A hypothetical situation about languages...?

[Circuit]

I would like to be fluent in Japanese, or French. French because I could then easily get an A* GCSE and Japanese because there are so many things I want to do that involve the Japanese language. My anime I watch has run out of English subs, so I'm stuck now, and I would love to get Jap games before they are released in England. Also, I would like to know French because it is quite widely spoken.

 

[dragoniteuser]

Well so far I speak fluent Croatian(native language), English, Italian, Spannish, and I'm pretty good at Latin!
But I've always wanted to learn Japanese! It's such beautiful language! I wouldn't learn it for the sake of games or anime, but just for my own sake of mind!

 

[Taemin]

German or Japanese, buuut.. probably Japanese, since I plan to shoot for a Foreign Language Major with it after all. xD; It would be awesome to just wake up one morning and be able to speak it fluently. I'd totally ace my classes for it. lulz -shot-

 

[Akirα]

I've always admired the German and Japanese languages, so if I wanted to choose, those two for sure. I am thinking of transferring to a German university next year, so if so, I would have to learn the syntax, the pronunciation in an extensive course 6 or so months prior to the transfer. I only want to learn Japanese to understand some of the anime dialogue and get a change to watch/read some of the non-subbed anime/manga.

 

[Devil Flamingo]

English, of course. It's the hardest language to learn. Seriously.

lolno.

English is hardly the hardest language to learn, unless your native language is incredibly different (i.e. Thai, Nahuatl, Xhosa) and not an Indo-European language, and since that's not the case for most of the world (I am fairly certain that the number of speakers of Indo-European languages is greater than the number of speakers of Mandarin Chinese and all the various Chinese languages but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), English isn't that hard a language to learn for many people. Am I correct in assuming you're a native speaker of English? If so, I am not surprised by your opinion; native Anglophones have an all too common tendency to believe their language is incredibly difficult for foreigners not learn, and for most people in the West this is far from the case.

In fact, more often than not, a foreigner's difficulty with English has less to do with English actually being hard and much more to do with not being able to go to ESL classes, being surrounded by people who speak the same language as them (in some parts of the USA, this is definitely a problem; Spanish speakers almost "prevent" each other from quickly becoming fluent in English because they speak Spanish all the time and there's TV in Spanish as well) or simply not having the right set of conditions to facilitate language-learning.

I have studied the French language for almost a decade now, and I'm still not fluent in it despite being fluent in English already. As a Spanish speaker, learning French is much more easy than learning English, so why am I not fluent in it? Because I don't live in an all-French speaking area; while I do hear the occasional French here in Ottawa, about 80% of the time I hear and am exposed to English instead. XD Thus, my learning of French is slowed down.

tl;dr - A language's difficulty is not universal. As an English speaker, you may find learning Russian difficult, but a Polish speaker won't. Likewise, learning Cantonese may seem like hell, but if you already know Mandarin it shouldn't be so difficult. Within the 6000+ languages of the world, it is certainly the case that a few languages are, globally speaking, overall more difficult than others, and this would certainly be the case of languages with particular histories such as Basque, English, and Japanese; however, there is still no such thing as "the hardest language in the world". That does not exist; what is (linguistically) challenging for one person may not be at all a challenge for another.

Example: as a [Caribbean] Spanish speaker, Japanese sounds are easier for me to reproduce than English's and French's, since Japanese vowels and Spanish vowels are more or less the same, except the . As for consonants, they have most of the ones we have too. So I've never had much trouble pronouncing things in Japanese (and by pronouncing, I mean getting the right pronunciation and making the right vowels) but the grammar is a nightmare and I'd rather swim with sharks than try and bother to learn JP kanji, lol (I don't know how to read kana either, though I could, but the thing is I'm more interested in learning other languages).


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To answer the OP's question, I'd pick Irish or Turkish. I love these languages so much like you wouldn't believe...

Unfortunately none of the ones I speak already (Spanish, English, French, Italian) are too helpful when it comes to learning these other two. :C

 

[Percy Thrillington]

German - they're gonna run away with our currency. If I want a chance of striking it rich (or even getting a job), I'll more than likely have to move over there.

 

[Ho-Oh]

Spanish because it sounds easy? XD; I dunno, some words are similar to English, but I guess it's like that in every language.

...oh, or Japanese, so that I could get B/W now instead of having to wait til 2011. :(

 

[Captain Fabio]

Japanese.

Mainly because I love the culture of Japan and since being there for a few weeks, I would love to live/work out there.

 

[Alakazam17]

If I could be instantly fluent in a language, I'd choose Russian. I've been interested in it since I was in high school, and I already know the alphabet. I just need the vocabulary and grammar to go with it. XD

 

[Alice]

French.

Mostly because I want to learn Japanese the most, and really enjoy the process of learning it. With French, I really don't enjoy it, but I really want to learn it still.

 

[Brendino]

If I could instantly learn any language, I would probably pick French. This is mostly because I've got a basic knowledge of it, and knowing both English and French can usually get you a fairly high paid job around here :P Other than that, I would also like to learn Korean (because of the large local Korean population), and Russian, because I've always liked the cyrillic alphabet.

 

[King Gumball]

French because they are so classy, and apparently one of, if not the richest overall country (money, resources, infrastructure, rich-poor ratio all added up)

 

[Prometheus]

I'd say..........Dutch, Its a rich country.

 

[Agent Clank]

I would like to learn Japanese, because it would be awesome to watch anime in Japanese, and to speak to other Japanese people.

 

[femtrooper]

My native language is English, and I took French immersion...so I'm 'okay' at French, but if I had to choose another to be fluent in, it'd be Japanese hands down. Coolest language I've ever heard, and I'm a huge anime/video game/J-Pop nerd. It would benefit me so much!!! Plus I have friends in Japan, and we always speak to each other in English...but I'd love to speak to them in Japanese!!!

 

[Angelito.]

If you could instantly become fluent in one language, which one would you choose?
I'm already fluent in English, Spanish and Gujarati so I'll pick Japanese :D

 

[chinpoko]

that's an easy question to answer ,japanese cuz japan is awesome.

 

[Impo]

jibberish :)
or italian, or maybe japanese

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Japanese, so I wouldn't have to wait for my favorite anime series to be subbed to understand and enjoy them xD And so I would be in good shape to visit Japan.

 

[Margot]

Gah, I love foreign languages and I was thinking of maybe going into translation or something. I already have quite a bit of french under my belt, as well as arabic. I'm going to learn these languages regardless, so I'm not going to pick them haha

If I could magically just know some other language I would pick either norwegian, russian, or chinese. I want to learn those too ;(