I want to learn another language! Which do you think would be the most reasonable for me, and why? Especially since I am someone who wants to be a choral conductor, probably study abroad for a while, and also keep up my piano playing, it would probably behoove me very much do do so.

I have four possible ideas, and some justification for them:

-German: Such a beautiful language, and lots of amazing choral repertoire is in German, from Bach to Per Norgard. This seems very reasonable for someone who wants to be a choral conductor
-Spanish: I already learned a bit of Spanish in high school, so I'd already have somewhere to go from
-Mandarin Chinese: Challenge myself a bit more
-Korean: Challenge myself a bit more, minus having to deal with multiple tones :p

So, to the Americans on this board, do you know other languages? And to non-Americans, I'm sure you know other languages, so what would be in your opinion useful for me and why?

I'm just hoping for some neat discussion on this topic. I really wish they mandated American children learning another language starting at a young age...

Hmm, I'd go with German in order to understand fully what Beethoven means in his scores. :P

And Mandarin, but I'm biased: I already speak it. Soon enough, the entire world's going to need to know it anyway. You might as well get a head start!

With both English and German under your belt, you'd be covering a lot in the way of being able to fully understand much of the choral repertoire, but I think it would take you a long time to get to the point where you would fully appreciate the fine distinctions that may be important between the original language and a good translation.

Similarly with Italian if you ever tended in the direction of opera; many good translations of texts exist and, of course, you've already been schooled in the Italian terminology that is almost universally used as the lingua franca of music study and performance. Still, you'd need considerable time to get to the point where your knowledge of the language surpasses what may already exist in translation.

I'm not so sure how much a "working knowledge" of a foreign language is going to help in your hoped-for career in choral conducting; I think you'd have to develop well beyond that stage for it to have great practical value.

It might be interesting to do some research on good or great contemporary choral conductors to find out how many foreign languages some of them may have mastered, and how that mastery may have helped in their careers.

All this said, of course, there is no denying the mentally and culturally broadening aspects of learning a foreign language in which case the study of almost any foreign language will provide.

Regards,

You've made a similar point 3 times in your post! IMO, it's not really an argument for or against anything - merely a statement of fact that it takes a considerable effort and time to be proficient in a foreign language. I would say that even though it will take time, the sooner you get started on it, the sooner it may benefit you. I didn't start learning a foreign language until I was 25 (German), by the time I was 28 I had a scholarship to study music in Austria - and that included a language test to ensure i was capable of writing a thesis and understanding my classes. It's certainly quite an attainable task as long as you have the right motivation. Having a good working knowledge of spoken German is certainly a lot better than having nothing if you are a choir director. If for nothing else, you really need authentic pronunciation to sing in a language - even if you aren't totally on top of the meaning of all words that you are singing.

What's more, once you learn one language it is successively easier to pick up the next one. I say, get started!

German is an incredibly useful language... German music and if you want to go and study in Germany

I know English, French, Spanish and Portuguese

Not Greek! I mean not only it's damn difficult, but it's useless... plus it will be lost in oblivion in a little while along with the country itself! ;P

Greman, Italian or French is one of the obvious choices...

Then for me I'd say Japanesse, not only because I'm fascinated by their culture, but also because they are champions of the world: Coping with everything, dealing with amazing problems and getting back on their feet in no time! They really are a stunning bunch of 'little people' (<- joke...).

German is good to know. If you love chorale music now, you will only love it more if you understand what they are singing! Someone played me Mahler's "Um Mitternacht" yesterday, with Kathleen Ferrier, as I read the libretto from the CD cover, and, gosh, it was almost overwhelming. Sort of embarrassing too because I had to reach for a tissue. First time I heard that song. I didn't get an early start on languages either, but it has given me enormous pleasure to have raspy-voice sing-alongs with Bach's Magnificat, and oratorios, and Schubert's German Mass, and Handel's Messiah (oh wait, that's English already), and "Eugene Onegin"... So I think you could identify with the love-to-sing part. You don't have to be completely fluent, but if you know what is going on when they are singing, it helps. Even to understand something 20% seems to open a door of appreciation, that you don't get at all with 0%. Good for you to want to learn, too. I also wish foreign language learning were a normal part of education and life for people in the U.S. I am thinking I would like to learn Italian so I can belt out "Che gelida manina" even though I am not really the right gender or vocal range to sing that, but who cares.

