at once.


Circling back to the thread, if you want to learn a language, there's no better time. You've got Duolingo, ChatGPT, and language Discord groups/forums to practice with. What more do you need?
 
fantanoice said:
Circling back to the thread, if you want to learn a language, there's no better time. You've got Duolingo, ChatGPT, and language Discord groups/forums to practice with. What more do you need?
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I'm not saying you should go onto your favorite giblen and easily find a great language textbook for easily downloadable knowledge, especially if your language already doesn't have a huge piracy subculture that would make finding these materials easy, or even has a hugely popular tracker site with the first initials of the country name attached to "tracker".

Just go to YouTube and find stuff, but just don't hop onto piracy sites named after a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision to download your textbooks.
 
In high school I took ASL as my second language and it is such a lovely language. It was remarkably intuitive because it was correlating a word to an action, as opposed to a word to a word. There's also an innate performance aspect, where you're able to embody the story or actions you're describing. Although I've lost a lot of the particulars, I carry enough to be able to talk with some Deaf people in retail or casual situations, and I really love retaining the essentials. If I could choose anything to become fluent in, I'd return to ASL.
 
Ray Trace said:
I'm not saying you should go onto your favorite giblen and easily find a great language textbook for easily downloadable knowledge, especially if your language already doesn't have a huge piracy subculture that would make finding these materials easy, or even has a hugely popular tracker site with the first initials of the country name attached to "tracker".

Just go to YouTube and find stuff, but just don't hop onto piracy sites named after a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision to download your textbooks.
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I agree, textbooks are a great reference in addition to everything else. Not sure what 'giblen' means. You can sus out your library if you don't want to go the piracy route. XD They're not my favourite way to 'learn' - I find a game like Duo and actual conversations better for that. If the other part is a dig at ChatGPT, I think it's a good tool if you're using it for the right reasons. Ie: using it as a nicer search engine and assistant, opposed to a literal piracy machine.

Roserade said:
In high school I took ASL as my second language and it is such a lovely language. It was remarkably intuitive because it was correlating a word to an action, as opposed to a word to a word. There's also an innate performance aspect, where you're able to embody the story or actions you're describing. Although I've lost a lot of the particulars, I carry enough to be able to talk with some Deaf people in retail or casual situations, and I really love retaining the essentials. If I could choose anything to become fluent in, I'd return to ASL.
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Oh yeah, sign language is a good call too. A lot of schools around here are now teaching Auslan for their LOTE classes, which is cool.
 
fantanoice said:
giblen
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(there's a lot of subtle winks and nods in my post in regards of how to easily find learning material online without paying for expensive textbooks)

Just an anagram of a popular book piracy site. Obviously I can't spell it out here but it's been an incredible resource if you want to find academic stuff.

I did install DuoLingo Russian in my phone, but I haven't played with it in a while but I really should, it did taught me some vocabulary such as "where" "gdye" (though that's the only thing I've retained from it so far). I do have a Russian handbook I bought that I read into and it's a good supplementary thing that did taught me a lot in relation to vowel reduction, stresses, and what not.

I do want to actually practice conversations though. The only reason I know some pronunciations is because I hear voice clips in Russian and I mock/imitate them or I look up lyrics to my favorite songs (listening to songs is also a great way to learn vocabulary too).
 
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