Acroticus wrote:Hello NS! This thread was made after I had great success asking NS about which Germanic language I should learn: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic ... 0&t=300843
The thread was so interesting, in fact, that I wanted to get NS's opinion on other languages!
The great response I got lead me to make this thread: Which of the Eastern European Languages is the best for an English speaker to learn? (Which should I learn?)
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Keep in mind here, I am not including Russian as an option. This is because, I have heard, Russian is loosing ground in eastern europe as a/the lingua franca, which means that the native languages in eastern Europe would be becoming stronger. (Also, Russian is too easy an answer)
I have heard that Polish is a relatively important language in Eastern Europe, with more speakers(around 40 million I think) than any other eastern European language, but it is not widespread throughout the rest of eastern Europe. Furthermore, I have heard that Polish is very hard for an English speaker to pick up. I would, however, consider learning Polish if it had an extremely interesting culture, which I do not have evidence for or against.
Serbo-Croatian seemed like a very interesting language to me, with nearly 19 million speakers, and it opens up a group of balkan countries. However, I have heard that the language differs from country to country (as Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian, as well as Montenegrin, are all supposedly the same language). I read that Serbia uses cyrillic, but that Croatia uses the latin script. Does anyone know how important the differences are between the countries? And furthermore, are these countries safe since the breakup of Yugoslavia? The Croatian culture in particular interests me, as does Serbian. I do not know much about Bosnia. I also do not know Serbo-Croatian's relative difficulty compared to other eastern European languages.
Romanian is a very interesting choice; as a romance language, with the Latin script, it would likely be the easiest language for an english speaker to learn. It also commands a decent number of speakers (I don't have a source, but I remember reading 23 million) However, I have read that Romanian is not even spoken throughout all of Romania, much less other eastern European nations. Romanian culture is very interesting (Dracula is from there!
The Baltic Languages also interest me, as I have ancestors from lithuania. However, all of these languages seem to be not widely spoken outside their own nations, and they seem to be relatively unique, making them more difficult for an English speaker to learn. I would consider one of these languages if one of the countries had an extremely interesting culture, or a large presence in the job market (Latvia is an interesting niche).
The other languages I think that deserve mention, but I do not know about, are Albanian, Ukranian, Czech, and Slovene. Are any of these languages particularly valuable, surprisingly easy to learn, or a gateway to a particularly interesting culture? For some reason Czech seems the most interesting of these to me, as I have heard that it may share a decent amount of vocabulary with German for a slavic language.
Anyway, NS, I would ask your advice on possibly learning one of these languages. Please help me by talking about the difficulty of learning the language, the utility of the language, and the culture of those who speak the language.
A side note: I hope I have not offended anyone by my mistaking labelling languages or any other mistakes I may have made while categorizing languages and cultures. I do not mean any offense, and I truly know little about many of these countries.
Russian. It's no competition between all of the Eastern European languages.
German should always be first of all languages to learn, though, German is really cool.