Isn't Eugene Onegin in Russian?

I vote for german too. Chinese is a good one too. Russian is also interesting.

Orange Soda King, I can't advise you on which language you should learn. However, you also asked what other languages people speak; I can report that I speak French. I was fortunate enough to start studying it in 7th grade. I have smatterings of Latin, German, Spanish, and Koine Greek. I can read mathematics in Portuguese. The Latin was studied in school; the others I picked up after graduation.

I've been in a chorus for two years and so far we've sung in English, Latin, German, Old Church Slavonic, Taiwanese, and Japanese. And even Greek, Nikolas! (OK, pretty much only Christos Anesti, for visiting a Greek Orthodox church, but still, Greek .)

I am fluent in Greek and it has helped me tremendously during college and my career - and in speaking to my sister without anyone else knowing what we were saying.....

I vote for Spanish, purely for practical, obvious reasons (including you should be able to get sufficient practice in!)

**well, maybe not so obvious to non-Americans...

Italian and German should be the most useful languages for choir work. I second French for beauty and cultural relevance, Japanese as the most interesting and Korean the easiest asian language (easy alphabet, no symbols for practical purposes)

One thing, beware: German is very hard and not very logical! There are 3 articles to learn, one for every substantive (male,female,neutral) and for the conjugation, there are almost more exceptions than rules. Simple past and conjunctive forms are extremely difficult, although they aren't used very often (except in literature and music, haha). Also, most english native speakers don't seem to get the sentence structure.

I need to learn Spanish because in Texas with our open border to the south we are being inundated by Spanish speaking people and many of them can't speak English.

I have a neighbor has to have his daughter translate when he wants to speak to me.

I'm in Australia which is closer to China than the USA or Europe, so I am learning Mandarin slowly (on and off for the last 4 years), more for the intellectual challenge than the goal of becoming fluent in it (which I realistically realize is unlikely to happen). The Chinese people that I have met in China are very intrigued by any Westerner who wants to learn their language. I posted here last year some observations on going to concerts in Beijing.

To answer your question directly, OSK, I'd suggest German because it will be more immediately useful to you with respect to your future musical career. If that's not enough, then add in Chinese, because there's a huge audience there!

REALLY?!?!?! That's impressive if you're not Greek. Πώς και έτσι; Εννοώ γιατί; Μου φαίνεται παράξενο...

sorry for the Greek everyone... It must seem all Greek to you!

One point that has only been hinted at. Pick a language that someone close to you is also interested in learning (or already knows). If you don't practice what you learn you won't retain it. Not very different from learning piano in that regard.

I took four years of high school German and a semester in college, at this point all I remember is "ein bischen."

Just a little nitpicking: Per Norgard, or Per Nørgård as his name is spelled in his native language Danish, is not from Germany, but from Denmark. Although there has been a heavy German influence on the Danish language, you would not understand Danish, if you learn German.

OT: Since Denmark, is a very small country, foreign languages are obligatory in Danish schools. Everybody is exposed to Swedish, English and German, and if you go to high school, you have to get exposed to one extra language typically French, Spanish, or Russian. Many also have Latin.

and then even with wrong spelling, that's sad sorry, take it easy there's some truth in what you say, it's definitely easier to learn languages with interested friends, but you can always find language partners and succeed in learning a language alone.

If you want to be a choral director, German is useful.
But if for traveling purpose, French is very useful. Because most of French do not want to communicate other than in French within France.

Faux !

No need to get your hackles up Landorrano, this is Ronald Steinway who's posting.

OSK, should you decide upon German, might I first direct you to Mark Twain's The Awful German Language? It will help illustrate some of the difficulties one will encounter.

Well, I'm probably being repetitive now, but German and Italian will clearly benefit you the most for chorale works.

Spanish is useful in general

Mandarin will become useful when China dominates the world

Korean? Not very useful, but if you have a lot of Korean friends and want to teach in Korea of something go ahead and learn it! Or if you go to some technology field, Korean is useful

You could just learn all of them!!!!!!

