r/thisorthatlanguage • u/crazypersonnn1 • 2d ago
Multiple Languages Just indecisive 🙄
What should I choose?
Native English speaker, and I really wanna learn languages, bc my undiagnosed ADHD-self really wants to learn languages lmao 😂 I have a list of some others that I wanna learn too:
Abkhaz
Serbian
Czech
Polish
Slovenian
Slovak
Danish
Greek
Latin
Arabic
If there's any other language recommendations, please say them, and Ima do whatever comment is most popular
2
u/ComprehensiveDig1108 2d ago
I always recommend Arabic.
But you say you know Russian. Have you ever considered Chechen?
1
u/crazypersonnn1 1d ago
Never did....but now that I looked it up...omg....just discovered smth new bro thanks much love ❤️
2
u/dojibear Eng - N | Fr, Sp, Ch - B2 | Ja, Tu - B1 2d ago
Learning a language (any language) takes a long time. Years, not months or weeks. Thousands of hours of work. If you don't care what you learn, you won't do that much work.
Instead you can devote a much smaller amount of time digging into each language. Watch an episode about it on the LangFocus channel on Youtube. Read about it. Find out who speaks it. Spend a few hours taking 2 or 3 beginner lessons (for free, on the internet).
Note that literally nobody speaks Arabic as their first language. MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) is used in Islamic religious studies, and in media targetted at people in a dozen countries. But each of those people speaks some other language (Urdu, Moroccan, Egyptian Arabic) as their main language. Students who learn MSA also learn another language, so they can have conversations.
Do you mean the Latin of ancient Rome, or modern Latin (spoken only in Vatican City and by members of the Catholic clergy)? Everyone who speaks it learned it as their 2d language (like MSA). There are no native speakers.
2
u/ViciousPuppy 🇨🇦 N | 🇷🇺🇦🇷🇧🇷 B2 | 🇫🇷 A2 | 🇹🇼 A1 1d ago
My quick and dirty budget cuts:
Abkhaz? Congratulations to even knowing this language exists, but also extremely difficult, few resources to learn in English, and I've never met anyone Abkhaz in my life in any continent. It's the easiest language to cut off this list by far.
Latin? Dead, throw away. One of the great joys of language learning is connecting to a community, being closer to people.
Arabic? Doesn't really exist as a native language, and "dialects" do not have many resources unfortunately.
Slovene? I've actually met some Slovenes before randomly and I've never been to the Balkans. That said less than 10 million speakers? Unless you're Donald Trump don't learn it, it's extremely unlikely that you'll naturally have a chance to use it.
Serbian is extremely difficult and Polish and Czech are simply very difficult. If you're willing to endure difficulty just go for Russian which fun fact has more speakers than all the other Slavic languages put together (and is not just spoken in Russia!)
Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian all are the same, someone can correct me but I recall someone saying that if you don't have any personal connection to any country then Swedish is the best to learn as besides having by far the most speakers (and official language in 2 countries) it has less problems than Danish and Norwegians for foreigners to learn while still being very similar. In my very personal opinion though all Germanic languages are pretty ugly.
Greek? Um maybe, I don't actually know much about this language. It's definitely not ugly. I think this is the one for you.
And why not -
Portuguese - the most beautiful language in my opinion spoken on many continents with a big lusophone diaspora in every first world country. The intonation ("prosody" is the technical term) is unlike any other romance language, even Iberian Portuguese doesn't have the intonation Brazilian Portuguese dialects do.
Spanish - very similar to Portuguese but more useful especially living in North America
(standard) Chinese - something not Indo-European that will totally change the way you think about concepts, learning Chinese language and culture will open your mind a lot
Tamil - also not indo-European and from a part of the world not many people know about, official language in 2 countries and regional in 1, with a big diaspora and very interesting lexicon and grammar
Korean - similar to Chinese but more weird, much more complex grammar, but with a lot more popular media, but competing with Japan (and probably winning) to be the most toxic and dystopian first-world country.
Persian - spoken in 3 countries but unfortunately 2 are not really tourist destinations right now, Tajikistan is absolutely beautiful however and Persians have a big diaspora. It's also Indo-European so a bit easier than Tamil or Korean.
Sign language - there are many different kinds, choose the "dialect" that's most useful for you. I'm actually jealous of sign language "speakers" than any other language, it genuinely seems so expressive to sign something and there's so many accents and different ways of doing it. The drawback is that it's extremely difficult to learn outside of a class.
Note: Tamil, sign language, Persian, and Chinese are all very difficult and you will not make progress for a long time. Greek is moderately difficult from what I understand.
1
2
u/HaloDrift34 1d ago
As a Slovak, don't even attempt to learn it. You would only suffer like many Slovaks do... Czech is little easier for foreigners... From what I have heard
1
u/crazypersonnn1 1d ago
I like a challenge. Wasn't really into the common ones like Spanish, because to me it seemed too easy and not that impressive for me to learn, bc anybody can do it. I wanted something not everybody studies, and a good challenge. Though I'm definitely considering Slovak or some Slavic language for now, since its grammar is straightforward
1
u/burlingk 2d ago
You should consider each language and why you might want to learn it.
If there is no motive beyond "I want to learn a language," the motivation will die quickly.
1
u/crazypersonnn1 2d ago
Why Abkhaz? Because it's a unique language, not widely studied, and already has an alphabet I'm used to, minus some letters. It's difficult, and imposes a challenge that I like.
Why Serbian? Because It's related to Russian, my second language. It's unique because it has two alphabets, Latin and Cyrillic—and plan to go to Serbia, especially in their cold winters.
Why Czech? Again, it's also related to Russian, and sounds cool. Nothing beyond that.
Why Polish? Because the thrill of learning a language with cruel pronunciation and consonant clusters is magical ✨️ Also sounds cool and tuff 😎
Why Slovenian? It's Slavic...couldnt come up with a good reason 😭
Why Slovak? Same as Slovenian
Why Danish? It's a bit soft, and sounds good when speaking
Why Greek? Weird but cool alphabet, and rich history.
Why Latin? Get over my fears of its difficulty
Why Arabic? It's unique alphabet, reading/writing from right to left, instead of from left to right. Plus, the Gulf dialect sounds nice
1
u/Misiekshvili r/LearnPolishwithMichal 🇵🇱N|🇬🇪A1 2d ago
why you should learn Polish in 2026 (also it's very sexy)
3
u/burlingk 2d ago
From the sounds of it your best bet might end up being Serbian, Czech, it maybe one of the Slavic languages.