Which language would you advise me to learn ?

[Olscream]

Hello everyone !

I'm french, I live in germany and I'm actually thinking about learning a new language but I'm hesitating between italian, russian or japonese. I also take into account that it needs time to maintain a language at a correct/good level.

I already speak "fluently" english (B2-C1), german (B2-C1), spanish (B1-B2). I also know tunisian arabic at a basic level (A2) but I don't wish to learn it more now.

I'm now student but soon I will be computer scientist, informatician, computer engineer or work in the domain of IT.

My different motivations and constraints:

-Japonese : I like mangas, animes, the history of Japan, the food and I find this culture "interesting and strange" in the same time. It's not an european language, a cool thing for me. The language is "a bit" hard but not impossible to speak. The main hurdle would be to read and write it. As student in informatics, it could maybe cool to learn japanese since a lot of robots are developed there. BUT I don't meet japaneses in my daily life and it's really hard to meet japaneses in my daily life, and my best/main method to learn languages is to talk with native speakers. Moreover, a flight to Japan is expensive.

-Italian : I like the italian history (and also the roman history), "The Prince" of Macchiavelli, the gastronomy, the "temperament" of people. It's for me an easy language that I can master in less time. It sounds beautiful. It's easy and cheap to go on a trip there. I can also see nearly everyday italians in my daily life. BUT I'm a bit afraid to mix it with spanish. There are moreover not so many people who speak it in the world and it's maybe less "interesting" for my work.

-Russian : the philosophy and literature is interesting, I don't know the eastern europe, I would also like to learn a slavic language, I meet often "cool" people from Russia, Ukrainia etc... it's an influent language and maybe interesting for business purposes. A trip to Russia is also not so expensive. BUT it's a difficult language (more or less like japanese) notably because of the declinations, the pronunciation, and the grammer in general.

Maybe I'm wrong by thinking in this way, but could you also help me to choose by sharing me your point of view, your experience, your advises etc... ? Notably about the confusion Spanish/Italian, those languages for a business IT purpose, etc...

Thank you VERY MUCH in advance for your help !
Have a nice day guys !

PS: Sorry for my mistakes in english. Don't hesitate to ask me if you don't understand anything .

[Theodisce]

I've never studied an Asian language (dabbled a little in Turkish, but it has a Latin alphabet) and I feel very discouraged by writing systems not based on Latin/Greek , so I'm basically ignorant and biased regarding Japanese. If you think you will be able to make it a part of your life by doing enjoyable things in that language on a regular basis its perhaps worth learning. But you seem not to encounter many native speakers and it is the speaking that is specially important for you. In order to learn Japanese you would have to invest much (I mean the time needed to learn it) without having the privilege of enjoying the benefits any way soon.

Russian would be complicate, too, but it has the potential of becoming a meaningful part of your life through the native speakers you have been already meeting.

I would not be necessarily afraid about mixing your Spanish with Italian. It may happen from time to time, but since you already speak Spanish decently, I see no need to worry. I occasionally mix Spanish with French (which happens to be my strongest Romance language) but I am able to correct myself almost instantly in most cases. To get a B1 you need as little as about 400 hours, possibly less. If you are determined enough, you will be speaking the language in several months. That would in turn lead you into this more advanced phase when the growth gets slowed down but would also enable you to chose another language while working on your Italian. Plus, you are now at the point where you can understand at least some native content in Italian and this ability will only improve after ~50 hours of exposure.

[neofight78]

I can confidently say that you should learn Russian, it's an awesome language! Regarding IT there is some serious programming talent here in Russia. Not only that, but where I am there are a bunch a meetups for us tech heads.

Disclaimer: This opinion is horribly biased

[Chung]

Hello everyone !

I'm french, I live in germany and I'm actually thinking about learning a new language but I'm hesitating between italian, russian or japonese. I also take into account that it needs time to maintain a language at a correct/good level.

I already speak "fluently" english (B2-C1), german (B2-C1), spanish (B1-B2). I also know tunisian arabic at a basic level (A2) but I don't wish to learn it more now.

I'm now student but soon I will be computer scientist, informatician, computer engineer or work in the domain of IT.

My different motivations and constraints:

-Japonese : I like mangas, animes, the history of Japan, the food and I find this culture "interesting and strange" in the same time. It's not an european language, a cool thing for me. The language is "a bit" hard but not impossible to speak. The main hurdle would be to read and write it. As student in informatics, it could maybe cool to learn japanese since a lot of robots are developed there. BUT I don't meet japaneses in my daily life and it's really hard to meet japaneses in my daily life, and my best/main method to learn languages is to talk with native speakers. Moreover, a flight to Japan is expensive.

-Italian : I like the italian history (and also the roman history), "The Prince" of Macchiavelli, the gastronomy, the "temperament" of people. It's for me an easy language that I can master in less time. It sounds beautiful. It's easy and cheap to go on a trip there. I can also see nearly everyday italians in my daily life. BUT I'm a bit afraid to mix it with spanish. There are moreover not so many people who speak it in the world and it's maybe less "interesting" for my work.

-Russian : the philosophy and literature is interesting, I don't know the eastern europe, I would also like to learn a slavic language, I meet often "cool" people from Russia, Ukrainia etc... it's an influent language and maybe interesting for business purposes. A trip to Russia is also not so expensive. BUT it's a difficult language (more or less like japanese) notably because of the declinations, the pronunciation, and the grammer in general.