Be careful, "American wants to learn another language" might get one on the list at Homeland Security !

Seriously, though ...



I agree.

As a professional musician, one should speak several languages easily, and have a familiarity with several others. One should have an close aquaintance with the music of those languages ... and not only the "classical" music. One should read and write in those languages, be able to make jokes, flirt.

I remember seeing Conlon during the Van Cliburn competition, speaking in Russian and Italian with the players. As it should be.

What a treasure, what wealth, languages are.

If you are a native English speaker you really ought to speak and read in at least one latin language. You will see that it is a way to really understand your mother tongue.

I put my vote in for French.

You know, in French there is an expression "for intérieur". "For" comes from "forum", meaning tribunal or judgement. "For intérieur" is your most intimate, you innermost thoughts or feelings. It is different from your conscience, which is kind of a person apart. I don't believe that there exists an equivalent expression in English, so speaking only English and living without a "for intérieur" is kind of rough.

(Dang! I can't use a Greek font on this forum, how'd you do that?!) In answer to your question, not strange at all- I am Greek (Dad from Corfu, mom from Athens), but I was born in Ohio! ha!
(yiayia lived with us and she didn't speak any English...)

I wish you the best of luck. The huge problem with the good ol' USA is we're essentially land-locked from exposure to other languages. (Other than Spanish which would be the logical answer to "easier to maintain fluency because others around me speak it" but not necessarily useful otherwise.)

Ah, memories! Two years of High School German and no where to practice left naught but vague shadows of declension and gender. German's an excellent language for English speakers as it has the same "barking dog" cadence we're already comfortable with. Great cussing too.

My two years of college French have held up a tiny bit better, but only with the reading. Also very useful as a lot of original and important literature is available in French. Unfortunately it's thoroughly useless when you're angry, so you'll still need the German.

Two years of living in Korea brought about 10 years worth of frustration with failure to learn more than the most basic phrases. I suggest Hangul only for those who will be living in Korea. The Korean grammar makes no sense at all to speakers of any other language except perhaps Hungarian or Finnish. What it doesn't have in "tone" is doubly complicated by a bizarre number of vowels and its poetically random sentence structure.

Mandarin seems an excellent choice. The grammar makes wonderful sense (from what I've gleaned), plus those instructions that come with everything we buy will make more sense read BEFORE passing through a "Mandarin to Menglish" translator.

Korean grammar is easy, just like Japanese and most other asian grammars. There are only 2 time forms (present and past), no articles, and there is almost no conjugation! And Hangul is almost as small as the Roman alphabet, no comparison to Japanese or Chinese Symbols, which you need to learn thousands of. Those are tough.

Interesting. I worked adjacent to interpreters who spoke Mandarin and Korean. Both agreed that Mandarin was much, much easier for English speakers to pick up. Do you yourself speak Korean?

No, but i learned quite a bit of Japanese, and it's very similar to Korean. A friend of mine learns Korean and it's much easier than Chinese for him. There's no question in my mind that forgoing your learned intonation and learning a few thousand symbols (Chinese) is much harder than Korean. I can't imagine Korean was harder for the interpreters, maybe it was their first asian language, and they probably didn't learn Chinese script.

Welsh. No need to worry over vowels as there is a mysterious and frightening lack of them.

Imagine learning 2000 symbols like this, and there are more complicated ones. Then you can start reading a newspaper in Chinese. (or Japanese. In Korean, these characters are practically unused.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters

Yes, the symbols thing is could be difficult.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to pick up - takes maybe a week to memorize. The syllabic structure of words also makes it simple to "read" those words. What is crazy making for the English speaker are the idioms and multi-tiered word forms. You MUST know social status of both speakers to select the correct form. For example, don't use formal when speaking to children, or use women's forms when speaking to men, and so forth. That's why every conversation with a Korean begins with "How old are you and what do you do?"

Hisssss, simplified Chinese!

I guess it's an individual matter. I'm wired highly visual so the idea of learning 2000 symbols seems a minor obstacle if the grammar is stable.

Other learners may not feel that way. What I could not deal with when learning Korean were structures and phrases changing depending on social factors.

