what language to take at college?

[LazyHermitCrab]

I've been avoiding taking a language at college, but I have to or I won't graduate. I took French wayyyy back in high school and the teacher made me feel so awkward (good ole memories). I was thinking of taking Chinese, because I think my handwriting is good and I know how to say hi and write "man." Lol. I wish there was an online class, but no because it's necessary to be embarrassed apparently. I gotta get to the intermediate level. Is this an okay idea to take as a language? Did you take a language before? How did you get through it?

 

[BlackPuma]

You should try and figure out which language is commonly used throughout the world. English in itself will get you pretty far I've noticed, but I believe there's a few exceptions in certain countries. If you're going to learn a new language you might as well pick on that is going to be most useful, right?

Something along the lines Chinese, Japanese, French, Hindi, German or Spanish is what I personally would go for.

 

[LazyHermitCrab]

You should try and figure out which language is commonly used throughout the world. English in itself will get you pretty far I've noticed, but I believe there's a few exceptions in certain countries. If you're going to learn a new language you might as well pick on that is going to be most useful, right?

Something along the lines Chinese, Japanese, French, Hindi, German or Spanish is what I personally would go for.

I'm an English major in the United States, so have English covered . I guess i'll go with Chinese. Thanks for answering.

 

[squidgee]

I would probably take French since you've already learnt some of it before but it's your choice. I'm currently learning Chinese SL for my VCE and its a pretty difficult subject. Lots of radicals and characters to memorise. For me, it's also hard because there's a great deal of competition, but again it's your choice. Just do what you feel is most interesting and useful.

 

[Diend]

Pick a language you are passionate about. You will learn it faster. Chinese is hard because there is no alphabet. Each character has to be memorized. Although my parents won't admit it, but Chinese as a written language is not as efficient as other languages. I am a Chinese-American with Chinese immigrant parents.

 

[Esperance]

What's your favorite country or culture ? I think you should choose the language because of that. I'm french but I get better with english because I spent time reading or watching english or american stuff, without the passion, I was one of the worst of the class^^

 

[Flanscho]

Depends on the reason why you want to pick it up.

Just for the fun? Any.
Science? Latin or German.
To help you with your career: Chinese / Japanese / German
Because you love literature? German.

It also depends on what you're best as. If you learn Chinese or Japanese, you have to be great in memorizing the characters. It adds a whole new difficulty to learning the language, compared to, say, learning Swedish. The latter one requires you to learn the grammar and have a decent vocabulary, but you already know the characters.

I speak English, German, average French, and know the basics of Swedish and Japanese.

 

[Lea]

I would first think about how much I will use it in practice. What use is to learn some language to which country you never go, for example. Or which you won´t use much practicaly in any way.

 

[Nanita]

I´d say choose a language you find interesting/beautiful/funny. (Well that is what I´d say about any choice: choose whatever feels interesting and fun...) You could also choose whatever seems the easiest I guess.
I studied spanish in high school & college, and that was very easy for me to learn, I found the grammar and the pronunciation pretty easy. I also studied german language for several years and even though my own language is kinda similar to german, the grammar was just killing me.

 

[ForeverTheWeirdKid]

Hopefully your instructor doesn't tell you how bad your handwriting is every class.

 

[jaim38]

I took French in high school for several years and I have one thing to say: unless you speak French at home, it's a hard language to master. I passed the classes with flying colors (because the instructor grades easy) but bombed the AP tests, twice. The only people in my class who did well on the AP tests were the girls who had at least 1 French parent and naturally spoke French at home.

If you want to learn an easy language, you can always go for Japanese. Many people say it's easy to learn, and if you're an anime fan, it's a plus.

 

[NamiraWilhelm]

Latin is great fun (no srsly, I actually love it).

 

[xDreamseller]

Latin is great fun (no srsly, I actually love it).

I got to learn latin at school. I thought it was really easy, as a lot of the words are very close to english anyway. It was one of the forced subjects at our grammar school for the first year, at age 11. But I kept it on until 15 out of choice. Plus, the history you learn at the same time is great. Sadly it's not very useful in 99% of careers ;(

"Meus canis ate meus homework" My dog ate my homework many a times...at least that's what I told my teacher. The great thing about it, is the words translate word for word with the same structure a lot of the time.

