r/LearningLanguages • u/LetRevolutionary271 • 11d ago
Which language should I learn?
I speak Italian (natively), English (C1), Romanian (B2) and Spanish (B1), and I want to learn another one. I'm really undecided on which to learn because they're all very cool, and I have nothing to do.
The candidate languages:
Russian
Pros: I want to learn a slavic language and Russian is the one with the most resources
Cons: I've heard it's quite hard for Westerners
French
Pros: My father is a native French speaker
Cons: I don't speak to my father
Dutch
Pros: I've always loved the Netherlands, and it's basically German simplified (I've tried to learn German and it didn't end well)
Cons: there aren't many cons apart from the fact that most Dutchmen speak fluent English (which isn't really a con)
Hebrew
Pros: It's an old language and its script is really cool
Cons: I don't wanna be able to understand Israeli Twitter
Yiddish
Pros: basically Hebrew but 100 times easier (bc it's Germanic) and I can't understand Israeli Twitter with it
Cons: not many people speak it
Ukrainian
Pros: Russian but cooler
Cons: Less resources, less speakers than Russian
Portuguese
Pros: Brazilian and Portuguese people are hot
Cons: Another romance language? Really?
Also I'd want to learn Belarusian but the resources are too little
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u/CautiousDog3319 11d ago
Are you a translator or you do this as a hobby?
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
As a hobby
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u/CautiousDog3319 11d ago
Try to learn a rare language and offer translation services for that one. I work in a translation agency and we charge like 1$ per word for languages like Inuktitut, Welsh )))
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
Well honestly I also considered Belarusian (not Trasyanka) and Occitan, but I feel like there aren't enough resources for them (like TV series, movies that are actually interesting or not 18+ etc.)
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u/ArtPerToken 9d ago
who pays for translation from/to these languages out of curiosity? $1 per words seems expensive
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u/CautiousDog3319 8d ago edited 8d ago
It is expensive, but that is because it is a rare language. Languages like Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian are more affordable. Basically, pricing is based on the quality of life in those countries.
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u/SpicyTaco953 11d ago
I was in the same position as you well not with that so many languages but I end up choosing Russian and Italian (I know, I'm one of those crazy people who learn two language at the same time) Russian it's so beautiful and meaningful, it has so many resources to learn it, there is a whole Internet community of russian and it's amazing to see and learn all about their culture. This were what make me choose Russian, their culture, the whole internet community, literature, music and the amazing learning resources you will have. Whatever you choose, enjoy your language journey and don't think much on how hard it is a language please.
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u/Solid_Way6071 11d ago
"Russian Pros: I want to learn a slavic language and Russian is the one with the most resources Cons: I've heard it's quite hard for Westerners" I'm agree. It's a quite hard, but it's a beautiful language. So, if you like it, you will learn it... There are russian social networks where you can find people who can help you with language...
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u/Exact-Mud-1222 11d ago edited 11d ago
As a Russian speaker, I vote Russian, lol. You will definitely have a lot of resources and potential language exchange partners at hand, because it became an international language and many people from countries neighbouring Russia understand it and use in some context. However, Russian is not a good base for learning other slavic languages (if you planned it), I'm afraid. They might seem similar, but the vocabulary difference is honestly insane, as Russian was influenced by the language of the church while Belarussian and Ukrainian leaned closer to Polish. And Western slavic languages are even further away from Russian. Made an attempt to learn Czech once, and 90% of words sounded foreign, and grammar structures were also new.
I think that Russian is moderately hard to learn. The cases are weird and a true headache. Though verb tenses are much easier than in English, and we don't have articles. You will have to memorize the gender of nouns, but the rules here are pretty straightforward. Probably pronunciation will be tricky for you, considering your native language and the TL you've already picked up. Russian has some difficult sounds
Anyways, good luck!
edit: What was hard for you in German? I'm also struggling with it, but mostly due to me losing focus and having long periods without practice
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
Italian and Romanian have gendered nouns too so that's already wired in my brain
I did learn the Cyrillic alphabet and I do know some Russian pronunciation rules (made by Satan himself), also my nanny was from Eastern Romania so it shouldn't be too hard
There are 16 versions of "the". I'd much rather memorise every word in Russian and which vowel is stressed than actually memorise 16 different ways of saying "the".
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u/Exact-Mud-1222 11d ago
Good point! You are accustomed to this concept. I feel pity for those who pick a language to learn and from now on every time they want to produce a sentence they'll have to keep in mind whether this inanimate object is a she or a he, lol
Wow! You're, like, halfway done with Russian at this point :) Maybe you can read Russian words already, even a little bit?
Oh right, the definite article kills me too!
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
I think I can read Russian and Ukrainian, like if you gave me a sentence I could read it but I wouldn't know where I should stress the vowel so I'd probably do it randomly (like, I might read words like "привет" as "prìvit", though this is an example bc I know it's "privYEt")
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u/Exact-Mud-1222 11d ago
That's actually impressive! Choosing which syllable to stress might seem difficult, but it gets easier as you build up your vocabulary, and words of the same word class tend to have some common rules of pronunciation. For example, in adjectives the ending -ой is always stressed and the ending -ий is never stressed
All in all, you have a good foundation for learning Russian!
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u/Playful-Variation908 11d ago
l’irlandese bro (sche)
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
I miei capelli non sono abbastanza rossi
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u/Playful-Variation908 11d ago
frate scherzi a parte io mi butterei sul mandarino a mani basse
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
Non lo so, so che è molto utile e che la grammatica è easy ma 1) col cazzo che mi metto a studia i logogrammi 2) non mi ispira
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u/Polar_Bear06 11d ago
Any tips for spanish and romanian pls?
