What language should I learn next?

I already speak English, Polish, and Portuguese. I'm looking to learn a fourth language but I'm not sure what I should pick up. Any suggestions lads?

An Uralic or Altaic language

Something useful like Spanish, Russian, or Chinese.

that would really just tie up my collection of useless languages nicely, wouldnt it?

Learn french and obviously spanish. You live in the US. Learn a useful language.

>Any suggestions lads?
Catalan. It's really easy and fun and beautiful. Piece of cake if you already speak Portuguese.

Also Catalonia will be independent next year. Plenty of opportunities will rain down in the coming years, and Catalan is your key to open those boxes.

Apren el català, és molt bell i divertit.

something not found in yurop

Learn an academic language. you already know English. Learn French, German, Latin, or Greek

off urself, my man, its time to leave the gig

Well fuck it's a matter of personal taste innit. I'll give you my own linguistic autisms in case they pique your interest.

Spanish is a 10/10 language that should be very easy for you after Portuguese (learn the 1488 Continental dialect though, seseo genocidio mejor dia de mi vida).

Bulgarian is the what-the-fuck black sheep of the Slavic branch that also sounds really cool, the weirdness is exemplified in, but not limited to: evidentiality, postpositive articles (no other Slav language has them), no case system (again, one of a kind in this), very archaic vocabulary compared to most other Slav languages, ъ, no infinitives, and other stuff.

Modern Greek sounds 5/5 too, and it's even weirder than Bulgarian. No tenses (perfective and imperfective aspects etc. replaced it), fuck-you verb conjugations (literally every second one or so is irregular), this baffling thing they have instead of the Ancient Greek optative, subjunctive and conditional, no infinitives again, mediopassive voice... learning it, now that'd be a fun ride.

Basque, absolutely fucking extraterrestrial, nothing whatsoever in common with Indo-European languages, is ergative, has seven gorillion cases, genitive constructions like in Arabic or Hebrew, unmarked number, generally just mind bogglingly complex. You'll never become fluent, Basques will switch to Spanish as soon as you try to say something in Basque, there's really not that many textbooks in existence and even less movies, music and literature in it which makes immersion hard as all fuck. But you won't back down from a challenge, will you?

Georgian. Another isolate, designed to be completely impossible to pronounce for foreigners, ergative, as synthetic as a pair of cheap socks, 11/10 sound, more verb forms than atoms in the universe, impossible to memorize agglutinative shit... Trust me, impossible, but trying is fun.

Why did you learn Portuguese and how hard was it?

Met a girl from Brazil and decided why not. The hardest part was understanding what the fuck they were saying. The actual language isn't very difficult. A lot of slang and phrases not very literal whatsoever
Wow this was quite the analysis thanks

Not him, but
1) why not? "usefulness" is the shittest possible criterion for selecting a language to learn
2) it's pretty what-the-fuck compared to other Romance languages, somewhat harder than Spanish but definitely easier than French anyway. It depends on the person in a gigantic way, but if he has any linguistic ability at all, an Anglo would learn be conversational in about 6 months to one year I'd say.

I have a huge interest in learning EU-PT and would really like to snatch a Brazilian wife or something heheh. I took Spanish for 4 years in high school and have a good background for learning PT already. I just can't decide if I want to learn PT or relearn Spanish (I live in Texas)

I'd say start with Spanish, then move onto Portuguese. It's mostly the same shit with minor grammatical, syntactical and lexical differences you have to get used to, plus a very different pronunciation (to be honest the Brazilian version would be much, much easier for you as an Anglo, continental phonetics is a fucking nightmare).

I've been exposed to both and I prefer continental European Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese sounds like slurred Spanish, whereas European has a bit of a more Slavic undertone. I do know European Portuguese speakers just decide to stop pronouncing some vowels in some words.

