URGENT: Poll for Languages

[colorhapsody]

Ok here's the deal: in highschool I took 3 years of french, but it's much too difficult to schedule in. So now i'm in Japanese and learning hiragana. However! As a philosophy major who is maybe planning on grad school afterwards, latin or greek would be amazingly useful! Please vote.

also, Paul676, how hard is latin/do you think i'd be able to pick it up?

[kwillin]

Just saying, Latin is difficult, so is Greek.

[xxsoboredxx]

Japanese is pretty easy

[Magnanimous]

I'm guessing you mean ancient Greek?

If you're already familiar with French, then you should probably go with Latin since it's the base of the romance languages. Greek has weirder grammar, and the same goes for Japanese... And of course, you'd have to learn a lot of new characters for those languages.

Japanese is a pretty easy class though, if the kana don't scare you.

[kdbar]

I voted for Latin because it can help you the most out of the three when you have to deal with other languages like Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc. Like Magnanimous said, since you took three years of French already, Latin will be a bit more familiar to you than Greek or Japanese.

P.S: I'm a Computer Engineer, who deals with numbers and diagrams. So my input should NOT be taken as the best advice. Just my 2 cents...

[larrytetris]

I have a Japanese friend, and he's trying to teach me some Japanese for use at the airport when I volunteer, and I can tell you it's NOT intuitive at all.

Their alphabet is two dimensional because each character has a main body and a trailing symbol to dictate consonant and vowel, respectively.

It took me a 45 minute bus ride to learn how to say "I don't know how to speak Japanese," and then another two days of me checking my memory with him and his correcting me to get it stuck in long term memory. But like kdbar, I'm not a linguistics-oriented guy, but I know my memory is pretty darn good.

[bach_of_tetris]

Chinese. It is easily the most practical language after English, unless you can already speak it, then Jap is next best.

[Spirale]

Chinese. It is easily the most practical language after English, unless you can already speak it, then Jap is next best.

latin can help you if you aim at learning other latin languages like french, spanish, italian.
greek is useless unless you want to study ancient texts.
japanese is useless unless you want to live in japan.

[Agamemnon]

latin can help you if you aim at learning other latin languages like french, spanish, italian.
greek is useless unless you want to study ancient texts.
japanese is useless unless you want to live in japan.

What he said.

Side note; learning several romance-languages at the same time will just mess you up even more, so if you're in the middle of learning French, Latin might just make things a lot more complicated. Take it from someone who has the basics down in Italian and Spanish, and doesn't know heads or tails of it anymore -.-

The way I see it, extinct languages are extinct....

[solo2001]

Lord, this community is helpful!  

[ohitsstef]

Hmmm

Although Latin would help you in philosophy. ... I guess? No one speaks.. it.. HAHA so ..

I think that the most helpful language to learn would probably be Spanish.. especially in the US.. =P but I voted for Japanese.. cause no Spanish up there.

[DAS44]

I had to say Greek, because well I am Greek.

[bach_of_tetris]

I had to say Greek, because well I am Greek.

Lol no wonder you sound like a fat greek from the movies

[DAS44]

Lol no wonder you sound like a fat greek from the movies :P

I'm not fat, and come here and say that to my face and see what happens :P

[themysticalninja]

i heard japanese is hard to learn, but i would still do japanese.
Probably applies better to real life, but thats my opinion