What will be your next language?

Language Love
#1

Hi everyone!

I’m learning French at the moment, but I’m already thinking about what my next language will be :slight_smile:.
Since I’m half Peruvian, I thought it would be great to learn a bit of Quechua. I do know some words, because the Spanish we speak in Peru has borrowed them, and I just love the sound of them:

  • wawa: little child
  • cancha: popcorn
  • carpa: tent
  • choclo: corn

What I love about learning a language which is completely different from the ones I already speak is understanding the logic behind them. I know for a fact that Quechua has a different understanding of what concepts such as past and future mean. When speaking about the future, Quechua (and Aymara) speakers gesture backward and, in contrast, when talking about past, they gesture forward.

I know @SKrausser learned Quechua while in Ecuador, for example, and I wanted to ask about your experience. Was it hard? Could you rely on any of the other languages you speak to make the learning process easier?

And what about the others? Would you be interested in learning other languages that are completely different than the ones you already speak? I’m interesting in reading your reasons to learn a new language!

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#2

Hello Stefanie!

Excellent question :smiley: and thank you for sharing some of the Quechua words, I think the sound of it is similar to some native languages in Mexico!

Currently, I’m living in Finland, so I am trying to learn Finnish although I tell you it is not easy. There are so many funny amazing Finnish videos about language, but the funny ones are not really for learning purposes :joy: like this one:

But I bet by the end of it you will know the essential things you need to buy at the supermarket haha.

And some Finnish words:

Kiitos - Thank you
Moi - Hello
Tervetuloa - Welcome
mitä kuuluu- How are you?
Hyvä! - Good!
Olut - Beer
Leipä - Bread
Juusto - Cheese

Which is also amazing with Finnish is that no one really speaks the proper Finnish language, everyone speaks some sort of dialect or regional version of it. So one has to go and learn Finnish, then unlearn it, and then learn the regional version. I guess one needs the first version to make sense of the second? :sweat_smile:

And in an urelated language learning note but learning essential things in life, here is a Finnish instructional video of “how to open a door” (for real) haha:

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#3

@stefanierambow Quichua is a very beautiful language. But my problem is that there is a language standard (by the Ecuadorian government), but nobody uses it. Here we have actually 5-6 mayor dialects and Quichua speaking natives don’t love to use the standard language. So we have to learn it directly from the native speakers and try to find a way to express ourselves in a way that most of them understand. And there is a big lack of (non-religious) literature.
It’s very different to have a language with a standard and a curriculum to learn it. Anyway, Quichua shimita yachacuchun achcata c’uyanimi (I love to learn this language).

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#4

I would like to learn italian next. That language always fascinated me and now that I speak spanish I hope that it will make learning italian easier :slight_smile:
We will seeee

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#5

@stefanierambow I’m actually super interested in the influence that native languages had for the Spanish spoken (in Latin America) today. For example, I didn’t know that carpa and choclo, that I use too, had its origins in Quechua.

I have been thinking of learning some Arabic for quite some time now… I think the Arabic writing is beautiful and I hope it would help me to learn more about the rich culture, too. :slight_smile:

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#6

@kjanina Arabic is such a beautiful language. I love that it’s grammar structure and also its rich vocabulary with its wide range of dialects. So enjoy to speak Arabi Fussha with people from Syria jajajajajaja

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#7

I’ve got a list of 10 languages that I’d like to reach B2 in before I turn 40 (in ~6 years). At first I thought “how crazy of an idea is this? because it sounds mad!”, but as I started breaking it down, I was able to start putting hour estimates against each and am now “project managing” my way there.

