Which foreign languages would you learn?

French + Italian + Spanish + Portuguese + Romanian

30 (31.9%)

German + Dutch + Scandinavians (inc Icelandic)

12 (12.8%)

Russian + West & South Slavics (Polish, Czech, etc)

5 (5.3%)

Chinese (all major dialects)

15 (16%)

Japanese

14 (14.9%)

Korean (both Hangul and Chinese characters)

4 (4.3%)

Hindustani (all major dialects)

1 (1.1%)

Baltic / Ugro-Finnic

1 (1.1%)

Greek (ancient + modern)

1 (1.1%)

Turkish

0 (0%)

Malay / Indonesian + Filipino

0 (0%)

Arabic

7 (7.4%)

Persian

0 (0%)

Hebrew

4 (4.3%)

Thai

0 (0%)

Vietnamese

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 24

[cerpntaxt]

 

[Brent]

I picked romance languages because spanish is quickly becoming essential if you want to be able to communicate clearly with everyone you run across.  I also picked Greek.  I hope to retire to my own Greek island someday. 

Can we come? 

Sure!

[Lindsey]

Sweet. 

[Alex Libman]

Better hurry up before Turkish and Arabic become the official languages of Greece.

j/k...  It's a great retirement idea.  The islands would be some of the most expensive in the world though...

[Brent]

Better hurry up before Turkish and Arabic become the official languages of Greece.

j/k...  It's a great retirement idea.  The islands would be some of the most expensive in the world though...

I didn't price land while I was in Greece, but everything else was dirt cheap.  I kind of assumed the land would be similar...  Maybe I should do some research.  Of course, I'm not going to retire for 50 years or so, everything could change. 

[freeAgent]

I answered Hindustani

Hindustani means "The Country of India", it isn't a language.  India has many languages (not dialects) with different scripts and people who can't understand each other unless they're speaking English (or Hindi - the national language).  Quick Indian language lesson (note I'm married to an Indian woman, and have spent a lot of time there):

Hindi - national language of India, not to be confused with the majority religion, Hinduism (Hindu)
English - spoken by most everyone
Gujurati - spoken by the vegetarian community of Gujurat
Bengali - spoken by folks in West Bengal (like Kolkata / Calcutta) (including my wife and I)
Marati - spoken by folks in Maharashtra, where Mumbai / Bombay is located
Kannada - spoken by folks in Karnataka, where Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India) is located
Urdu - very similar to Hindi, but spoken by Muslims. Totally different script
Sanscrit - ancient language that is to Indian languages what Latin is to Western European languages
Pali - an even older language that was the root of Sanscrit

........and about 300 other languages that are too numerous to list.

The good news is they almost all speak english, and unlike most parts of the world, consider Americans like Rock Stars (they like our technology, and our money), so it's a good place to visit, especially if you like spicy food

Matt

I was just answering in the context of the question posed...I too have never heard of "Hindustani" as a language, though Hindi is offered at my college.

[libertus]

I'm the only one who picked Hebrew 

Why not ASL?

I picked hebrew too!

[libertylover]

I picked Chinese and Korean those are two of the hottest emerging markets. I lived in Korea for two years and picked up around 200 useful words and learned to identify important sign symbols like hotel and public toilet.  Don't ever underestimate the importance of the last one.  However today as translation programs become more and more accurate on handheld pda devises.  I think people will be able to communicate in just about every language at least enough so as to facilitate commercial transactions.

[gibson042]

Wouldn't "Hindustan" be the country of India and "Hindustani" be its people?

[Alex Libman]

It might not be technically accurate, but Hindustani is often used as shorthand for "major dialects of Hindi (written in Sanskrit-based Devanāgarī script), plus major dialects of Urdu (written in Arabic alphabet)".

[Elitist Bitch]

I know an Indian woman and she refers to herself as "Hindi" or "Indian".  "Hindustani" has archaic usage (circa the 19th century) as the name for the primary language of India, Hindi.  It is written used the Devanagari script.  I have also heard the term used to describe the Hindi and Urdu languages as a group.  Urdu is considered to be a dialect of Hindi but has a lot of "loan words" from Persian (Farsi) and Arabic.  It is written using the Arabic script and is widely spoken in Pakistan.

[Alex Libman]

There's now a follow-up poll:

Which Romance Language Would You Learn?

[AlexLibman]

From Newsweek International via MSNBC.com -- English for Everyone --

Hitting the Books: In China alone, 175 million people now study English

By Jonathan Adams and Max Hirsch
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue

China's recent rise has brought with it a new conventional wisdom: that everyone must learn Mandarin. But no one's told South Korea yet. Though Chinese is increasingly popular here, the nation seems to be suffering a profound case of English fever. South Korea now boasts at least 10 "English villages" - mock Western communities complete with post offices, pharmacies and the like where kids can practice their language skills. An entire English-only town is due to open on Cheju Island in 2010. And one Internet-based company here even offers English courses for fetuses in the womb.

Next door, mighty China itself seems to have caught the English bug. Beijing guesses that more than 40 million non-native speakers now study Mandarin worldwide. But that pales next to the number of those learning English. In China alone, some 175 million people are now studying English in the formal education system. And an estimated 2 billion people will be studying it by 2010, according to a British Council report last year. "The impression is that 'Mandarin fever' is rampant and spreading, but a close look shows this is an exaggeration," says Stephen Krashen, a second-language-acquisition expert at the University of Southern California. "The dominance of English as an international language is growing."

