Post: #1

Decided I should really learn a second language. Trying to decide between French, Spanish or Mandarin. I'm torn between them, looking for some input about which one I should start. One thing to note is that I'm really bad at languages, so I want to take that in to account.

French because I love French women, I think it's a beautiful language. I also studied it for a few years at school, from 8 to 13. I'm twenty three now, so I wouldn't be coming to it totally fresh.

A huge amount of the world speaks Spanish, and I'm moving to California in a few months (work related). Also, I've heard that Spanish is quite an easy language to learn.

Mandarin because of all the obvious reasons.

I'm also open to any other suggestions.

Post: #2

spanish. it aint even close

Post: #3

Definitely Spanish. You're going to be living in a place with a high Hispanic population and you'll be close to Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico. By all means learn French or Mandarin later, but unless you're moving to Quebec or Chinatown in NYC, Spanish makes the most sense. It's also pretty easy to pick up if you're willing to work at it.

Post: #4

Well, man, as a Mexican I'd recommend you to learn to speak Chinese. They are going to be the new Masters of the Universe. I know that America is becoming a miscegenated bilingual country with 50 million Mexicans living in there, but money is money.

Post: #5

Thought I'd chime in since I've got experience with all three of those languages. I haven't used Spanish in a Spanish speaking country yet but I've got Mexico/Colombia on my radar. I've lived in France (Paris) for 5-6 months and China for over a year (Beijing, Shanghai).

All things considered, if you don't plan on operating in and around China in your lifetime and career, I don't think Mandarin is worth it. It takes an immense amount of effort and time to really become proficient in Mandarin. You really have to be committed to the country, culture, and life over there. Furthermore, I think it is very rare that people become proficient, let alone fluent, in Mandarin without going to live and formally study it IN CHINA. It definitely does not sound like you plan on going to work in China, let alone study there, and people who go to China are generally a certain breed of people with a strong level of commitment to being there.

I may be wrong since you did not specify your career goals.

French is arguably the least "important" of all these languages. However, I agree that French is fun to speak and one of the most pleasant sounding languages in the world - even if most of the people speaking it are assholes. You can pick up French and Spanish fairly easily, since they share an alphabet with English and you have an experience with a Romance language. In contrast, Chinese will throw a range of obstacles at you, such as learning how tonal languages work and needing to learn thousands of new characters.

Since you mentioned that you are bad with languages I suggest you try to master one romance language and possibly pick up a few others as you go. I speak solid Spanish and, while living in Paris for 5 months, reached the stage where I could argue with Allianz representatives in French over the phone about my insurance bills. There are several reasons why this happened. First, if you know English or Spanish then you can read French and pick up things based on context. Example - Cinturon means "belt" in Spanish, and when seeing the word "Ceinture" on a seatbelt in France, I figured out that the words were the same.

In China, you would have a much harder time coming to conclusions like that. If you don't know what the character means from memory, or can't come to a conclusion about it based on the "radicals" of the character, you are pretty much screwed.

I'm not sure if all the obvious reasons to learn Mandarin are so obvious, having lived/studied/worked there and struggled with the language myself - and I consider myself to be very strong in language acquisition.

I think you should learn Spanish and re-gain your French.

Post: #6

Youngmobileglobal speaks a lot of sense with his post above. I can't comment on Mandarin, but I gather from the nuances in tonality and the difficulty of learning the grammar and language characters it wouldn't prove fruitful unless you planned to live in China.

I speak German, French, Spanish and Italian on a daily basis at work, as I am fortunate to come into contact with people from all of those nationalities.

I agree with the comment above: " I suggest you try to master one romance language and possibly pick up a few others as you go." I learned French at school and I lived in Spain for a year and my knowledge of French helped immensely. And when I learnt Spanish, Spanish and Italian are basically cousins, so that made it so much easier. For example:

the verb to sleep

Italian: dormire
French: dormir
Spanish: dormir

Not everything is like that but you get the jist!

French has a lexical similarity of 75% with Spanish and 89% with Italian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity. So your French learning at school will help more than you think, and you will be surprised how much it comes back, your brain stores that stuff away for a rainy day.

All in all I would definitely learn Spanish, it opens so many doors, 329million native speakers...no.2 language world wide in terms of how many people speak it natively. There are tones of people who speak Spanish in California and the US...I went to parts of LA and only spoke Spanish...think Miami! It helps with employability prospects and is a generally easy language to learn with little in terms of complex rules. And most importantly think of all of the beautiful Colombian women you can swoon because of it.