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Scott@Chatterbug has a really interesting blog article about what it takes to learn a language, which is actually one of the places I reference back to often when trying to gauge the learning journey:

I find myself on the CEFR Wikipedia page in this regard pretty often too:

There’s also a few polyglots out there, like Richard Simcott & Alex Rawlings, who’ve shown that it’s possible to go far beyond that. They’re already paving the way to show what’s possible! Alex has an interesting talk about maintaining multiple languages from a few years ago, here:

So, to more directly answer the question, I’ve just embarked into Esperanto in the last couple weeks and have ambition to start into the basics of Polish come November/December. Polish scares me a little bit… it’s got all the difficult parts of all the European languages it seems (based on a couple overview videos I’ve watched). However, the Polyglot Gathering will be taking place in a small town outside of Warsaw next May, so I’d love to get up to an A2 level before then. :crossed_fingers:

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#8

@neilgrey: Good luck :wink:
Maybe you can add to your list some native languages from Canada such as Haida. That may help you in your next holidays at Haida Gwaii Islands jajajajajajaja

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#9

I’m actually really interested in Inuktitut, but hit a few roadblocks getting started and finding people to speak it with. The grammar is unlike any other language I’ve seen and it’s got really interesting writing systems. Definitely something still spinning in the back of my mind for “sometime in the future”.

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#10

Wow @neilgrey this is so impressive!! Good luck with that, I hope you stick around in the Community Forum for a long time to let us know how your journey is going :slight_smile:

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#11

I am between learning French or Spanish next. Luckily, I will be able to use Chatterbug! My mother (is kind of French was born there) and my Grandma is french so they both speak it and I think it’d be cool to speak with them. However, a lot more people in the world speak Spanish and there are more places to travel to in my opinion :). Nevertheless, I am living in Germany and don’t want to be unfaithful to my first foreign language love, but it would be cool to be able to order a beer and pay in France or a Spanish speaking country.

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#12

What is the next language Chatterbug should offer to learn?

In my opinion, it should be Arabic, Chinese or Russian. It would be a great challenge to help students how to read and write in other characters than Latin characters.

What do you think?

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#13

My favourites would be Chinese or Arabic. I love both cultures associated with the languages and would like to communicate in either of the two.

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#14

My favourite is definitely Arabic :heart_eyes:
As I am living in Egypt currently, I am studying Arabic and I wish to have an opportunity like Chatterbug to learn it faster …

The Arabic writing looks beautiful and is actually easier to learn than it appears. Other than Chinese, the Arabic alphabet and words consist of letters, as the Latin alphabet does. :grinning:

Though, the variety of dialects is a big challenge. :see_no_evil:

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#15

I’ll start learning Swedish again and I want to refresh my Spanish.

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#16

This month I will start learning Japanese :jp: :jp:

I had this goal since I was very young and now it became a must for me. It is part of my list of what to learn before my thirties , which will be next year and that is basically the reason why I decided to start now :smile: :smile: :smile:.

And as @SKrausser said

I would love to see those languages here too , Russian is also a dream of mine :stuck_out_tongue: !

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#17

I’ve changed course plenty of times over the last few years on which languages to learn. I think I would definitely like to learn something out of my comfort zone next. Even though German definitely was/is difficult, I still feel its clear connection with English. Next, I would love to learn Japanese and/or Turkish as well as brush up on my Portuguese. Also! I think if I could have a super-power it would be, hands-down, being able to speak every language in the world. :blossom:

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#18

Hi Stefani!
And thanks for sharing this post and pieces of knowledge about the quechua language. It is fascinating that the concepts or future and past are sort of “inversed” from ours. Some philosophers would have a lot to say about that…
Anyone correct me if I’m wrong as I am just writing from memory here, but I think a friend of mine who speaks thai told me there’s no “tenses” in this language - that you only have the verb and then need to have words like “yesterday”, “tomorrow”, “later”, etc to indicate “when” you mean the action to take place. It’s also quite interesting as I feel like it pushes you to set more specifically “when” you mean things to happen - you can’t be as blurry as we can be, for instance in French saying “On verra…” (basically meaning we’ll probably never get back to it or that there’s no way we can control anything on the given matter).

Anyways, I can never chose which language I want to learn next! For practical reasons it would be Spanish, for cultural reasons (wanting to understand more the culture and sharing the language spoken by so many people in my country) I would go for Arabic; but it’s also very complicated… Then I think that I also want to learn LSF (French Sign Language) but I know I should be moving to Canada in the following years where the sign language is quite different…
It’s a tough choice to make.

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#20

Chinese! Very difficult language but it will be verz useful in the future :slight_smile:

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#21

No, Quechua indeed has tenses as past, present and future.