Plus, there are a few more speakers of Mandarin than Korean making its value fairly obvious. The "Land of the morning calm" is lovely, but I'd have to rate Korean with the Nordic languages in overall usefulness.

I think he meant the "Faux!" in a friendly way.


That's a delightful read for a german like me, and quite true. As i said, German is quite illogical. Only this is plain wrong:

Accusative case is for (passive) objects, not subjects, for example.

The top left is traditional, right?


With stroke order and multiple meanings? Also, writing them is harder than reading them. It's not a task to be underestimated.

Ohh I've always wanted to learn German..you should learn German

I KNEW MANDARIN
I was fluent, apparently, when I was little. but (according to my mom) when I started to learn English, I only wanted to speak English and I stopped...

needless to say, I am very upset with my younger self. my knowledge is very, very basic now, and my pronunciation is even worse. I think in terms of speaking languages, Chinese is one of the harder ones...it's very challenging.. it would be best if you could study with a native/fluent speaker, maybe? otherwise you'd probably end up pronouncing completely different words each time you speak (I say this from experience...) gaah crazy voice-inflections, and a lot of memorizing.

languages are so incredible though, and becoming fluent would def. be well worth the hard work

Go for German. Since you are an English speaker, German will really just "come together".

Since you said you wanted to be a choral conductor German will be extremely useful.

Might I suggest Russian as well? Russian is extremely difficult but not as much as Mandarin Chinese so you would still be challenging yourself. I wouldn't jump to such a difficult language like Chinese just yet. Russian sounds cool and you could probably find work as a conductor there in Russia as well.

World languages could be categorized into roughly three systems. English, German, French, Latin etc belong to one group, Chinese, etc , another group, finally Japanese, etc, the last group. Within each group, it's easy to learn. Across the boundary, the difficulties increase.

So after the consideration of functionality, you may need to consider how well you want to learn. If it's not just for normal conversational needs, you may also need to consider the time you have to spend.

Sorcerer you do realize you only need to know a couple hundred characters to be considered fluent? It's really not that hard to memorize all of that. Of course, it's not going to to take a week to learn like Hangul, but you exaggerate the difficulty. Stroke order is more of a suggestions. It's given to you to write the language in the most "efficient" and beautiful way, but it is hardly a requirement... There aren't that many characters with multiple meanings that can get easily confused either... Maybe it's just me? But Japanese and Chinese aren't that much more difficult just because of the alphabet, particularly Japanese in which most Japanese use a smaller amount of kanji characters than what Chinese use.

Also, while Japanese and Korean have similar grammar structure. Korean is more complicated. You shouldn't necessarily assume things if you haven't studied both languages.

Here's a post I found regarding it:
Korean grammar is more complex. A relative clause for example (the man who drank the coffee for example) in Japanese just uses the infinitive of the verb: コーヒーを飲む男 (lit. coffee + particle + to drink + man) whereas in Korean you can't just use the infinitive, but instead have to take off the da ending and replace it with 는: 커피를 마시는 남자. (lit. coffee + particle + to drink (minus the da infinitive) + neun + man). In this sense it's similar to Turkish which does the same thing: kahve(yi) içen adam, where drink (içmek) has the infinitive (mek) removed, and then adds on the -en which fixes it to the following noun. Sometimes Turkish is eerily similar to Korean as well.

Anyway, Orangesodaking please tell us what language you choose to learn!

I learned French and some Spanish in high school, took some more classes of each in college and tried one semester of Japanese. The French is the only one that really stuck at all. I don't know if its because it was the first one of the three I learned or if its just because I always liked the way it sounded better than the others and maybe I felt more motivated because of that. I'm not fluent, but as long as I have a dictionary or phrasebook or something to nudge my memory I still can pronounce things and I could probably get by if I needed to. I would sound awful, but I could communicate.

French can be the only people in the world who are not willing to understand that foreigners have problem learning their language. I have been all over places, only in France that I am always afraid that if I am lost that I will have problem. The rest of the world, people will be willing to communicate in whatever way to help. That is why it is very useful to learn French, because once you know how to speak to them, they become extremely friendly and helpful, otherwise, I have to say that they are the worst in the world. No other people can top them.