My main tips to getting good..learn the basics in a class, meet some people from a Spanish speaking community, or even better get a Spanish speaking girlfriend...or one step further live there...but seeing as you're going to the US. Listen to music, I used to listen to Juanes- easy to listen to and helps with your pronunciation!

watch Spanish speaking films with Spanish subtitles. I'm currently trying to read my Italian and I read http://www.repubblica.it every day, helps so much, so you could read http://www.marca.com if you like sport for example. Good luck, if you want any more advice feel free to PM, even if you are Beeston scum

Post: #7

You won't need to know Spanish in Cali (been here a decade) unless you're providing services to low-income immigrants.

If you want to travel to Latin America, that's another story.

Don't learn Spanish, though, just because you think you'll need it to live in California.

Post: #8

Sammy, you didn't specify why you are learning a language. It mostly sounds like you just want to be bilingual, which is certainly a good enough reason by itself. I wish more Americans could speak foreign languages.

Based on what I'm hearing, you don't have a strong enough reason to commit yourself to Mandarin. However, learning Spanish and/or French will undoubtedly be a much more pleasant experience for you as you enjoy these languages, have a foundation in them, and are motivated by your love of French and possibly Latina women.

If you had started your post with something like "I have a job offer from a private equity firm in Beijing and I am crafting a career as an international financier based in greater China" then there would be no doubt in my mind that you had the means, will, and necessity to learn Mandarin. However, if you started learning Mandarin in the United States with no concrete and specific plans to use it in the near future, I would bet that you would quit fairly shortly.

Don't take that as an attack on your character.

I have been regularly going in and out of China over the past four years for travel, studies, and work - and am nowhere near mastering the characters. The conditions and reasons for me to do so are very clear and yet I still have managed to slack - and I consider myself a highly driven workaholic.

If you want to learn languages for pleasure, travel, women, and the attainment of bilingual proficiency, I think romance languages are the way to go.


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(With all due respect to the Mexican gentleman who posted earlier)

A somewhat related note - Mandarin acquisition does not result in wealth.

For every foreigner who has made money in China, there are at least two horror stories. Your ability to build wealth and be successful in business depends primarily on your business skills - languages are a tool but not the means to success.

There are opportunities abound in the Spanish and English speaking world as well. English is still the international language of business and plenty of people have been successful in cross-border ventures without any knowledge of the local vernacular.

Post: #9

I have to agree with everyone else. Spanish because it is the most beneficial living in the United States and once you master it then the rest of the Romance languages come much easier. Portuguese, french, italian are all very similar and with the spanish background you will learn 10x faster.

Post: #10

YMG has strong points regarding Mandarin and your situation, having said that I would go for Spanish. Would be easier to learn and you have more chance and possibility to actually apply it since you live in America.

Post: #11

Fretdancer, I actually strongly suggested that he not learn Mandarin.

I think Spanish/French acquisition is a much better idea

Post: #12

YMG nails it in his replies.

Side comment not directed at the OP: I remember after 9/11 everyone wanted to learn Arabic and all I could do was laugh because I knew they would quit before they even learned the alphabet...largely because it is so difficult for people who are native Anglo speakers. It was hard for me and I was raised in an environment where we communicated in the language daily. I see Mandarin emerging as a similar interest for people. I don't think it's worth it unless a person will absolutely use it every day and can immerse themselves.

Post: #13

Spanish first, stick with it. Then when u have it down u can easily transition to another romance language (portuguese,italian, french, romanian).

Post: #14

(08-12-2011 12:46 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Fretdancer, I actually strongly suggested that he not learn Mandarin.

I think Spanish/French acquisition is a much better idea

Yes, that was what I was implying.

By the way, YMG are you chinese? I just started to learn mandarin just a month ago and so far its been great, Im loving the language and I've learned around 70 characters already.

Do you have any tips on how to make my learning experience much better? I would appreciate it.

I might return to Taiwan for Master's Degree so thats why I'm learning, also I was dying hard to become trilingual and Mandarin just seems an amazing language, it all fits perfectly for me.

Post: #15

Learn the language of the place that interests you most or that you have a cultural or female preference for. If you are interested in that specific culture, you'll learn the language. Lots of Americans CAN speak Mandarin. Don't do it just for the money.

Do it so you can communicate and understand the culture, its people and best of all it's women.

For instance you may find the nuances of Chinese characters, Arabic or Russian interesting. But i will say that if you suck at languages, that Spanish is definitely the easiest language to learn for an English speaker.

Post: #16

go for spanish dude; it's way easier than mandarin and also easier than french

they say spanish is the language roman soldiers developed who were based in spain; it's pragmatic and straightforward

unless you have an asian fetish of course

Post: #17

Thank you to everyone and especially YMG who posted in this thread. Given me a lot to think about, and I'm going to try and get some proficiency in Spanish.

Post: #18

yea mandarin might be the dark horse pick, china is only gonna get stronger, and knowing mandarin might lead to making more money.
but spanish is number 3 if not 2, especially if you live in the states.