Which language would you acquire?

[elysepopplewell]

In a hypothetical world where you could pick up any language on top of your native language overnight with no effort required - what would it be?

If language acquisition was just a matter of drinking magical language juice and you knew the entire language completely fluently the next day...which would you pick?

Is it because it sounds beautiful or because it's so random or because you want to use it for career opportunities or because you want to get in touch with your family's native culture? Let me know

[Joseph41]

Mandarin Chinese. Then Spanish.

I reckon they'd get me by pretty well.

[Paulrus]

Greek would probably be at the top of my list – I can understand a decent amount of what I hear, but my speaking is absolutely shit and I can't write the script. My parents never really forced us to go to Greek school or to learn the language or anything so I never really picked it up. I kinda feel guilty cos I grew up immersed in a lot of the culture and 'Greekness' is still a part of my identity but I feel kinda removed from that cos I never learned the language. I wrote an article about this last year actually lol.

Other than that, Spanish would be amazing to learn, not only cos of the usefulness of it but because it's such a cool sounding language and cos Spain/Latin America would be insanely cool to travel around. Although it's meant to be pretty easy to learn anyway so maybe I should go for something like Japanese or Chinese so I'd never have to learn any of the Kanji or Hanzi lol.

[spectroscopy]

i'd probably pick a language that is super hard to learn as a non-native speaker, like vietnamese or arabic or russian or something.
i'd say arabic is most useful out of these in general but vietnamese is 100x more useful for my day to day life (even though its not really that needed). but i wouldnt want to waste this 1 time shot on a language like spanish which im learning pretty quickly or chinese which i learnt for ages and decided to stop cos i couldnt be bothered but i could definitely improve to a high level. in all seriousness though i cant really be bothered learning a language at the moment cos i dont have much time so i would probably just pick something super useful like french or chinese. probably french cos my chinese is good enough.  but if you rephrased the question where it was "you get 100 million dollars and you can learn any language" then i would pick arabic because if i had no need to work i would spend alot of my time learning languages and i feel like the main ones that are important to me at least french/chinese/spanish are all learnable with time and effort and immersion. and i feel like no amount of living in dubai would get me to fluency in arabic.

so realistically french but in a perfect world arabic

[appleandbee]

Languages

I can already communicate at a reasonable level (I'm a native English speaker) or am currently learning the languages I'm really interested in. I speak Chinese ( intermediate level), Russian (at an elementary level), Spanish (intermediate level) and recently started learning Arabic ( which will take me a lifetime because I self learn languages and Arabic is ridiculously difficult to read). So first I'll like to get to an advanced level in all those languages first, although I'll use this one time opportunity for Arabic. These languages meets my needs and interests:

Chinese: native culture, history and the Chinese influence in the economy and international relations, Asian Medicine and ancient philosophy.

Spanish: The amazing sounds of the language, Spanish and Latin American culture history, being able to travel to South America, communicate with 400+ million native speakers and Spanish literature is awesome. I'm also really interested in international development for which Spanish is useful language.

Russian: Central Asian native cultural roots, interest in minority politics and identity self-determination in former Soviet Union states, as well as the influence of Russia and Central Asia (there are enormous reserves of oil, gas and renewable resources in that region) in international relations. Central Asia is also a beautiful region (although there's a bit of political instability at this point in time).

Arabic: The opportunity to access and better understand middle eastern history and Islamic history. The language script looks beautiful as well.

If time wasn't an issue, I'd love to be able to read Latin and Sanskrit (ancient languages are supposed to be read not spoken). I find the ancient world fascinating, especially Roman history and Indian philosophy. In terms of spoken languages, probably Japanese because of the art, food, culture, history of the Meiji restoration and the advanced scientific research conducted by Japanese universities (most of the research papers are publish in Japanese Scientific Journals). German is also interesting (it looks really cool), but I wouldn't use the potion for that since it's a relatively straightforward language to pick up. Mainly for the classical music (Bach, Strauss, Wagner) philosophy (Marx, Kant, Nietzsche), Science (Einstein and the focus on scientific research in German universities) and I really love Vienna.

[elysepopplewell]

Mandarin Chinese. Then Spanish.
I reckon they'd get me by pretty well.

Because so many people speak it?

