Easy language to learn

[Frosted]

I'm still learning American

[chainsnuser]

In the German dubbed version of that movie the guy speaks Bavarian.

Cheers!

[squeezyjohn]

In answer to the original question - if you are a native English speaker then French, Spanish, Italian and all the modern latin european languages are fairly useful and fairly easy. The words are very different to english ones in these languages - but the grammar is very similar so you don't have to learn how to plan the grammar of a sentence with French like you do with say German. I'm afraid I can't advise on Russian, Japanese and the Chinese languages which are probably the most useful.

As for me, I already speak French and German with a smattering of Welsh and holiday Spanish. I'm currently enjoying learning a most useless language, Dutch. I only say useless because I have yet to meet a Dutchman who doesn't already speak amazing English!

Cheers

Squeezy

[squeezyjohn]

I have to say that I would love to try Arabic next. Not that I think I have any real for it. It's just that there are lots of people in my day to day life around me who are speaking it and I'd love to know what they're saying about me!

That's why I learnt Welsh.

Cheers

Squeezy

[Crow]

Excellent find, Yfir!

[Skell18]

In the German dubbed version of that movie the guy speaks Bavarian.

Cheers!

When I learnt German I learnt koelsch as they guy was from Cologne.

[blotgode]

Roo wrote: "I can't think of the last time I met a Swede on the street, or anywhere else for that matter."

Haha, reminds of when i visited Tyler,TX a couple of years ago, ordered a coffe at Starbucks, and the clerk asked me about my name (to write on my order), I told him my name, and he said: you´re not from Texas, where do you come from? I said Sweden..
and he looked at me with big eyes and said: and what the F**K are you doing here.....

[Mdisch]

So to follow up on a few things here ; Icelandic is the only living language which resembles Old Norse; Norwegian, Danish and Swedish no longer remind even the slightest of it.
Also, all of the above languages are difficult and pretty much useless unless you live in the countries.

German is a quite simple language (though I failed it), and so is Spanish - and both are a lot more useful.
Russian is also quite handy IF you go the baltics or Russia, but people rarely go there for various reasons.

I think that for someone in the US Spanish would be the most useful language, or you can learn French and use it to pick up chicks in any country apart from France.

[Crow]

Roo wrote: "I can't think of the last time I met a Swede on the street, or anywhere else for that matter."

That's because you're not looking in the right places............ Try going to Ballard.

You might need a good eye though..... A lot of them are stealth Swedes..!

[Crow]

So to follow up on a few things here ; Icelandic is the only living language which resembles Old Norse; Norwegian, Danish and Swedish no longer remind even the slightest of it.
Also, all of the above languages are difficult and pretty much useless unless you live in the countries.

It won't be useless when the vikings take over the world, after WWIII...

Might as well start learning Icelandic now!

[Jan]

So to follow up on a few things here ; Icelandic is the only living language which resembles Old Norse; Norwegian, Danish and Swedish no longer remind even the slightest of it.
Also, all of the above languages are difficult and pretty much useless unless you live in the countries.

In my experience these languages may not be all that useless. When I was was doing my snus shopping in Stockholm I went to an immigrant run tobacco store and was quite surprised to find that they speak hardly any English. I was even more surprised to find that I still have quite a good command of Swedish (was learning the language 15 years ago while working in Sweden).

[PipenSnus]

Spoken Mandarin Chinese is not very difficult, as the grammar is very easy -- almost like baby talk. There are two downsides for native English speakers, however: (1) written Chinese is hard to master, with over 8,000 characters in common usage; (2) you have to learn to hear and speak the four tones, as well as learning the sounds that don't exist in English. You should expect to spend 6-8 weeks of intensive study in a language lab to get a grasp of the latter.

[Jan]

Spoken Mandarin Chinese is not very difficult, as the grammar is very easy -- almost like baby talk. There are two downsides for native English speakers, however: (1) written Chinese is hard to master, with over 8,000 characters in common usage; (2) you have to learn to hear and speak the four tones, as well as learning the sounds that don't exist in English. You should expect to spend 6-8 weeks of intensive study in a language lab to get a grasp of the latter.

I admire people who have the brains to learn a language as different to any European language as Mandarin (or Japanese). I have no doubt though that the knowledge of Chinese would help tremendously to get a well paid job, no matter in what state of economy.