If you decided to learn a second language just for pleasure, which one would you prefer?

Cantonese or Arabic. I've often thought they'd be useful in dealing with different groups of people at home in Australia.

I would get the most use out of French so I think that would be cool to know.

I'd like to add to my high-school French.

German and Spanish, maybe French

Definitely italian. I know a bit of it from playing the piano and I think it's a beautiful language.

A good part of my ancestry is German but nobody in my family speaks it (a few speak Slovak). I love German films though, so I'd like to be able to enjoy "The Tin Drum" and "Das Boot" without having to read subtitles.

Anything but French. Good grief, that language makes me cringe every time I hear it.

Swedish.

Not a very good survey: very limited options!

Latin

I picked Italian, but y'know, I really just wouldn't decide that I wanted to learn a language just for pleasure, because I already have to learn to many friggin' languages. And natsim, trust me when I tell you that as much as you might like to *speak* Arabic, you really don't want to *learn* it!

Latin

I'd learn some dead languages.

Gaelic

Gaelic.

Matt! HA!

Russian

:)

Mandarin would be the most useful. (I don't ever expect to speak Cantonese properly because there are seven tones--Mandarin only has four.) I would like to speak French fluently, but there's not real purpose unless we move to Paris for a few years.

If I could just magically know the language then either Japanese or maybe Welsh, but if I had to actually *learn* the language then French since it would be by far the easiest for me (having done it for over eight years in the distant past and being quite similar to English) and still of interest to know.

Learning another lang. is something I have tried before but I can't seem to get the hang of it. French really seems to be a hard lang. for me!

Spanish because I already know a little.

I took evening adult-ed Spanish classes for a while until I clued into the fact that just going to the classes and doing minimal homework was not going to do it- I'd actually have to study and learn to get any results. I'd really like to speak it and someday even be proficient enough to read one of my favorite poets in his native language and understand some of the subtext, but right now my study-learn energy is being put into other things. I'd like to go to Mexico and paint there- so that I could learn by immersion and get some good painting done, too.

Vos: I was reading something about vulgarities used in different languages and came across this one:

Krijg de mazelen.

Is this commonly used? I didn't think it was that insulting.

they: It means 'Get the measles'. It's common here to wish someone all kinds of terribles diseases, cancer, typhoid., AIDS, etc.

This one (krijg de mazelen) is not used very much I must say.

I didn't think it was a very up-to-date insult.

I'm not sure that learning another language counts as "for pleasure," with me. I think that the next language I learn (if any) will be a computer language. Depending on where I live next, I might learn spanish, as it would increase my clientele.

Chinese so I could talk to my friends at work and/or see a really foreign country. Actually one of my dream lives is as a rice farmer in China.

because the other half of americans population mostly speaks Spanish or some form of it, plus i already have 3 years experience.

What about ASL (american sign language)? I would love to know how to speak that... Or rather... Sign that?

I took ASL for two years and loved it, despite hating the actual class with all of my being.

kligon

pleasure?

Latin

Just for pleasure? Probably Esperanto.

If I actually wanted to use it, probably Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit... Then I could read old books. -Really- old books.

Analog: if you want old, go for Sumerian or Akkadian. Only then, they're really old clay tablets, not really old books.

Aramaic.

Not a big fan of Aramaic...

Enh: I'm glad to hear that. Anyone who described themselves as "a big Aramaic fan" would certainly need to get out more. "Woo HOO! Aramaic!! Yeah!!! Kick ass!"

I sometimes wonder if we had more people who can properly translate from Aramaic to English maybe the Bible Belt would be less arrogant about "English was good enough for Jesus" and more aware of the mistranslations. Then again, I'm told large parts of the new testament were originally in Greek and we still have the problem... oh, well!

Brian, Enhe: Have you seen Stigmata?

pcpr: actually, pretty much the whole New Testament is in Greek, except for a word or two of Aramaic and Hebrew.
they: yes. And I actually kind of liked it. It was a fun movie. But of I course I had a little scholarly bone to pick with them: the text they used was the Gospel of Thomas, which only survives in Greek as far as I know, although it's possible that it had an Aramaic antecedent. But the big problem was that the script that she wrote it in was a paleo-Hebrew script which Aramaic was never written in, and by the time of Jesus was only used in a few places, mostly to write the name of God (the Tetragrammaton) by particularly pious sects of Jews like those at the Dead Sea.

I liked it too.. I loved the idea behind it... and thanks, I was wondering how you felt about it and how accurate it might be.

yeah, I generally don't look for accuracy in that type of movie, because I know it would just annoy me if they didn't get it right. So I tend to be really forgiving. I thought Patricia Arquette was good, and Gabriel Byrne and Jonathan Pryce just pretty much rock!

Enh..do you believe there is another gospel written by jesus?

magbast: not really. I mean, I guess it's possible, but it seems like it would have survived if there had been, especially given that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were so concerned with preserving a story of Jesus' life. There are theories about a common source, called the "Q" source, which Matthew, Mark, and Luke all drew upon; reconstructions of such a text are based on the commonalities between those three gospels, but no such source actually exists anymore, if it ever did. If there was one, though, it was probably not a first-hand account of Jesus' life. I think he died before he had time to write his memoirs.
The thing about works like the Gospel of Thomas (the one used in "Stigmata") is that they are Gnostic Gospels, meaning that they belong to a school of mystical thought which post-dates Jesus' life. The Gospel of John shows more affinities with gnosticism, and I believe it was latest of the gospels to be written. If you compare the Gospel of Thomas with the Gospel of Mark (probably the earliest gospel), you'll immediately see how very different they are.

Stigmata rocked!

Enh...i just thought it was interesting idea...and made for an interesting movie...

magbast: oh, me too, completely. That's why I went to see it, and I really did enjoy it!
Sorry if my previous answer got overly technical!

Enh- i asked *you*...because i knew i would get the technical answer

While traveling in Asia I managed to develop a 200 word vocabulary in Malay: Restaurants, directions, pleasantries. I found it to be a really easy and interesting language: no difficult pronunciations, logical, some interesting rules (eg. to pluralize you repeat the word, if it is a long word, you just repeat the last syllable). I sometimes think that it would be fun to learn to speak it fluently.

ukraine

Japanese, Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), and Korean.

I already know some french so I'd have to say Italian cause my girlfriend's family is Italian.

Russian