What language should I learn in order to get out of monolingualism and why

What language should I learn in order to get out of monolingualism and why

Swahili, Frisian, Afrikans.

Spanish out of convenience, french to look and emigrate to Québec, Japanese to fit on Sup Forums.

look fancy*

Spanish, German/French, Russian—in this order.
Then you can learn something non-IE, whatever culture is more interesting for you. Just watch out and don't learn a language without a decent literary tradition.

Spanish is probably the easiest language to learn for native English speakers. Finding conversational partners will be probably pretty easy for you too.

It's really worth it. I've been to Barcelona on last weekend and it's an awesome city. I only liked Berlin better so far.

pick a language that balances difficulty and interest

interest is very important because of the sheer number of hours you will need to spend, especially so since it is your first foreign language

i wouldn't recommend learning a language outisde of the indo-european family for your first, you want it to be related to english it helps a lot

hope that helps

Anime

>interest is very important

exactly, which is why I'm kidna reluctant to learn spanish when other languages interest me more

anyway I'm not uneducated when it comes to grammar though, I've looked at some languages just never committed to learning them.

It's just whenever I think about what I should learn I get stuck in this loop of pros and cons and considerations and I just don't know what to do

Spanish since thats what will be most useful to you in the U.S, Here we learn french

>Frisian, Afrikans.
Might as well just go with Dutch.

Spanish since you will be speaking it sooner or later anyway

I'm just not inspired to learn it
Too commonplace I guess

japanese for the waifus

Learn Spanish if you want it to be easy and useful

Learn Esperanto if you want it to be easy but don't care about useful

Why everyone (including me) is recommending Spanish:

- Obviously, it's very widely spoken, tons of material exists for learners, and you will find it everywhere throughout the US
- Spanish has very regular spelling/pronunciation rules, instead of stupid ones like French, so learning to read/spell will be extremely easy
- Spanish is related to English so you have tons and tons of cognates to give your vocabulary an immediate boost
- Spanish is a Romance language so it will immediately give you a key to all the other Romance languages once you gain some skills in it, because their grammar is almost 100% look same and they too share many cognates

Why I'm recommending Esperanto:

- Because it's designed to be learned quickly and it's fun to learn a language to fluency that fast, but I know not everybody is into it

So basically just pick Spanish. Or Esperanto if you're a madman/want to play on training mode.

Russian. It's pretty difficult, but good for a read

2hard

I will say though, because this is an important point, that the wealth of media and vibrant youth culture in japan is a huge push for wanting to learn it. It's "alive" and has its own thing going on.

But it's just too much, people say they learn it for years with little ability to form sentences without sounding retarded

C++

In that case look for a language that seems fun. Honestly once you commit to anything you will find some way to enjoy it and get useage out of it.

Is there a country you are interested in visiting? Do you like a certain country's films? Is there a place you want to work? Is there a language that you see as a challenge you would like to tackle?

Pick a reason like that, pick a language, and don't spend time weighing if you should proceed or not, just do it. At worst you will have ""wasted"" some time by amusing yourself learning something kind of interesting, at best you will settle into that language and discover a passion through it.

It just bothers me that it's only useful/relevant in this hemisphere
That's a stupid concern I guess, I don't know

Portuguese

Yeah this is what I've been doing, I had actually been looking at [spoiler]latin[/spoiler] because it's just something that I was really able to get into and am fascinated with, but it just seemed like such a long and mostly rewardless road where I could be doing something more "useful" instead, and I don't know why I put useful in quotes there because by objective standards, Latin isn't useful.

2bh I really like the look of the arabic script and am interested in the relationships in culture and history between the west and the middle east, but it just seems to difficult and there's not any sort of wealth of good media to get immersed in.

>OOP

Well, as I said, it will give you a free pass to learning the other Romance languages (although Spanish is the most relevant of all of them tbqhwy, French is second I guess)--and if that doesn't excite you, it will at least give you a really painless understanding of verb inflection. Pretty much any European language you're going to learn is going to use a verb inflection system much more complicated than the one English has, and you will be able to copy-paste the mechanics of it onto any other lang that uses a similar system. If you go with something like Russian, you will not only have to deal with verb inflection but also noun inflection.

You could learn an Asian language, but since you're concerned with usefulness/relevency you're probably going to aim for Mandarin...That's cool I guess.

Spanish so you can read some Gabriel García Márquez and Pablo Neruda in its original language.

I agree with anons. Learn spanish. Memes aside, there are some decent coutries you can visit including spain and it is a good beginnner language to help you learn the romance family.

Well I will tell you what, sitting on your hands trying to decide what is the "best" choice is going to keep you from ever making any progress. There is no best choice. There is no language that is going to provide you with everything that you want. It's pretty much a "focus on the journey, not the destination" sort of thing, plus, YOU are the main agent when it comes to using your language skill for useful things, most stuff isn't just going to fall into your lap for no reason. I have spoken Spanish for years and no huge opportunities have come to me for it, because I haven't sought them. Meanwhile I've had (but not taken) opportunities to make some money and travel with the ''useless'' language Esperanto because I have sought that opportunity.

When it comes to some languages being an entertainment desert...that's just something you have to accept. Most languages are unless you look to their literary traditions. Even the langs that do have alot of modern media to help you with immersion, their media is usually mind numbing garbage (minus a few countries with good film/music industries)

Several months ago I picked a not-super-relevant/useful language almost at random and began to study it pretty hard, now I have a basic conversational ability in that language and can read some simple things. Am I completely wowed and amazed at what this language has opened up for me? Mostly no, although a couple really cool things have happened to me because of it. But does it feel good that I have studied something everyday and now can gradually claim another language as one that I can speak? Yeah feels breddy good. If I keep chipping away at learning this language and others I may one day find the "perfect" choice, and if not, I will have learned alot of interesting stuff anyway.

Oh and this for sure. Spanish has some really good authors, OP.

Yeah, I think it would be way easier to learn french once you know spanish.

Italian and Portuguese on the other hand are very similar to spanish.

How hard would it be for someone on a B2 -C1 level to understand them?

Not hard with a dictionary on hand

That is a pretty decent level. It should be possible to understand, at least, most of the Gabriel Garcia Márquez works.

Pablo Neruda wrote mainly poetry, so I imagine it might be more challenging.

It's called laziness, retard-kun

Russian. Why? Because Fuck You, That's Why.

std::map

Spanish, it is the most obvious choice

You want to learn what is needed not what you feel like

...

French. At least with the French they're on par literary wise with us English.

Hips.

Russian is not worth learning, literally the most useless language ever. He should better learn Spanish, French, German or some Asian language like Japanese or Chinese.

learn Icelandic for the ultimate white language
also for the Norse sagas and mythology

also when Icelandic becomes the new world language you'll regret not starting

Not german, dont want some anime-loser shit up our general.

You already due with austria

What do you like

Another bonus of speaking Esperanto is being able to piss everyone off on Sup Forums.

Klingon would suit you well.

Have you heard a Dutch person speaking? They literally sound like Oompa Loompas. If you wanna acquire Dutch qts Afrikaans is the better choice, to them it sounds hella manly. Butthurt Dutch males will deny this