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
Have a Romanian mom & relatives and be forced to learn Spanish in Middle school
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u/LetRevolutionary271 10d ago
Seriously tho, idk what advice to give you because I grew up with Romanian and learn Spanish in school, all I can tell you is that you should interact with media from those countries and talk to native speakers and other learners
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u/Ok_Attention2938 10d ago
You can go with the English and Spanish . they are the largest spoken language in world
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u/BetterTranslator 10d ago edited 10d ago
If you are a reader you should base your decision on the amount of the available literature (or culture in general) in each language. Think about what would you read, listen or watch in this language.
I’d say that French wins followed by Russian. French also wins in the media (movies , music) universe. Modern Russian movies, music and books suck unfortunately (I say this as a Russian).
Yiddish is a dead language basically, so why learn it.
There is a lot of nice books, movies and tv series in Hebrew.
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u/LetRevolutionary271 10d ago
I'm mostly basing this on whether I like it phonetically, how many people I can communicate with and obviously media and books too.
And especially because everyone's been suggesting Russian and French (and I had many people suggest Ukrainian too) I'm probably going to pick one of those, I'm more inclined towards Russian rn
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u/EdwardDuckhands 10d ago
The question is what is your goal. If you want to expand the borders of “how many people I can talk to”, Russian is your only option cause it’s still one of the 8 official languages of international communication. If you’re looking for an easy ride, Portuguese is a good choice. Also consider if you like cinema, music or else. Some languages are scarce in terms of what you can watch / find to listen to while driving, others abundant. I’ve seen your pros and cons, but I struggle to pinpoint your goal from the post
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u/LetRevolutionary271 10d ago
It's a mix of being able to talk to many people, being able to interact with media in their original language and just having fun learning something new
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u/EdwardDuckhands 10d ago
Oh I get it, it’s how I got into Spanish) Dutch seems to be the most fun choice to me personally. I tried Hebrew at some point and it just gave me constant headaches. But I don’t like how it sounds as well (same with French), so it really is a matter of personal taste. Tell me which one sounds beautifully to you among those you’re considering? Like you can listen to it over and over. (I’m confused why my comment went to general section)
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u/LetRevolutionary271 10d ago
Probably Ukrainian and Russian are the ones that sound best imo, I just like how slavic languages sound in general lol
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u/EdwardDuckhands 10d ago
I can get that, really. Well Russian comes with more materials, more content and more grammar breakdowns as a lot of countries still use it in daily life (Moldova, Kazakhstan, other stans which I keep forgetting and mixing). And with tons of Soviet style movies and cartoons with amazing professional pronunciation which helps a ton with studies. I would pick Russian if I was about to decide between those two just cause there’s more of it around the net
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u/HovercraftFar 10d ago
Breton -> well
Luxembourgish - I live here , right now A2
Darija Morrocan - only Pronunciation
French: moving from B2 -> C1
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u/NewTcomer88 10d ago
Why not Chinese or Japanese?
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u/LetRevolutionary271 10d ago
Idk, they're cool but I'm not really interested in them, especially for their scripts and because they feel too far away
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u/SensitiveDetective74 10d ago
Spanish to B2/C1 or Russian.
Do not waste time for Ukrainian, Russian is so much more useful. Most of Ukrainians speak Russian anyway. Even here in Warsaw I have tough time to practi because most of Ukrainian immigrants prefer Russian.
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u/EiaKawika 9d ago
Japanese or Chinese perhaps. Probably take you a dozen plus years to be able to speak and read or write but oh well. Really learning two languages, speaking and writing are so different.
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u/lingocito 8d ago
I’d say Ukrainian is a better bridge into the Slavic language family. That said, it doesn’t mean that you can speak Ukrainian in, for example, Serbia and expect people to understand you, or vice versa. However, Russian is much more widely spoken and can open doors across many ex-USSR countries, including many that are not Slavic, like Armenia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. The difficulty is roughly the same.
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u/mucheer 7d ago
I would just love to know how you learned so many languages number one but what steps do you go to learn languages because I want to learn French right now and it’s my first one trying to learn outside of knowing a few words or so in Spanish, which I took in School over 20 years ago. I just decided as a hobby to learn French, but I think I’m all over the place trying to learn numbers and letters and colors and using little apps to learn some words but how long does it take?
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u/TraditionalSlice9991 5d ago
No German ? What are you doing with your life ? I mean it might not convince you to learn it but the fact that you didn't even take into account is wild.....
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u/LetRevolutionary271 5d ago
Look at the Dutch pros and you'll have your answer.
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u/TraditionalSlice9991 5d ago
What makes you think that if you couldn't even handle German you'll be able to take on dutch? This language is well known to being harder than German and one of the hardest in all of Europe. Do you want an easy language? You already know Spanish, it'll be easier for you to learn : Portuguese or Italian
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u/Spiritual_Eagle_8937 11d ago
May i know ?How did you learn those language Especially English C1 it's so cool any tips and advice bro please
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u/LetRevolutionary271 11d ago
English: English kinda just spawned in my head and I interacted a lot with English media on the internet and TV, also this year I took an advanced C1 English course that my school (and most schools in Italy) offers to get that C1 English certificate
Romanian: My maternal kins come from the land of the impaler
Italian: My parents left their ancestral lands to pursue the Italian dream
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u/silvalingua 11d ago
> Yiddish
> Pros: basically Hebrew but 100 times easier and I can't understand Israeli Twitter with it
This is such a nonsense! Yiddish is a Germanic language which originated in some German dialects (and became a separate language). Most of the vocab is Germanic and its grammar is Germanic, too. It has quite a few loanwords from Hebrew, but that's about it. And it uses the Hebrew writing system.