To be sure, Mandarin has become increasingly useful, particularly in Asian business circles. And its utility will rise as China's clout grows. But English is—and, for the foreseeable future, seems set to remain—essential for those hoping to compete in the globalized world. From Brussels to Beijing, English is now the common language spoken in multinational firms, top universities and the scientific community. A recent survey by the San Francisco-based firm GlobalEnglish found that 91 percent of employees at multinationals in Latin America, Europe and Asia believed English was "critical" or "important" to their current positions. And the consulting group McKinsey warned China in 2005 that fewer than 10 percent of its college graduates were suitable for employment at multinationals—primarily because they couldn't speak English. "Any nation that ignores English learning does so at its peril," says James Oladejo, an expert in language acquisition at Taiwan's National Kaohsiung Normal University.

In recognition of this fact, numerous countries are starting to teach their kids English at ever younger ages. According to the British Council, the prevailing model is to ensure that students gain basic English proficiency in primary school and then use it as a language of study in secondary school. This model is much evident in Europe; Eurydice (an EU education unit) reports that more than 90 percent of primary-school students in Austria and Norway study English, as do more than 80 percent in Spain. In South America, Colombia and Chile have implemented ambitious programs to boost English skills. And the Philippines mandated in 2003 that English be the medium of instruction for math and science beginning in the third grade, and for all subjects in secondary school.

But no country compares with China, which has the world's largest number of English students. In 2001, Beijing ordered that English classes start in the third grade, rather than in high school as before. In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, such instruction now begins in grade one. And many Chinese parents try to accelerate the process by sticking their kids into English buxiban -- cram schools -- as early as possible. New Oriental, one company that runs such programs, says it alone has enrolled 4 million students, including 1 million last year. In total, China's English-language training market is now estimated to be worth $2.6 billion annually and to be growing at some 12 percent a year.

Driving that growth is China's rising standard of living. Middle-class parents feel intense social pressure to enroll their offspring in buxiban so they can keep pace with their peers. And the long-term benefits of English acquisition are widely touted. According to New Oriental, medium proficiency in English now gives a Chinese child an almost 25 percent salary boost when he or she enters the working world; advanced English provides a more than 70 percent boost. Of course, companies like New Oriental have a vested interest in making such arguments, but many outside experts echo them. Asians who work at multinationals but speak broken English are likely to bump up against a linguistic "glass ceiling" and be passed over for promotions. Wei Yun, a professor of English as a second language at China's Suzhou University, points to two former students who are now software engineers. The one who passed a key English exam is making double the salary of the one who failed.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) -- the U.S.-based organization that administers the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and similar exams -- says that Eastern European countries and Persian Gulf states like Qatar have also become big growth markets. But they are dwarfed by the hot economies of Asia. In Vietnam, the region's newest "tiger", an estimated 90 percent of all foreign-language learners now study English.

In South Korea, "the hunger for Western—and specifically U.S.—education seems to have no limits," says Bhaskar Pant, head of the ETS's Asia-Pacific operations. Many Korean universities now require all students to pass the TOEFL in order to graduate, and many employers won't hire applicants unless they're similarly qualified—even for jobs where English is not routinely used. More and more South Korean families now pack their young ones off to the United States for expensive English-only summer camps. According to Marilyn Plumlee, the president of Korea TESOL (an organization for English-language teachers), interest in Chinese at Hankuk University where she teaches has spiked, but English majors still outnumber Chinese majors by more than 2 to 1. In fact, China's rise has actually increased the desire to learn English among the country's neighbors, as they seek to maintain a competitive edge. Take Taiwan; 3 million students now study English in its schools, compared with roughly 1 million in 2001. Taiwan is also following South Korea's lead by opening an "English village."

In Japan, Mandarin has surged past French and German to become the second most popular foreign language taught in the country. But Chinese still ranks a distant second to English, which is increasing its lead. According to government statistics, in 2005 there were some 3.6 million high-school students studying English, and just 22,000 studying Chinese. And last year Tokyo created 100 "super English high schools," where core classes are taught exclusively in English.

Farther afield, Mandarin also trails far behind English in influence. David Graddol, the author of last year's British Council report, notes that Chinese is growing more popular in Europe. But he's skeptical it will ever weaken English's hold over the EU. "English has become the lingua franca of Europe ... it's the language of integration." The statistics are telling: from 2002 to 2005, the numbers of German primary-school students studying English soared from 16 percent to 47 percent, and in Greece they've doubled, from 44 percent to nearly 90 percent.

Of course, none of this guarantees that English's current importance will last forever. Graddol, for one, predicts that after peaking at 2 billion in 2010, the number of English students worldwide will begin to drop sharply. Eventually, Mandarin could replace it. But the operative word is "eventually." "Chinese will not challenge English any time soon," says David Nunan, a Hong Kong-based expert on teaching English as a second language. "English will remain the dominant global language for at least the next 50 years because of its pre-eminent position as the language of science, technology, tourism, entertainment and the media."

If study patterns are any guide, even many Chinese agree. More and more of them are heading to English classes wherever they can find them: voting with their feet in the great language election.

Not sure I believe this entirely.  While the number of people learning an additional language is growing, and English is still the most popular choice world-wide, its growth rate is slower than that of Mandarin Chinese, especially in China itself and in Central and South-East Asia...