Obviously the question is a little ridiculous, but I’m asking Particularly for English speaking westerners. By best I mean most interesting, fun, and rewarding. I am asking this completely subjective question because I love hearing all the different opinions on the enjoyment they got out of their second language. Personal preference is obviously a factor as of course there isn’t an objective best.
In one of Steve Kaufman’s videos he said that during his Korean challenge he would pivot back to Russian because he found the content more interesting. He mentioned that interesting content in Korean was tougher to come by. I really have fun with Korean on lingq but worry about regularly getting enjoy content since I don’t particularly like soap operas.
How about Chinese? Are there good, relevant, Echo Moscow style podcasts or news stations that aren’t Chinese state run? Perhaps Taiwanese? Are there good film and books to enjoy? It seems so handy to have, I would love to hear if people are happy with learning Mandarin.
Has learning some a smaller language with less speakers such as Finnish, Greek, Swedish, or Czech been fun to enjoy from home when you aren’t traveling or is really more trouble than it’s worth?
Just enriching content that makes you feel like you are in the language and cultural. It’s hard to tell which languages will be the most enjoyable in the long run. I’d love to hear which languages people enjoyed the most.
Tell me about the interesting stuff you have enjoyed in your language learning experience and about
I have to go with Steve. Russian is an incredibly rewarding language and it’s also quite surprising how many Russian speakers live around you without you knowing about it.
Spanish speakers expect you to know their language but Russian speakers absolutely do not expect Westerners to know their language in depth, so you often get a cool and encouraging reaction out of native speakers. Soviet movies (especially Larisa Shepitko’s) are very interesting too. In my humble opinion, Russian speakers, and Russians more specifically, hold a completely different world view than we do. It’s great to discuss with them about just anything.
However, Spanish is more useful to us North Americans. I found a couple of good podcasts from Spain, and I’m strangely into the novelas that they have on netflix. It’s bad but somehow very addictive.
Can be considered blasphemy or hope in humanity at the same time.
Makes me want to learn the ancient Native American language spoken close to where I live…except the only resource seems to be a 1930 print word list of stuff like “tule branches”
As for me I’ve found that there’s so much content in Chinese that I don’t even know where to begin. I have found TV shows, movies, podcasts, books, you name it. Finnish on the other hand doesn’t have an abundance of stuff that I really consider interesting, but I’m sure I’ll find some once I start looking.
Oh my. I have to confess this too. NetFlix is great because they have the subtitles in Spanish so you can read, listen, and watch. I already watched La Reina del Sur (now reading the book), and I’m very into Teresa…One dissent though: most native speakers of Spanish I encounter are not surprised I speak Spanish. however, they ARE surprised when they find out I am an American who speaks Spanish.
in spanish i watch most everything from spain i neverwatch that much from latin america they have some incredible action tv shows in spain. i can’t stand telenovelas in portuguese there is a huge abundance of them
What is the best language to learn? Well that ones hard to say there are of course best and better arguments for every language. Irish is the best because it is very old (one of, if not the oldest in Europe). However, Russian might be better as there are more resources for it. Although arguably Russian is certainly not as old as Irish making Irish better. It could go around in circles. It depends on what you value the most / what you find the most interesting / what makes something more worthwhile in terms of your personal interests. Sorry if that response was a bit generic.
Anyhoo most interesting advanced content? Well I’m not very advanced in anything apart from German. So I’ll say German for that reason. I enjoy reading zeit.dedaserste.dewelt.de news articles. They seem well balanced and factual.
My personal favourite language! Now there is a question! I would say Hindi/Urdu (debatable if it is one language or two separate). There is nothing more addictive than a massala bollywood film, I also find biriyani and Shah Rukh Kahn irresistible. I also have never heard a language to be so beautiful as Hindi/Urdu. I don’t speak it save a small collection of basic words and can manage to write / read Urdu rather slowly.
I love to learn Russian because of its people, litterature, political and economical discussions, because I understand current events and international affairs far better as I can access the 1st hand sources. I also live and travel a lot around the Baltic sea where Russian is a common language.
French and German are two contemporary languages which are great for anything in the humanities and litterature as well as news, politics and current affairs. No matter whether you like to read Freud, Nietzsche or Goethe German is so enriching. Or Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir or Camus. German and French journalists are some of the most hard working and have many interesting points of view on almost anything, there are great easy sources at places like Radio france international or Deutsche Welle.
Latin and ancient Greek, even though they are not anyones native language anymore, are both very rich for history and litterature.
I am also most interested in peoples experience of Arabic, Chinese and Spanish. And what about contemporary Polish or Italian sources?
Out of curiosity, what is your opinion of Latin at LingQ. I might do it some day because, if my school had offered it, I would have taken it in high school instead of French and Spanish, our only choices. I think it might be cool for my interest in Law and the Catholic Church.
If I were a native speaker of English, I would invest time in learning German. The similarities between two languages will make the process easier for you. The time you invest worth it. I honestly think that the creators of the modern world are the Germans and the British people. The scientific researches are mostly published in these two languages. Even the German newspaper articles are worth to learn the language.
My second choice would be Spanish or French. Then Portuguese and Italian.
Anyone who speak English as mother tongue can learn these languages easily and the invested time/benefit ratio would be so high.
You mean velvet? Yeah, I heard it was set in 1950s Spain, which would be awesome for me. One of the things I liked about Reina del Sur was its frequent use of Castillan Spanish.
I’m trying to find more stuff in Russian to import. The blog site The Village (the-village.ru) is like a hipster site for fashion, food, cooking, and news.
It’s hard to find stuff that’s LingQ friendly and not awkward for someone to make an audio file for you from the exchange. I imported a lesson: как на самом деле делают спаржу по-корейски How to make asparagus Korean style.
I think I should start learning German. A lot of great food chefs come from Germany and I’m a huge fan of German beer. Also, Russian movies are good if you find them, but much easier to find in German.
It has got me wondering, is there a German or a Russian version of Gordon Ramsay?
I’d be curious to hear where some of you get your Russian content from.
I have been learning German for 3 years, and Romanian for about 1.5 years :). I have noticed quite a few things when learning, which is both good and bad.
German is an absolute constant adrenaline rush, and I think one of the main reasons is that they just have an almost unlimited amount of content and material lol. I looove reading, and they have translation of every possible book I have ever wanted to read lol. They also dub so many amazing american TV series, so even TV-wise, I have a staggering amount of enjoyable material :).
Romanian has been slightly different, but still very fun ^^. I have been shocked by how many Romanian books (mostly translations for me) that I have found here in the UK. There is a online Romanian bookshop in the UK, which was a brilliant find, since I was worried about losing interest :). So even a small language like Romanian, my bookshelf is now happily over-flowing ^^. It is also the most brilliant feeling to lie there and read a book that in most cases, only Romanians have read!!
Both of my choices were just based on pure interest lol. I chose German because I had a friend in my office who I wanted to chat to in German, then I fell in love with German books etc.
I then decided to choose another language alongside German after a while, and Romanian just absolutely fascinated me. The language sounds really beautiful to me since its romance but with slavic influences, the culture was different and interesting etc. It was just a world I wanted to enter and enjoy
