What new language should I learn?

OK, I really want to learn a new language, mainly because I'm fed up of conforming to the steriotype that English people can only speak English and expect everyone else to too. (I guess they have a point ).

But I really don't know which one to learn. I have a GCSE in German, but can't really remember much of it (it was 7 years ago), and I learnt a bit of French.

I do want to take a gap year, travelling round different parts of the world, probably mainly Africa, and I want to go to Peru among many other places. French being useful for North Africa, and Spanish for South America. My friend is learning Spanish, which could be slightly useful, but she lives a long way away so I don't see her very often...

Alternatively I could try to learn an African language, which doesn't have very wide useage but would be fun and quite random. I tried learning Swahili for a while...

I'm determined to do it properly this time, and I'm looking into adult education courses, but I can't decide which language.

Any ideas?!

you can never speak too many languages.

Why learn only one?

I go for option seven: all of the above

As much as I would like to learn all of them, I have other stuff to do. I might learn another one after, but I need to concentrate on just one at a time! :P

After learning one, another one will be easier to learn.

I would then choose spanish.

I reckon it's the easiest. plus french speakers are able to understand a bit of spanish, because of the similarities.

German is a good language to learn for travel in continental europe.

Well, I'd say Learn Finnish, Norwegian, or Turkish but those have no relevance to you lol.

Although, German is also a favourite language of mine.

German.

You already know some of it, and its a cool language.

I would say french as the alaphabet is not that differant to spainish and french is a handy languade to be able to speak

Chinese.

Language of the future, innit

My vote goes towards Esperanto. Whats cooler then that?

I'm having fun with japanese. Been learning for a little over a year. Plus I enjoy learning Kanji.

The problem with being a native english speaker is which language do you choose? What other major language will come in as handy as english? It can be a motivation killer sometimes.

I say either Thai, Khmer or Vietnamese just for fun, or Spanish or French if you want something more practical.

I'd say french to be practical as well...

I'm learning Sign Language in a few months for school!

Umm.. practically, improving your French or starting Spanish would likely be the most useful, but...

WELSH!

dont bother with Italian... its a dirty foul mouthed language when your fluent.

Spanish opens up a large chunk of Sth America. Also - its atonal, like english - unlike some Asian languages - which makes them much harder to learn. I think Mandarin would be useful, however only if you are traveling in China.

I've learnt Japanese since Primary School and Romanian while living there.

When I started university I was going to study two languages and since Romanian isn't taught anywhere, it was Japanese and something.

I decided to look at what is the most useful in the scheme of things. I figured for employability that a UN language would be a smart choice, then I also considered countries where languages were spoken and the number of these countries. I narrowed it down to French and Spanish so I took both in first year. And well, after a year of doing French, there was no doubt in my mind that Spanish it was!!

Personally I wouldn't learn Chinese. Unless you are a native speaker or have been exposed to that language you will never sound like a native speaker (because it's tonal), unlike a European language where hard work can lead you to native-like competency. Oh, and I have enough characters in Japanese to *&^% me up a wall, I didn't want any more to learn!

But after saying all that; if you already have some German, I'd think furthering that would be a good idea

Spanish... mainly on the grounds that I found it easy to learn! I did French and Spanish up to GCSE level, that was years ago now, I have Spanish and French family but I find I have remembered more Spanish and find it easier to understand, even without studying, than French. But hey, everyone is probably different when it comes to what we find easy! Spanish is very sexy too.

Japanese basic grammar is easy as. Japanese just gets hard when you move into the nuances

That's true. I'm only just starting to get to that stuff.
I think the bit I like best is when speaking in conversation, sentences assume the context stays the same. Somehow it makes it feel tidier.

Actually, I heard it's desirable to keep your sentences as short as possible, even as short as 1 word.

why study a live language...?

I studied Old English at uni...

Latin's another one that could be fun - no real rules on pronunciation!

i'm doing Old English at the moment! :loc:

Try Cockney

Seriously I think it's a nice approach. Whilst Spanish (more than) French will give you access to roman languages and you will be able to get around in South America, German might just give you a headache and not get you anywhere

Think of what and where you want to use it for.

Is it just personal use for fun, or do you want to open up (business) oportunities... if the latter, I would suggest Mandarin, Hindi or Japponaise...

To me, all (foreign) languages sound nice - and the less I understand the better. If I am sitting in a cafe next to French talking rubbish, I can completely ignore it and indulge on the sounds - if the same happens with some German speaking, I have to make an effort.

Warning: if you learn Japanese, "Lost in Translation" stops being a good movie (or never was a good movie if you learnt Japanese before the movie came out!)

Y'know... if you want to go for obscure and interesting over useful, there are quite a few cool and random languages out there.

Have a look at these...

* Kernewek
* Olelo Hawai'i
* Romansh
* !Xóõ

I was going to learn some Kernewek myself. It's kind of where I'm from, n all.

Te Reo Māori, everyone should know some.

Sorry, there's probably a limit of one silly answer per person, but I wanna learn both my suggestions!

The Welsh due to the habit in remote areas of wales of the locals to switch the conversation into welsh (even though you could hear them talking English from outside) when a 'foreigner' walks into the room..

!Xóõ would be almost impossible to learn for someone who wasn't brought up in that language (for the same reason as Chinese, although more phonemes)

And I thought Cornish was extinct? Which is sad, really; so many of the languages of the British Isles dying. I'd love to learn them if I were from there!

I want to learn Hungarian (it's my heritage, I should know it!)

My brother is learning Arabic and Hebrew atm

If Cornish is extinct, where do the Cornish pasties come from??

I'm learning German at the moment, although I eventually plan to also learn a Romance language or two and a bit of Lithuanian (my heritage) and even maybe Hebrew (also heritage)

The advice I was given was that if you're going to do more than one language at once was to not do it from the same language family, because it'll confuse you

and George... Pasties? scandalous...