Languages

I can already communicate at a reasonable level (I'm a native English speaker) or am currently learning the languages I'm really interested in. I speak Chinese ( intermediate level), Russian (at an elementary level), Spanish (intermediate level) and recently started learning Arabic ( which will take me a lifetime because I self learn languages and Arabic is ridiculously difficult to read). So first I'll like to get to an advanced level in all those languages first, although I'll use this one time opportunity for Arabic. These languages meets my needs and interests:

This is insane - is this part of your degree or do you have a wonderful fascination for learning languages?

I wrote an article about this last year actually lol.

Is the article available online? I'd love to read it!

[literally lauren]

Hungarian.

[sudodds]

J'aimerais pouvoir parler couramment le français 

Prettiest language ever. Half my family speaks it. A good chuck of the world speaks it. I want to speak it. 

[rachid.kam]

Oooh thats a tough one. Other than english, I already speak arabic in 6 different dialects.I'd prosper at the thought of learning french (because its sooooo widely spoken in my native country), spanish (sounds so exotic!) and maybe even german. But,croatian/macedonian has always intrigued me, so I wouldn't mind learning them either.

[pootato]

if there was a limit of 5, then it would be french, mandarin, spanish, vietnamese, and korean. only because i want to be able to speak to people around me in a language other than english

[Paulrus]

Is the article available online? I'd love to read it!

It sure is! This was from last year's Farrago edition 1 (which is like Melbourne Uni's equivalent to Honi Soit/Vertigo/Tharunka). I kinda miss writing stuff actually, should try and get back into it.
https://issuu.com/farragomag/docs/edition_1_for_issuu/38

German is also interesting (it looks really cool), but I wouldn't use the potion for that since it's a relatively straightforward language to pick up.

Ooh German is actually a bit deceptive haha. Seems pretty chill at first cos of its similarity to English but once you get deeper it hits you with the bizarre grammar and syntax, and the fact that basically no-one actually speaks standard German in real life makes it more difficult – some of the dialects are fucking impossible to understand hahah. I'd say it's definitely a good amount more difficult than any of the romantic languages, but yeah it's also nowhere near being in the realm of something like Arabic, Russian or most of the logographic languages, so probably not worth using the hypothetical potion. Would 100% recommend learning it to anyone who's interested though, such a fun language.

[elysepopplewell]

It sure is! This was from last year's Farrago edition 1 (which is like Melbourne Uni's equivalent to Honi Soit/Vertigo/Tharunka). I kinda miss writing stuff actually, should try and get back into it.
https://issuu.com/farragomag/docs/edition_1_for_issuu/38

Ooh German is actually a bit deceptive haha. Seems pretty chill at first cos of its similarity to English but once you get deeper it hits you with the bizarre grammar and syntax, and the fact that basically no-one actually speaks standard German in real life makes it more difficult – some of the dialects are fucking impossible to understand hahah. I'd say it's definitely a good amount more difficult than any of the romantic languages, but yeah it's also nowhere near being in the realm of something like Arabic, Russian or most of the logographic languages, so probably not worth using the hypothetical potion. Would 100% recommend learning it to anyone who's interested though, such a fun language.

Absolutely loved this! My favourite, "On the outside I was Tzatziki, but inside I was Coles tomato sauce." LOVE IT.
I also think the idea of a melting pot instead of a mozaic is lovely as well - you're a very talented writer!

For the record, Kim Kardashian doesn't have butt implants

[Paulrus]

Absolutely loved this! My favourite, "On the outside I was Tzatziki, but inside I was Coles tomato sauce." LOVE IT.
I also think the idea of a melting pot instead of a mozaic is lovely as well - you're a very talented writer!

For the record, Kim Kardashian doesn't have butt implants

Thank you so much, that means a lot! Hahah honestly the tzatziki line was my favourite part of writing it too, but my sense of humour is super lame.

Also afaik Kim hasn't had actual implants but I'm pretty sure she's had that thing where they take fat from your body and insert it into your ass. And I'm now realising that I know a lot more about Kim Kardashian's butt than I thought I did. Why the fuck do I know this

[elysepopplewell]

I think I'd acquire French. A lot of well known texts are originally written in French, and I'd like to be able to fully grasp the literary flair of them, as opposed to reading them with basic French and just translating (not something I can even do now, mind you). Also, it sounds great.

[Joseph41]

An interesting article related to this: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-24/which-languages-should-australian-children-be-learning/8383146

There are 7,099 known languages in the world today.

Choosing which of these to teach our children as a second language is an important decision, but one that may be based more on feelings than facts.

There are several different ways of thinking about what languages we should offer at school.

Research suggests that Australian school children may not be studying the right ones.

I highly recommend reading the article; it may inform some of your decisions in this thread!