

Ask HN: Best second language to learn? - mpg33

English is my native language, but what would be the best/most valuable second language to learn?  Also what would be the easiest language to learn for english speakers?<p>What are the best resources to learn languages?
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CPops
Speaking multiple languages is a great thing, but if you already speak
English, maybe you ought to consider if its worth your time if you don't have
a clear goal in mind.

Do you want to learn a new language for the sake of knowledge? To travel the
world? For business?

I would figure that out first and then make a choice on what to do.

~~~
inspiredworlds
I'd tend to agree with CPops. If you have a reason to learn it will motivate
you. If you have clients in that country or if you are intending to travel to
a place, it will give you incentive to learn.

I might be a bit biased, but I'd go with Mandarin Chinese! A lot of people
speak this language :)

I'm also the founder of a company called Native Tongue which creates
vocabulary apps. It's one of the most simple ways to learn and fun to, so I'd
invite you to try out our apps. Go to nativetongue.com and check out our
mobile apps. If you have any questions, email me on hello at nativetongue dot
com.

Thanks,

Matt

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davesmylie
It will be hard to learn a language without the motivation of needing (or
wanting) it for a specific goal.

I'm currently learning spanish with the aim of it being useful when I take my
family on a extended tour around south america sometime in 2014 or 2015. I
don't expect to be fluent by then, but hopefully am able to learn enough to
get by. (I spent time in France last year, having not made the effort to learn
any french - not an experience I would recommend!)

For actual tools, I'm currently using Anki (specifically ankidroid). This is
just a brute force tool for rapidly increasing vocabulary (similar to
supermemo) but free. Previously I have tried Rosetta stone, but although easy,
I found it to be an incredibly slow way of making progress.

Take what I say with a grain of salt though - I'm still only learning so I'm
far from an expert in this area =)

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luxpir
CPops is right. What is the end goal? I found Swedish easier to learn than
French; (more) simple grammar, very similar to English in many ways.
Tolkien/saga-style English, at least. Ties to northern British traditional
slang and place names of interest also. But I earn the majority of my living
from French.

stevenbrianhall - I'm no fan of Duolingo. I wanted it to work well, but it let
me down. The voice rec is a gimmick, the material doesn't seem to be able to
take you very far. Also, as a translator I find the idea of relying on
crowdsourced translation too great a risk.

For anyone interested in language learning techniques and startups, would you
happen to know how to legally protect an audio-only teaching method? I presume
it would fall under the legal area of copyright, but the technique I'm
developing would be easily copied. Do I need to just bite the bullet and trust
in copyright law?

I'm not normally jumpy about IP but I would like a few years to try to market
this one as my own.

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damian2000
It depends where you live and what you are hoping to use it for? E.g. if you
do business in Asia, then Mandarin chinese would be the most valuable.
Personally I like Italian/French/Spanish/Portuguese since they are reasonably
easy to learn.

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szhorvat
If you choose to learn a new language, I'd suggest to do it for the joy of
learning and discovering something new. The fact that you ask which one is the
most valuable shows that you don't feel you need another language for any
practical purpose. Don't look for the easiest or "most valuable" (whatever
that might mean). Look for one you'd enjoy.

You can check out some online language learning communities such as UniLang or
HowToLearnAnyLanguage for a lot of discussion on this.

~~~
andrewroycarter
Exactly why I'm learning Japanese! Also, I believe it's been shown to improve
other brain functions (memory) as well, so you'll get added benefits!

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stevenbrianhall
As far as resources for learning languages, I have been using Duolingo
(<http://www.duolingo.com/>) to learn German over the past few months, and
can't praise it highly enough.

They currently offer German, Spanish, and French (which is in beta). It's in
private beta, but I recently had an influx of friends added to the site, so it
seems like they're sending out invites pretty regularly.

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tallpapab
I've had a better time learning German than other languages just because my
grandparents were German speakers. So as a small child I heard sounds which
help my accent today. So just another of the many things to consider when
making this choice. If you want to _speak_ as opposed to just read then you
might look to a language others spoke around you when you were little. Even if
they just had an accent.

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korginator
I'd go with Spanish or French if you want fast learning. Mandarin (Simplified)
Chinese otherwise for practical reasons. Japanese and Korean are much easier
to learn than Chinese if it is too tough.

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jfaucett
the easiest language for english speakers to learn would have to be swedish,
its very similiar and its grammar is about as simple as that of english, but
there's not much value in it even if you go to sweden, since everyone speaks
english. I'd say if you want a valuable language (besides english which is by
far the most valuable in the world today), go with spanish for the americas,
german for europe, and chinese for asia, all of these languages are very
valuable and german and chinese bring with them booming economies.

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boolean
Spanish: It's the second most spoken language in the world. French: It's
spoken officially in 33 countries, most of them in Africa which is developing
fast.

~~~
tokenadult
_Spanish: It's the second most spoken language in the world._

[citation needed] Possibly so by number of different countries where it is
official or co-official, but certainly not so by number of speakers.

Weighting aggregate number of speakers by the economic activity of the
countries where those speakers predominate may be a better gauge of which
languages are expedient to learn in the next few years.

~~~
boolean
You're right. It should've been "Spanish is the second most natively spoken
language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese."

From: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language>

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davyjones
Learn a non-germanic language since you already know a germanic one. Plenty to
choose from: Hungarian, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, etc.

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computerslol
C#.