If you're looking for something other than latin, which I am assuming you are...go for something you enjoy or find easy. Passing your course with the best mark you can get is the main goal, you might as well make it as easy as possible to achieve. Chinese would be very useful, but it is also greatly different from English. Spanish on the other hand, you can at least attempt to pronounce as it shares the same alphabet and a lot of history with English. Plus, depending on where you live, there may be a large population of Spanish speakers.

 

[NamiraWilhelm]

I got to learn latin at school. I thought it was really easy, as a lot of the words are very close to english anyway. It was one of the forced subjects at our grammar school for the first year, at age 11. But I kept it on until 15 out of choice. Plus, the history you learn at the same time is great. Sadly it's not very useful in 99% of careers ;(

"Meus canis ate meus homework" My dog ate my homework many a times...at least that's what I told my teacher. The great thing about it, is the words translate word for word with the same structure a lot of the time.

You're very lucky, my school didn't offer it. Turkish, Urdu, Russian, Hindi, all sorts but no latin... I'm trying to self teach, I wouldn't say I find it as easy as you did but I definitely enjoy it. I love the idea of reading latin directly rather than relying on translations, either in books or in ruins themselves. I'm also a great lover of etymology and i love encountering root words myself

Dead languages are the only type that really interest me, perfectly sums up what a sociable creature I am.

 

[Esperance]

Damn, I wished I could have the same school that you. For me, that was simple. You had to learn english and you could choose if you wanted to learn Spanish at the beginning of High School or two years later.
I'm going to think that USA Education looks as great as on TV^^

 

[xDreamseller]

You're very lucky, my school didn't offer it. Turkish, Urdu, Russian, Hindi, all sorts but no latin... I'm trying to self teach, I wouldn't say I find it as easy as you did but I definitely enjoy it. I love the idea of reading latin directly rather than relying on translations, either in books or in ruins themselves. I'm also a great lover of etymology and i love encountering root words myself

Dead languages are the only type that really interest me, perfectly sums up what a sociable creature I am.

Dead languages are indeed much more fun to learn, as there is all the history that goes along with it, which you can aspire to read and understand. Latin is probably one of the best for this, as it is well understood and there is more history than you couple possibly hope to learn about. Although maybe I'm just biased because I think that the Romans were one of the greatest nations in history.

Dammit...re-reading the book, I really want to start learning Latin again..
If you want to learn some, you can use the same textbook we had, it seems to be all online with some really good resources now. (I just googled the book, not sure how much is available online for free etc, but learning from reading a book was a nice way to learn a language, instead of how French was taught at our school which was more about just learning words and grammar from a dictionary)

Textbook Resources

Click on explore the story and you can read it and click on any word and it will give you the translation. If I remember correctly the story is about Caeilius, a banker in Pompeii just because the eruption and his family plus his dog. The story goes beyond the eruption, which his son I believe survives and then the story follows him.

 

[NamiraWilhelm]

Dead languages are indeed much more fun to learn, as there is all the history that goes along with it, which you can aspire to read and understand. Latin is probably one of the best for this, as it is well understood and there is more history than you couple possibly hope to learn about. Although maybe I'm just biased because I think that the Romans were one of the greatest nations in history.

Visiting Rome is part of what made me start to self teach; I've decided it'll be lovely to read the inscriptions etc. by myself the next time I go! After that I think I'll move onto Old English ^.^
Of course another wonderful thing about learning latin is how easy it is to understand its descendants, maybe I'll look into the romance languages too.

 

[LazyHermitCrab]

Is there a language where people can just sit and not participate in front of people? Haha.

 

[xDreamseller]

Latin doesn't have an oral exam or any actual speaking of it. At least not when I was learning it. The exams were more like an English comprehension test, along with a translation of a given text.

No speaking, performing etc. Although at university level it might be different. Maybe join up with the drama majors and do a fully Latin play. (That would be awesome to go and watch if you understood it all)

 

[coyote]

Persone, mi opinias ke vi devus serĉi en Esperanton. Ĝi estas la internacia lingvo de internaciismo, kompreneble.