SOV I you love 45% Hindi, Japanese, Korean, German

SVO I love you 42% English, Mandarin, Russian, German

VSO love I you 9% Hebrew, Irish

VOS love you I 3% Fijian

OVS you love I 1% Tamil

OSV you I love o%

Yhc, that is a rather alarming piece of misinformation. Most linguists would claim that there are indeed nine or ten phylogenetic language units. You are correct in stating that the Indo-European languages (which count English, French, German and Latin among them) form one such unit with the largest number of users of any. Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan group and is the second largest unit in terms of users. Japanese, a member of the Japonic language group, is very small and certainly does not constitute one of the big 'three systems' as you claim. The third largest group in terms of users would be the Niger-Congo family of Sub-Saharan Africa or the Afro-Asiatic group of languages of North Africa and West Asia.

Newport, both Arabic and Chinese (as well as Korean and even English under certain conditions) exhibit OSV tendencies under particular types of semantic pressure.

Yes, you can say "you I love" in Chiese (so can you in English), but it means something totally different than "I love you". You don't need to learn the latter unless you want to be a Sinologist.

Newport, don't let your lack of science get in the way of having an opinion!

Orange Soda King,

I also think German would be the most useful language for your purpose.

Of course every thing one does subtracts from time spent at the piano and one's pianistic abilities. Isn't that what your piano teacher would tell you?

Bech

I have studied languages at the Uni (German, English, Spanish, Italian and French). I always wanted to study some Chinese and I have also bought a book, but have kept it by my bed -- not the best place to learn Chinese because I felt tired after a while, but it is still a project (a daytime project though).

With German you will be able to understand Schubert's Lieder among other things.

German
French
Italian

fwiw, Hebrew ("ani ohev otach") is SVO, not VSO.

-Jason

I don't think it is easy to say which language would be best for choral music. If you're teaching middle school or high school choirs in the US, then I would think that you would do more pieces in Spanish than in German. I was in a community choir this summer where we did the Brahms Requiem in German. The people in the choir found it difficult. University choirs or professional choirs would be different.

Since I do a lot of vocal accompanying and am starting to coach some, I find knowing 2 things from language useful. The first is general sentence structure. I took about a semester's worth of German, and from that I know how to parse the sentence and make sense of the literal translations for the songs that are available. I also understand the little words like articles, and different forms of verbs, which can be confusing if you are trying to make your own translation.

The second thing I need to know is pronunciation. I think the best thing I did for this was to take out some of the Pimsleur language learning CDs from the library. They have you repeat simple phrases and answer questions, and spend some time with forming the correct sounds. The thing with German and French is there are more vowel sounds that we don't have in English, so I would start with one of those.

For my background in languages, I knew French already, and lived in France for a few years. When I went on vacation to tourist areas, I found I could make sense of most of the Spanish and Italian written informational signs due to the similarities in words. I couldn't make any sense of the German, so that is why I decided to study that language next.

Ha-ha, except for those of us who dislike the world in its present condition enough that we'd prefer to have as little contact with it is possible. I'm not bothering to learn a Category 4 language!

You've probably already mastered it, but as a former math teacher I strongly recommend

This is caricatural, but still there is some truth.
Things are changing, however. Nowadays, almost everyone knows a bit of english. The thing is, we're sometimes not really willing to make the effort to speak it.
But we're trying to improve...

Anyways, for OSK, I would suggest Spanish, Chinese or Russian.
With spanish you can go almost anywhere in South America. Besides, it's very useful in the US (maybe not so much in Kentucky...). China is becoming increasingly important in classical music (and China is such an interesting country). Same for Russian (and you would be able to speak with E. Kissin or B. Berezovsky).

But maybe you should consider first which country you would like to go (musically, cuturally, etc), and then, learn the language of this country, rather than the other way ?

Anyways, for OSK, I would suggest Spanish, Chinese or Russian.
With spanish you can go almost anywhere in South America. Besides, it's very useful in the US (maybe not so much in Kentucky...).

There are some who would say that for many in Kentucky, English is a second language.