>Portuguese
>slavic undertone
Burger, you completely lost your mind

Every fucking non-Slav says that, relax m8

Whatever man idk if I'm learning Portuguese or spanish still lol so idc. I think EU-PT sounds slightly Slavic and sexy but Spanish would probably serve me best in Texas

Deutsch is quiet fun, is intimidating at first, but when you learn that Germans don't speak German that well that's where you find yourself in a sweet spot, where you learn by constantly fucking up.

There is one thing I was wondering for a long time. How hard is for everyone to understand older texts in their native language? For example, can Americans/British read The Canterbury Tales in original form? Do Spanish/Latin Americans understand Cervantes? Are French able to read Rousseau nowadays? Is Confucius understandable to modern Chinese? Could average Japanese possibly read 平家物語?

>can Americans/British read The Canterbury Tales in original form

Not really.

>Do Spanish/Latin Americans understand Cervantes

I understand most of it well enough, so smart money's on they do too.

>Is Confucius understandable to modern Chinese

Lmao fuck no

The other two, no idea

>For example, can Americans/British read The Canterbury Tales in original form?
They cant read Shakespear in orginal.

Mandarin desu

pleb, cheap taste. dégage.

Whatever you chose make sure it has enough resources and isn't in the same family of languages you already know.

I would recommend to learn Chinese. hard to learn, but pretty useful.
>language of one of the oldest civilizations of the world
>language of the second biggest economy
>language of 1.2 billion people
some complain about hieroglyphic writing, but they actually make sense, when you get used to it
probably hardest part is tonality of the language itself

wew, didn't expect to find my language in the thread

Bom, parece que você já fala uma língua relevante (Inglês), uma com conjugações verbais e gêneros (Português) e uma com casos (Polonês).

Procure idiomas que contêm algo que você não aprendeu ainda.
Pictogramas? Mandarim ou Japonês.
Medroso demais pra isso? Tente outro alfabeto - Árabe, Hindi, Coreano, Tailandês...

Mandarim, aliás, é uma língua tonal - outra característica ainda inexplorada por você.

Você poderia tentar aprender Islandês para aprender mais sobre o purismo linguístico aplicado no país, ou aprender - novamente - o Árabe para entender como funciona o sistema deles, onde a escrita é igual para todos os países, mas a língua falada difere radicalmente.

Alemão, pelo pouco que sei, tem um sistema itneressante de sufixos e afixos, o que gera palavras extremamente longas e intimidadoras - talvez seja algo divertido, e você já tem o bônus de saber uma língua germânica nativamente.

Mas eu evitaria aprender línguas muito próximas - não é muito desafiador e não traz tanto aprendizado assim.

Let's see. Russian because you already know Polish. Russian is very valuable. Spanish because you already know most of it.
If you want a challenge, try Hungarian.

Latin or Ancient Greek, the only true languages, had Latin at school myself for eight years and it feels great to be educated

>learning any other language besides english

Do you speak бeлapycкaя мoвa?

>he learns languages for practical reasons
lmao, since you are so practical why are you here in Sup Forums :DDD

Yes
I don't learn anything because english is enough for me

Do you ever see any Americans there? Always wanted to visit Minsk.

EXCELLENT post

Only once when we hosted world hockey championship, you are welcome if you want to come

Thanks mr kiwi

Belarus has an amazing flag.

I will be in Moscow for a few weeks in January. I may take the train.
desu m8. I like your pre-1994 flag better than the present.

Looks like a fucking carpet desu
Ok м8

The present flag is a joke. I don't even consider it "my" flag.
An aesthetic carpet. It's better than the euro flags which are usually three fucking lines

>not educating oneself and learning how to pick up qts from less developed cunts
inb4 muh underdeveloped cunts

You won't last long enough to learn and master a language solely for muh qts

Korean, it's so fun to learn, alphabet is easy as fuck, abundance of media to immerse yourself in. Quite a lot of learning material online too. I recommend howtostudykorean.com if you choose to learn it.

>but when you learn that Germans don't speak German
What does that mean?

