What language would you like to speak?

[Jakob]

Mandarin (It'll be useful in the future!)
French
Japanese (properly)

[Valiant]

Italian

[Frenchie]

Spanish. (need to learn seriously)

Arabic. (I have some notions od Northern African dialectal Arabic which I learnt during my national service there)

Japanese.

[mike]

Hindi. 

[agagisgroovy]

Gaelic

Irish, Scots or Manx?

I would like to speak Scots Gaelic fluently, or learn Welsh or have a convincing Glasgow accent.

[Elleigh]

Chinese.

I'm learning to speak Chinese thanks to a Chinese colleauge who is helping me.

[TheLurker]

Greek (Demotic).
Have been trying to learn for some 10 years now. 
Not one of nature's linguists.

[Gus]

Gaelic

Irish, Scots or Manx?

I would like to speak Scots Gaelic fluently, or learn Welsh or have a convincing Glasgow accent.

scots gaelic

[nutkin]

Cornish.

Although it would be pretty useless in Norfolk...

[numbnuts]

I like to talk dirty

[Phil]

Italian, I really want to live there for a bit. 
After that, Arabic, because it opens up so many places to go, and after that the rest of the common European languages so I can read things in Foreign. 

[agagisgroovy]

scots gaelic

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/foghlam/learngaelic/index.shtml
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk
http://www.noclockthing.de/foramnagaidhlig
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml? (Click on Radio nan Gaidheal)
How to Learn Gaelic

 

[andygates]

Russian, Japanese, Arabic. 

I was so bad at French and German that I tried these all because they're so different.

But I'm rotten at them too.   

[PeteB99]

I bought a hungarian language tutor pack from a charity shop last week. So far I've only got as far as glancing through the book and listening to 5 minutes of the CD. How do I motivate myself to become fluent?

[rogerzilla]

I'd like to speak Chinese, so I can tell all those guys with Chinese tattoos that their Confucius-he-say motto really reads "supermarket"* or "bidet".


*there was an actual case of this; either the tattooist got it wrong or was Having A laugh.

[Tom B]

there was an actual case of this; either the tattooist got it wrong or was Having A laugh.

Here's a discussion of this

(Summary)
Looks like he got it wrong in this case; there's no similarity in sound between the boyfriend's name and the characters used to represent it. Unlikely he was having a laugh: the characters themselves do not mean 'supermarket', rather, they form the name of a (lesser?) supermarket chain in Hong Kong. It's rather like someone have a name that looked or sounded like 'Tesco' or 'Londis'...

[Maladict]

Nihongo.

[mike]

Nihongo.

bless you.

[Gus]

scots gaelic

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/foghlam/learngaelic/index.shtml
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk
http://www.noclockthing.de/foramnagaidhlig
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml? (Click on Radio nan Gaidheal)
How to Learn Gaelic

 

Hmm, I might give it a go, how can I find all the profanities and learn them first 

G

[Tom B]

The 'How to Learn Gaelic' blog that Yellow-Ceitidh lists is first-rate. The blogger has given this a lot of thought and effort: excellent general advice for anyone interested in language-learning. Many thanks!

[Mr Larrington]

Curiously enough, I sat next to someone on the tube last night who was reading a book entitled "Gaelic Can Be Fun" - a sort of Spoke Yourself Gaelic With The Aid Of Cartoons thing.

[agagisgroovy]

Hmm, I might give it a go, how can I find all the profanities and learn them first 
G

A quick Google brought up:
NSFW http://www.insultmonger.com/swearing/scots_gaelic.htm 

Curiously enough, I sat next to someone on the tube last night who was reading a book entitled "Gaelic Can Be Fun" - a sort of Spoke Yourself Gaelic With The Aid Of Cartoons thing.

I tried to get my parents to buy me that book in Oban. They said I needed something 'proper' and I have now got teach yourself, though I mostly learnt on the internet. London has quite a big Gaelic sort of thing - they even have a Feis. 

[CAMRAMan]

I bought a hungarian language tutor pack from a charity shop last week. So far I've only got as far as glancing through the book and listening to 5 minutes of the CD. How do I motivate myself to become fluent?

Best I can offer is that once you've mastered it, you've learned one of the world's trickiest & most complicated languages. On the plus side, it's a purely WYSIWYG language pronunciation-wise.

I can't for the life of me think of any benefit, aside from when visiting Hungary, that it would bestow, though.

[teethgrinder]

I'm not so sure about only understanding just how to speak and not be able to read a language. Especially eastern and Arabic languages, which also have very different cultures to our own.
I suppose I'd go Japanese, but I'd really want to know the culture too. Arabic culture might be interesting too.

So, I think, maybe Spanish, which would open up a few more contries.
Or maybe Italian, or French.
Probably Spanish.

[Maladict]

I have restarted my Japanese quest thanks to this thread and the other language thread.  I found a kana practice website and am working my way through hiragana at the moment.  Once I've done that I plan to start learning from the web (there's a wikibook at wikibooks.org).  This should allow me to take a "traditional" approach (rather than using romaji for everything).  Currently I have 3 columns (a, e, i, u, o, ka, ke, ki, ku, ko, sa, se, shi, su, so) pretty much down.  IIRC to be able to read a newspaper one needs around 1,900 kanji. If I learn one a day then that should only take 6 years or so. 

If anyone else is tempted to try this, read this first.  If that doesn't put you off (or ruin your keyboard) then you may just be stupid enough to try.