German would indeed be very useful. I have studied it for almost three years and I can even understand some of Schubert Lieder. I think it is easy to pronounce, but I don't know about (American) English speakers. Other people have already said enough about the grammar.

The other languages I can speak are Swedish, Finnish (which is my mother language) and Estonian (and English of course).

Swedish is very useful in Scandinavia: it is spoken in Sweden and Finland and the language is closely related to Norwegian and Danish (and more distantly to German).

Finnish is useful mostly in Finland and I've read that it is one of the hardest languages to learn: for example there are lots of suffixes that can be added to generate long words like epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän which are grammatically correct but not used in spoken language for obvious reasons. Anyway, it is a useless language to learn unless you are planning moving to Finland.

Estonian is also a language with few speakers and many of them (at least in Tallinn) understand Finnish (or Russian).

The primary language being Basketball.

Sorry for the misinformation. That's coming from my teacher of Classical Japanese grammar. Maybe the pride of a native speaker shields him from the fact.

Actually I think you're mistaken on the Russian.

When I learned it, to say "I Love You"

It was "Ya Vy Loobloo" or in English I You Love/Like

Here's an aria "Ya Vas Lyubliu" (from Queen of Spades) and another "Ya Lyubliu Vas" (from Eugene Onegin) both from Tchaikovsky! So you can decide which aria you like better (In my tangential mind, all roads lead to opera!)

I was awful at that one, but I picked up Geometrese without much problem.

I took the trouble to learn a bit of French when I visited France on holiday for the first time, and found the French
people remarkably helpful once you start by speaking French (and pronouncing it correctly, not with an obvious English/American accent), even if you then run into difficulties and switch to English. But if you approach a Frenchman (or woman) and ask in English, 'Excuse me, can you speak English?', you'll be given short shrift, whether or not they speak English......

Incidentally, Quebec is also proudly French.

If I was going to learn a new language, it would be Esperanto, because it's the only truly international language, and nobody in any country understands it......

Of course...there is the most rapidly growing ,rather new "language" here in the US (not sure about the rest of the world):

TEXT




UGH.

lolol yeah 4 realz

Sorry to disagree, but Japanese has no conjugation? In fact it has the most ridiculously complicated conjugation of any language I know, probably outstripping German. You can construct nearly an entire sentence with compound verb conjugations. And, to make matters worse, the basic verb is written with Chinese ideogram characters (Kanji) and the conjugation is written with Japanese phonetic characters (Hiragana).

Chinese has has no conjugation, but you have to deal with the Chinese characters and the pitch system. Take your pick.

Since you started this thread on Chinese New Year then you should learn Chinese.

Algebrese is fascinating! Just look at the happy face of someone who has studied it here.

What japanese conjugation do you know?
There are no different forms for singular/plural and different persons, only one for present and past tense, and formal/informal versions.
let's take "do" (infinitive shiru):
shimasu = i,you,he/she/it,we,you,they do
shiru(?) same, informal
shimashita same, past tense
informal, not sure

no future, no different past forms, no conjunctive. anything else? It's about the same for Korean. German is the language with the most ridiculously complex conjugation i know, more exceptions than rules, Umlauts, more individual person forms, extreme variety in conjunctive and simple past word stems, etc.

OSK, did you pick any languages?

And Tararex, I would like to affirm that I've recently met many people who both learned Madarin and Korean as a native english speaker. They've all stated that Korean is impossible for various reasons while Chinese is actually rather easy in comparison. I've also asked some of my polygot friends, and many state that Korean is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn. Writing is much easier in Korean, but everything else seems to be harder. Japanese is very different in this respect. Many have stated it's not nearly as difficult as Korean either.

Orange Soda King:

I've always thought that one of the greatest reasons for studying another language is because people who speak other languages actually think in different ways and have words and expressions in their language that simply can't be translated into English. Somehow after studying their language for awhile, through a process of osmosis almost, you really begin to intuit the meanings of these words and expressions and learn to think the way they do. In a way, I think an exposure to different styles of thinking only serves to broaden and expand our own thought processes.

In the past, I've studied German, Russian, and Mandarin. Of those, I'd rank Russian the most difficult as it has, I think, six cases and gazillions of different endings to learn, and I think something like 75% of its verbs are irregular. I always felt like you had to be born into it to learn it.

