What is your favorite foreign language?

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Declension
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10 Jul 2012, 3:45 am

I like ancient Latin and ancient Greek, but I'm not sure if they count as foreign languages since they no longer have any native speakers.



MisterSpock
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10 Jul 2012, 3:49 am

I am tempted to say German, because I learnt it from a youngish age and had the good fortune of a brilliant teacher. It's fascinating to see the commonalities between it and English. Even the commonalities between it and Swedish and Dutch.

However, I will say Mandarin, a language which I am (slowly) teaching myself. The precision of a tonal language, combined with the completely different phonetic palate means it's very interesting to me.



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10 Jul 2012, 3:55 am

Hawai'ian.

Even though I know how to speak it, it still sounds nice to me. It has a lovely rhythm and pitch changes which make it extremely pleasant for me to listen to and open sounds.


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Tequila
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10 Jul 2012, 4:24 am

CyclopsSummers wrote:
Wait, you're Canadian! French is one of your country's official languages


This isn't quite true. Although the sole official language of Québec is French, it's not French as spoken in France. French spoken in Switzerland is slightly different from that spoken in France, but far more similar to France French than say, Swiss German is to German.



Tequila
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10 Jul 2012, 4:24 am

Cantonese.



AspieSharaf
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10 Jul 2012, 4:33 am

Declension wrote:
I like ancient Latin and ancient Greek, but I'm not sure if they count as foreign languages since they no longer have any native speakers.


They count aswell. Dead, living or official artificial languages(e.g. klingon) - all goes on this thread.



VMSmith
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10 Jul 2012, 7:54 am

latin is good. i think i like it because it's old. i think my favourite is arabic(either lebanese or palestinian) partly because its rough(or not) and uses all parts of the mouth/throat and because there are words in it that dont have translations and partly because the way the language(at least in lebanon) varies so much from one corner of the country to the other and it sounds cool. in beirut though people are a little snobby if you speak the arabic from your village. i also like russian because its gutteral and round/full and japanese because its geometrical. i dont know how to clarify what i mean by that.



CyborgUprising
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10 Jul 2012, 8:03 am

I like all of them, but if I chose based on utility, it would have to be German (hochdeutsch) or Egyptian Standard Arabic. If I went by how unique it is, I would go with Icelandic. Icelandic sounds amazing in music; it gives it this sort of "earthy" feel, like a direct connection to my Scandinavian ancestors.



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10 Jul 2012, 4:23 pm

Cymry! (Welsh) Although I can only speak it phonetically :(



LiberalJustice
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10 Jul 2012, 4:59 pm

Either Spanish or German, not sure which.


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AJCoyne
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10 Jul 2012, 5:34 pm

My favourite would have to be czech, it's extremely sexy :oops: :lol:
Unfortunately though the only words I remember are

"Dickwee"- Thankyou
"Voda bez booblinek"- Water without bubbles

Haha not very romantic xD



Descartes
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10 Jul 2012, 7:53 pm

Spanish, but I'm biased because I'm currently in the process of learning Spanish. Ever since I started learning it in high school, I became more appreciative of the language. It's so much fun to speak and listen to, because it has a spicy and sexy sound quality to it. The grammar structure of Spanish is so much more straight-forward than English's and therefore easier to learn.

I also really enjoy French. If I ever decide to learn another language, it would probably be French.


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NeueZiel
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10 Jul 2012, 8:01 pm

German, Russian and French. German just sounds really good and I love German and Russian history. French I feel is really essential for fully appreciating a lot of the old russian and European stuff plus a lot of cool idioms and sayings are french. Russian(Cyrillic) alphabet looks the coolest.

Japanese is okay but I'm not as obsessed with it as most people who want to learn about it. This is really obscure but I liked how in the Japanese version of the Pokemon anime, the gym leader, Koga (Kyo in the Jap version) uses this really cool unique dialect. Its supposedly an archaic form of Japanese but it sounded really sweet and regal. It made him really badass and its a neat detail that was lost in translation. I don't even like anime much at all, just found that neat. I even have a (largely unused) book with katakana and hira. in it.



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10 Jul 2012, 8:20 pm

My favorite language is Spanish, followed by French and then Italian since I have learned these languages due to taking them in school and/or actually living in the country where there are the native speakers. I would love to be able to speak two or three languages well like people in Europe can do and that is my dream.


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corvuscorax
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10 Jul 2012, 8:42 pm

German. It's so blunt and to the point. It fits my personality perfectly. For some reason I find the grammatical structure quite interesting too.


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RockDrummer616
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10 Jul 2012, 11:03 pm

Once, a shy girl on my track team who had never talked to me before came up to me and asked if I spoke Polish. (I don't speak Polish or any other similar language. Or any foreign language really.) She said she was in love with Polish and really wanted to learn it. The funny part was when I brought that up another time but it turned out I was talking to her identical twin. :oops: :lol:

And just so nobody gets mad at me for not answering the question, it's Spanish. I no longer speak it very well, but I can translate written Spanish pretty well and occasionally I can understand what people are saying.


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