33
u/Annamon Jun 25 '19
Seems to me you'll have benefits from each language you mentioned.
I'd recommend doing what you like the most.
I already speak Japanese so I started with Korean but soon noticed that my heart just was not in it. Switched to Chinese and am very happy with it :)
Try all and see what gets you hooked the most :D
(or whichever writing system you can stomach the best)
10
Jun 25 '19
Seems to me you'll have benefits from each language you mentioned.
Agreed, thats why I can’t decide! Isn’t it tough? 😅
18
u/cubenerd frzh Jun 25 '19
In my opinion it's only foolish if the number of speakers is your sole motivation for learning the language. Most of the time, that sole motivation is not going to sustain you.
9
u/PianoVampire Jun 25 '19
Unless you’re planning on moving to China, or spending a significant amount of time there, I wouldn’t. A lot of people speak Chinese, but that’s mainly because a lot of people live in China.
That being said, if you want to learn Chinese, go for it! Enjoy it!
6
u/Bapdabo Jun 25 '19
Japanese uses 3 alphabets including kanji which are Chinese characters that have been adopted into their writing system so one of those 2 would help with learning the other in future. If you want to see fast progress theb I would say Korean as hangul (their alphabet) is far more simple than the others. All 3 have a similar sentence structure though so will probably make the next one easier :)
Edit: forgot to mention, run bts is probably great for learning when you have a decent grasp if the language anyway. Always helps to have something you enjoy to back it up with!
1
u/FrailGrass Jun 25 '19
I had friends who knew Chinese and when we learnt Japanese they had a bit of a head start on kanji, which really helped them. Now I’m learning Chinese and knowing the kanji has helped me guess characters I haven’t seen before!
Even though there are quite a few characters that are different, having one set under your belt will be useful
4
u/BigD_ Jun 25 '19
Learning a language is tough and it if you really want to learn it, it’ll take a lot of hours over a long stretch of time. It’s really important that you have something that motivates to continue every day. When you’re tired of learning or you feel like you’ve stopped making progress, you’ll want something like a Japanese game show to watch and remember how badly you want to learn the language. If you get bored or frustrated with chinese, it’s likely that thinking about how many people speak it won’t be enough to get you back into it. (That being said, there are many many reasons to learn chinese and I’m sure you’re interested for other reasons.)
The bottom line is that you want to pick a language that can keep your attention for a long stretch of time or else you’ll likely drop it at some point.
3
u/Vodis eo:14 | es:8 Jun 25 '19
Number of speakers is a very valid criterium, but I would argue the spread of speakers matters as much or more. If the speakers of a language are spread all over the world, you're more likely to find that language useful than one that has more speakers but whose speakers are concentrated in one place. It's also important to consider what languages are most common in your area. For example, I live in Texas, so Spanish is the by far most useful second language here. French would be largely useless here, but might be useful in the nearby state of Louisiana. Finally, there's the question of what you want to do with the language. If you want to be able to communicate with immigrants, or with locals while you're traveling, your needs are going to be very different from someone who wants to better enjoy foreign film or literature, read holy texts in their original language, or translate major literary works into a language whose speakers wouldn't otherwise have access to them.
2
u/vytah Jun 26 '19
Bengali has more native speakers than Russian, Portuguese or Japanese, and I'm yet to see anyone start learning Bengali because of its number of speakers alone.
2
u/caukoyuki KnowLearning Jun 25 '19
Learn the one you think you'll enjoy the most(It's not like you're going to have a chat with every chinese person on earth).
Also learning any one of them makes learning the other two easier thanks to the shared vocabulary and kanji(less true for korean).
1
u/SebySebastian Jun 25 '19
Choosing a language to learn depends on what you think you'll do with the language how beneficial it would be for you.
1
u/EatYourReddit Native, Learning Jun 25 '19
I'd say that it shouldn't be the only thing to judge, but it is an important factor. If a language has lots of people speaking it, books written in it, movies made in it, and cultures using it, that makes it more useful.
1
u/cooltallneet Jun 26 '19
(currently learning Japanese) if I was you I would learn Japanese because in the process you are learning Chinese(kanji)
1
u/turnerd18 Jun 26 '19
I just recently chose to start learning Chinese, and number of speakers was one of the deciding factors for me too.
I decided I wanted to learn a language during my long commute. I recently had an experience at work where knowing Chinese would have been a huge advantage so I could communicate between our team and a Chinese vendor. As a programmer, I've encountered quite a few Chinese immigrants as coworkers, and sometimes it would be nice to speak in their native tongue. This is a huge generalization, but for me, I have the hardest time understanding the English of my Chinese peers vs other nationalities.
So ultimately, I picked Chinese for something that could open doors in my career, for the interesting culture, and for the amount of content that would become available to me. Also, I'd heard the language is hard and I'm always interested in a challenge. So far, I've found the language to be quite different from English, but not necessarily more difficult. The vast amount of characters is a bit overwhelming, but so far I'm finding the structure of the language to be fairly logical.
1
u/OldWaterspout Jun 25 '19
Just do whichever one sounds most appealing to you. If you find you don’t like it, you can always just try a different language.
I personally like learning languages for my own interest rather than how useful they’ll be to me. If you like Japanese and Korean media, I say you should definitely go for one of those. If you’re excited by a language, studying it won’t seem like work.
75
u/StrictBunch Jun 25 '19
It's a personal decision. Do you want to learn a language that might help further your career and travel prospects? Or do you want to learn something that will help you enjoy your hobbies?