Chinese grammar is fairly simple, but learning to read and write it is more daunting, although once you learn some of the common elements that make up many characters, it becomes easier. I took two years of Chinese in college and I think by the end of the first year, we were expected to know about 2,000 characters which is probably about what the average five-year-old in China knows (sigh). As others have mentioned, Mandarin is a tonal language, and it's interesting that in my Chinese class of about fifteen students, there were three folks who were music majors, taking it just for fun. Since you've got some musical background that would probably make it easier for you to learn spoken Chinese. You'll always have plenty of folks to talk to in Chinese, including probably half of the foreign piano students in the U.S.

Good luck in whatever you wind up choosing.

Regards,

John

I read French and German quite well. Speaking and hearing another speak and understanding what is said are more difficult for me. I am not a fluent speaker in either language. The advice, stated above, of having access to people who speak the language you choose is very helpful (especially if they are friends who will allow you to struggle and still maintain a conversation in that language). Living in the US, this is a difficulty I have encountered. Almost everyone I encounter in the US who speaks French or German also speaks English and, since they speak English better than I speak either French or German, the default language becomes English. Since Québec is on the same continent and Canada has a favorable currency exchange rate to the US, I have begun concentrating on French more than German. Therefore, since you live in the US, Spanish (first choice) or French (second choice) would be my inclination. Spanish would be much more practical and easily accessible. Musically speaking, IMHO, German or Italian would be the best choices with French following.

My late wife was Chinese. Unfortunately, her linguistic development was formed by coming to the US when she was 8, being thrust into the English speaking world with no preparation, then returning to Taiwan at age 12 and being thrust back into Chinese, which failed, and she ended up going to Taipei American School. The result was that her "mother" tongue was Mandarin Chinese, but she was more fluent in English. I tried twice, on my own, to learn Mandarin, and failed. One of the reasons I failed is what has been stated above: the characters and, consequently, looking up words in either language. I have been able to reinforce French and German through reading. I could not do that in Chinese. Additionally, my wife could not explain any grammar to me because of her limitations and her vocabulary was also limited. Lastly, I learn better visually than just aurally. Ultimately, I learned to speak some Mandarin. I agree that, for an English speaker, pronunciation is easier because the sounds are similar. However, the four "tones" that are used present another difficulty. Chinese is a practical choice for the future, but, for a person who is accustomed to an alphabetically and phonetically based language, will be more challenging to learn.

What ever language you choose, plan on devoting a good deal of time to it. The returns are well worth the time and effort. Good luck and have fun with it.

apart from Dutch, French, English, German, Italian, I hope to have room in my head to store Russian grammar/vocabulary (horror) and maybe Swahili for the mere fun of it, alas, all that music occupies so much space...

Gotta love those Neerlanders !

Sorry for reviving this thread, but I just finished reading a very inspiring book called How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. I am learning German right now and Farber's method is extremely helpful.

How is your language study going, by the way?

Why do you want to learn many languages? Isn't it better to spend one's time to learn other things. I think that being able to speak two languages is good enough. To me what we say is more important than our ability to say it in different languages.

^ ^ Because he can. He's done well so far.

I still haven't gotten off the ground with a language yet... It's still the middle of the semester. I'm not sure when I can fit time in to study one, because my schedule gets SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO packed so easily...

Because every language has their own flavour and way of thinking. You could also ask: why would you learn or listen to multiple instruments when one instrument (the piano) can say it all? Also, it's fun and interesting, and you also learn other things beside the language.

I've just started Korean which is very fun so far, the alphabet for example looks like a tough nut, but is actually easy!

You raised a good question why we learn or listen to multiple instruments. As a matter of fact, I don't. I do not like to listen to any other instruments or even listen to music. I listen to music just for the purpose of learning how to play it. I listen to get ideas. I think this is totally my personality, with anything. I usually only want one thing. For example watch, I only like one brand, and satisfied with it. I think there is a good and bad side. The good side is that I won't spend my money on many unnecessary things, and the bad thing is that I am missing something. But what will I miss, if I do not even know what I miss.