>Ese sentimiento cuando puedo entender todo lo que dijiste

I'm just intermediate in Spanish and I could understand all that too. Maybe I should spend a few months on Portuguese and get a language for free

They say that immersion is the quickest way to learn a language, so go for it user and enjoy the journey. I want to go to Spain or Argentina.

misread that. you said on, not in a portugese country. sorry. still.

Isn't that neat? That's why Portuguese speakers have no problem with Spanish, it's a bonus language to us.

To Britbro - go for it. 3 months of French made me already conversational at it, because it's basically a mix of English and Portuguese.

Since I've been studying Japanese, French is a very easy language to give me some instant gratification while I struggle/grind through Nippongo.

opps read that wrong.
are the idioms and the grammar the same?

It's kind of like Russian to me. I'm speak Bulgarian and while they're more different than Spanish & Portuguese, learning just a few words increased my understanding a ton.

Brazilian Portuguese is hnng

L E R N U

>are the idioms and the grammar the same?
Conjugation-wise, there is a LOT of similarity between all Romance languages - thanks to that I have an innate feeling for new verbs when studying French, for instance.

Other than that it's not so clear-cut. Spanish grammar looks more like Italian, in my opinion.

>Brazilian Portuguese is hnng
In a good sense? I hope it is, Portugal's Portuguese got too bastardized by Castellaño in the last centuries, we speak a purer variety.

you guys guys have to say the pronouns, dont you, like in french?

>like in french
Nope. And compared to English, we are even more independent from pronouns, as the verb conjugation already implies the subject of a sentence. "Comprei escravos" - comprar + past + 1st person indicator.

In French not only you seem to have to put pronouns everywhere, you can't isolate stuff and say "thing", it's always "the thing" (or "of thing" if it's uncountable).

>implying it's not true
Whenever Portuguese is on the TV, my mind always freezes for a moment because I can't figure out what dialect is spoken before I realise it's Portuguese

To be fair, a lot of Sup Forums people has said I seem to have a "Russian accent" when I try to speak their languages. Cunts that said so:
Japan, USA, UK, Finland, France, Bulgaria.

But I see why PT-PT would be regarded as "more slavic", they are pretty nasal and talk with their mouth shut, in a lower pitch than PT-BR.

Portuguese speakers from Brazil have a very Slavic accent when speaking English. Brazilian Portuguese sounds like Spanish with a Russian accent so maybe that's why.

Bulgarian here btw

i think we should have a party for everyone of us who speak tiny retarded languages

As other people have said in the thread, if you already speak good Portuguese then you can pick up Spanish easily. I learned Spanish in about 3 months only with a conversation-level French, and I speak fairly fluently now (although I still have a thick Danish accent)

dunno if you had the same revelation but when I got really good at Spanish and understood the finer points of the grammar I sort of realized how stupid many other languages are including my own and English, so that sort of inspires me to improve my French / start Italian or Portuguese

>I sort of realized how stupid many other languages are
Elaborate.

>Polish and Portuguese
That's quite random

Just as in how it's systematically built up in it's grammar. I feel like past tenses in both English and Danish weird, while in Spanish it makes more sense.

Latin, m8

Ah, I see, because the system relies more on multiple categories/endings instead of auxiliary verbs.

But Romance languages have been taking the easy route and recurring to auxiliary verbs lately.

Simple Past in French is almost exclusively literary, being "ai fait" the standard way of saying it now.
As well as the Spanish "he comprado".

In Portuguese our past tense is well and strong, but our Future tense has been in jeopardy because of auxiliary verbs. Just like in English you say "I will do it", Brazilians have been saying "Eu vou fazer" instead of "Eu farei".

I wonder if that's to do with it being naturally easier or if that's a consequence of English pervasion.

Dunno, when I learned about the "he comprado" system, I pretty much started exclusively using that because I thought the "compré, compraste, compró" etc system was too hard to remember each time.

Turns out that you don't use it in the same way as in English, and it needs to be connected to the present somehow. Apparently it's often used in Spain but in the countries that I have connections to they usually don't use that verb form very much

>I already speak English, Polish, and Portuguese
Mytho