lojban: “Now my communication will be unfailingly perfect!”
Spanish: “I want to be able to convey my fast food order.” (Reason being you should eat healthy instead.)
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Anonymous2009-08-15 19:58
What is wrong with wanting to do business with China? The prospect of learning something useful to my career has made me way more motivated than I was to learn Spanish.
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Anonymous2009-08-15 23:00
the Australian government paid me to learn Indonesian. I'm looking into getting paid to learn Chinese because it IS a superpower!
The Australian government like to waste money like that too. Rather than getting an Australian Chinese person they would rather pay to train people. I'm cashing in!
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Anonymous2009-08-16 0:52
>>6
Because the "business language" aspect changes often. If you were in the 70s and 80s, people would be saying Japanese was the language of the future. By all means, study something practical, but only if it intersects with your genuine interests.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 5:41
>>1 Japanese: "I like anime and jrpgs!"
Honestly, why not.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 8:44
>>8 true, but I think they're applying the wrong model. The question isn't "what country will be the most economically dominant", but "What languages are USED by the majority of economic powerhouses". The countries will rejigger a bit, Korea may briefly take the lead, or India, or Brazil, but most business decision makers as of right now are at least familiar with English, so English would be the language to learn -- and unless some major shift occurs in the next couple of years, learning English for business purposes is a good idea.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 11:37
Arab: "I'm gonna work for the CIA and kill terrists!"
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Anonymous2009-08-16 13:49
>>9
I agree. Why not?
Someone who likes to read books could want to learn Russian to read some work in its original language, or some untranslated work.
If anything, that seems one of the few valid reasons to learn any language.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 14:33
Good reasons to learn a language?
Oh, just saw >>12. That's precisely why I majored in Russian in college, and now speak it fluently. Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy, fuck yeah!
btw it's one of the main reasons for learning english. lots of people learn it for playing untranslated games, reading english literature etc and then use it for more practical reasons as well
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Anonymous2009-08-16 20:18
Any language: None. Shut the fuck up, OP.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 22:41
Any reason is a good reason to learn a new language.
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Anonymous2009-08-21 17:01
>>15
I think you meant "Lots of people learn it by playing untranslated games".
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Anonymous2009-08-21 21:15
German: I love National Socialism!
Spanish: I'm some retarded teenager who likes the way it sounds!
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Anonymous2009-08-22 3:08
English: Hollywood movies are so much better than my country's movies!
Here's some other languages and bad reasons to learn them...
French: "I want to be gay!" (but only because you should not want to be gay)
Mandarin: "I eat tons of rice, noodles, and am shorter than 5'5" (Actually, pretty good reason... scratch that)
American: "I want to learn the language that drives economies and scientific discovery, culture, etc., around the entire globe" (You are foreign scum. Hands off our language, since you just mess it up.)
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Anonymous2009-08-29 19:34
Finnish: I want to read the Kalevala in the original language!
It's like learning Modern Greek to read Plato.
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Anonymous2009-08-30 8:29
Is learning a dialect(Scottish) for your girlfriend a bad reason? I don't have to, but it sounds pretty sweet anyway.