Next year I'm going to be doing an arts course and I was thinking of doing a major in two different languages- Chinese(mandarin) and Arabic.
Is this a good idea? I remember reading somewhere that learning arabic is pointless because the dialects between countries varies so much that even learning the standard language tends to be useless. Is this true?
Also, would having knowledge of japanese help in learning chinese? I learnt Japanese throughout primary and highschool and was wondering if having knowledge of kanji could aid in learning chinese at all.
The university I plan on going to also offers Indonesian and Italian. Would either of those be worth learning at all?
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Anonymous2010-01-14 22:59
learn mexican
or ching chang because there be a couple trillion of those fuckers
or learn to speak nigger
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Anonymous2010-01-14 23:10
second
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Anonymous2010-01-15 2:50
why switch from japanese to chinese?
and yeah having a background in asian language like japanese will help with chinese.
as for arabic i say fuck that learn indian/hindi/urdu instead.
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Anonymous2010-01-15 3:07
>>4
I'm switching because they don't offer Japanese at the university I'll end up going to and also because I think mandarin will be more useful if I do end up becoming a translator or interperator like I've been hoping to do.
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Anonymous2010-01-15 3:49
Is this a good idea? I remember reading somewhere that learning arabic is pointless because the dialects between countries varies so much that even learning the standard language tends to be useless. Is this true?
China is exactly the same, but China is communist, and Arabic countries not. Roughly both peoples speak the standard language to some extent (arabs - standard arabic, chinese - standard mandarin), so you shouldn't bother.
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Anonymous2010-01-15 14:31
>>6
But nobody speaks standard arabic in real life, while the majority of chinese has standard chinese(mandarin) as their mother tongue
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Anonymous2010-01-15 15:45
>>7 But nobody speaks standard arabic in real life
I dunno then, as for me standard arabic is fully sufficient whatever arabic country I go to. while the majority of chinese has standard chinese(mandarin) as their mother tongue
That's one example of communist propaganda. They don't want China dissolved, ain't them.
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Anonymous2010-01-18 23:32
Are these good languages to learn?
I thought this would be obvious, but pick a language with a culture that you're interested in, so you have a reason to learn it (want to bang the chicks in some country, want to read animu, or some other bullshit reason).
What is a "good" or "useful" language depends on your interests and what you want to do with the language. A language with 1 billion speakers can be useless to you if you never expose yourself to that langauge.
Learning standard arabic will help you learn the different colloquial dialects which use very different words and slightly different grammar.
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Anonymous2010-01-28 14:09
It's true that no one speaks standard Arabic in real life because they all have their own dialect. However, anyone you run into in the middle east that speaks Arabic will understand you if you speak the standard version. It's like running into someone who speaks broken English, but well enough to be understood. I know it's not the best example, but it's the only one I can think of right now. But yeah, it all depends on your interests OP.
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Anonymous2010-01-28 14:56
If you plan on learning an Indo-European language I recommend you learn Esperanto first. Esperanto is the easiest complete language ever created and studies have shown that Esperanto learners learn Indo-European languages much quicker. Two languages for the price of 1.