Maybe I'm wrong by thinking in this way, but could you also help me to choose by sharing me your point of view, your experience, your advises etc... ? Notably about the confusion Spanish/Italian, those languages for a business IT purpose, etc...

Thank you VERY MUCH in advance for your help !
Have a nice day guys !

PS: Sorry for my mistakes in english. Don't hesitate to ask me if you don't understand anything .

If you want to learn a language for business/work purposes, do so when you have a job offer in hand for the relevant country/environment (or are about to be transferred to that environment where they speak some language that you have yet to learn) or already live in that place (e.g. you take the plunge to move to Russia without a job offer, and conclude that you have to learn Russian unless you're OK with restricting yourself to looking for work where you could get away with not knowing more Russian than a few pleasantries, and will learn it just to simplify your life after work). I've found that trying to learn a language for professional purposes makes the most sense when you're set on becoming a language teacher or translator/interpreter. Otherwise you're better off boning up on your non-linguistic knowledge and abilities. For example, you as an aspiring computer jockey are better off focusing on picking up IT stuff and the fundamentals of business. It's much harder to learn that kind of stuff on the fly than any foreign language and again it'll come down to which language to choose, which only you can figure out.

Trying to learn a language other than English for perceived benefits in the future job market isn't a great use of time unless you need that language explicitly (e.g. you get a job offer to work somewhere, and are expected to master enough of the local language after a certain time. It's a bit like how students at FSI and DLI are taught intensively some language from scratch with the high certainty (or guarantee) that they'll use those skills in the field in short order). Otherwise you run the risk of becoming like those people who listened to business bobbleheads who gleefully spouted in the '80s that smart American businesspeople were learning Japanese because that was the future language of business, only to then cast Russian as that new language of business in the '90s, and then in the '00s moved the goalposts to Spanish. So far this decade, Mandarin seems to get that privilege. I wonder what they'll come up with for the next decade.

Look at things from the prospective hiring manager. Your competency in foreign languages is just one side of you. If you're a code-monkey who can't work well with others in the office or piss off clients, you probably won't get a job or last long in one no matter how many languages you speak or CEFR exams you pass.

tl;dr the answer is Finnish.

[mcthulhu]

I wouldn't worry about confusing Spanish and Italian. If you already know two languages in the same family, branching out to one more will help you much more than it will hinder you.

Don't worry too much about population size as a criterion for choosing a language. If that were the main consideration, wouldn't we all just be studying Chinese? What you, personally, will get out of a language is much more important. Motivation is crucial for this kind of investment of time and energy, as you probably know. All of your reasons for being interested in those three languages are valid ones, but you're the only one who can determine which one would motivate you the most. Personally, I'd find personal enjoyment of a language to be a much stronger incentive than the uncertain potential of future business use.

I'm not in a position to say which of these three would be most useful in the German IT industry (if any), but you could probably find people there to ask - professors, if no one else. If you did happen to end up in a job where one of these languages would be a requirement or advantage, that would take care of motivation.

I wouldn't really consider Russian and Japanese comparable in terms of their writing systems and vocabulary. With Russian, you only have one straightforward alphabet to worry about, and Cyrillic is much easier to learn than hiragana + katakana + kanji. You'll probably also find a lot more cognates with languages you already know. Russian should be more accessible to you.

But why choose yet? You could just put all three on your to-do list, and at least in the beginning, try looking at some introductory lessons in all three in parallel. You can find plenty of those online. Playing with all three for a little while might help you decide which language speaks to you (so to speak) the most and which you should focus on first.

[tarvos]

Kiribati.

[solocricket]

I find that connection to a culture is what keeps me motivated to learn a particular language. It seems as though you're interested in the cultures of all three languages you've listed, but (and I'm reading into what you're writing!) you seem quite enamored with Italian. Since I like native materials from the start, consider how easily you can get Japanese/Italian/Russian learning materials. If you love Italian culture and you can get Italian novels/movies/TV shows/etc. easily, I'd say go with that one. Money and business are not great motivators for language learning-- it always turns into "I should learn X" which just morphs into guilt.... Even where English is concerned, it seems that the best second-language English speakers have found something to love about Anglophone culture, or some community they wanted to participate in.

And as for mixing up languages, you can probably expect to mix Italian and Spanish in the beginning, but sticking with Italian will soon sort those things out. If you really like Italian, you should go for it.

And if you're still undecided, I second mcthulu-- try all three! I would add in native materials to see which ones you like best.

[zenmonkey]

You should learn the language
that you learn, and none other.
We will also give great advice
on what to eat and what to wear.
Should it be long or short,
we can tell you to color your hair.
What language to learn?
Don't even listen to your mother.

(boy, is that awful)

I'm currently, like you, living in Germany (and partially from France) and consult to an IT group - in my small cluster of 20 desks we had today people that spoke Italian, Hindi, French, German and English in our office. One of my project mangers is Hungarian, we have a near shore team in Romania. I had Skype meetings with Korea and China. Just choose the languages you like, each language brings it's own opportunities.

Choose the one you will stick to, because only playing with a language (which is fine if that is what you want to do) won't deliver the utility that you seem to be driving for.

And they have IT needs in all those countries...

PS: Learn Ladakhi.

[Atinkoriko]

I'm disappointed that no one's mentioned Uzbek yet

[Xmmm]

I find Russian at least twice as hard to learn as Italian.

However, learning Russian has unique rewards.

Russian Firefighter Saves Cat

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