Languages

>>1206930
>> What's the easiest language to learn for a native English speaker?

We have no idea how smart, dumb, or lazy you really are. Any language could be considered "easy".

>> What's the most useful language to learn for an American that wants to travel?

Depends where you want to travel... Knowing German is not going to help you much in South Asia, right?

>> Is there any point in mastering foreign languages, or should I just try and get the gist?

Realistically you probably need to know about 700 words to be able to converse in most situations in a foreign language.. above that you are entering what some would call fluent.. but "fluent".. its a myth.

>>1206930
>German
>English
>Up to you m8

>>1206930
I've been trying Russian for about 4 months. Slowly I see myself slipping as I have had major difficulties with their conjugation system and I have gotten frustrated and been practicing less

>>1206934
This.

Why are you asking retarded questions op

There are some languages which are more widely spoken, and so more "useful".

>>1206952
Like this guy said, Russian is extra hard for Americans

>>1206934
That last bit was extremely helpful.

>>1206956
I'm sorry for asking you to make a few inferences, I can see that it's a stretch for you.

>>1206930
I feel that Spanish is quite amazingly easy for this Scandidfg that is fluent in English and speaks some German. Especially the kind they speak in the Americas. I'd go for that.

>>1206967
Thanks mate, I'll give Spanish a go!

>>1206930
>French
>Spanish
>Learn the basics and you'll be fine

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>>1206930
Anybody like Bush more outside of office? He's just so darn cute in a goofy old man kind of way.

>>1206930
three of the most important languages are also most commonly found in the American school system.

German, French, Spanish

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>>1207032
>most important languages
>German
Nein

>>1206930
I miss the old days when any language thread on /trv/ would turn into a shit-fest arguing the merits of learning Esperanto.

>But there are speakers of Esperanto in every country.
>Yeah, 3 in one country, 1 in another...

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>>1206930
Of possible interest --map showing dominant languages around the world by country...

>>1207096
...And most common second language in each country.

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>>1207098
...and here's the image that I forgot to post.

>>1207055
German has roots in a number of European languages so between it, English and either Latin or Spanish you have a lot of wiggle room.

Still mad Esperanto isn't a normal thing desu.

Top travel languages

God tier:
ENGLISH

Useful tier:
FRENCH
SPANISH
RUSSIAN

Meme tier:
ARABIC
CHINESE

>>1206930
> What's the easiest language to learn for a native English speaker?
Spanish

> What's the most useful language to learn for an American that wants to travel?
Depends where you want to travel, but in general it's Spanish for an American, because it comes in handy in the US too. And it opens up a gigantic swath of the world (Latin America).

Travel in Latin America isn't like Asia where you can really meet lots of locals using only English. That's only possible in maybe Argentina, Mexico, and the tourist spots of carribean countries. So IMO if you want to travel to latin america for any real length of time, you'll want to get conversational in spanish. Everyone will expect you to speak it.

Learning asian languages for Asia is more or less futile, you won't learn it yourself to any useful degree without serious, hardcore focus. And they're only useful for a single country generally.

Same with Russian, though that's useful for a large swath of the world. If you have ambitions of travel through central/eastern europe, some russian is probably a must.

> Is there any point in mastering foreign languages, or should I just try and get the gist?

Depends what you want to do. Do you want to meet people that aren't educated enough to know english? Do you want to fuck any latinas? You need conversational-level, more than just the basics.

But if you just want to travel and see tourist sites and hang out with backpackers, or stick to meeting the rare educated locals that speak english, then you can really get by just by knowing "thank you".

>>1207220
>FRENCH
Why french? You'll only use it in france and west africa, which no one goes to anyway.

>>1206962
That last bit is utter bullshit.
700 words is absolutely fucking nothing and is nowhere near close to being able to converse in most situations. It's not even enough for small talk. 700 is just about enough to study very simple texts and try to guess the plentiful unknown words from context. And that's not even touching things like grammar - conjugation and declension can shit all over your "700 words".
And fluency is not an unachievable myth, it's just something that takes a lot of effort and constant practice. And it's definitely not just learning more than 700 words.

>>1206930
German or Dutch, both of which are among the least useful travel languages.

>>1207237
As a primary language it's only spoken a few places, but it was one of the bigger lingua franca of the 19th and 20th century so more people speak it than you'd expect. It has lost a lot of ground to English, though.

Spanish is probably the most useful language in terms of speakers, regions and mutual intelligibility.

>>1206930
http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Romance languages desu.
In most other places you'll do more than fine with just English.

>>1206930
> What's the easiest language to learn for a native English speaker?

not gonna be very useful, but:
Pidgin (of, e.g. Papua NG);
Dutch. (grammatically pretty close to English, but mastering phoenetics can be quite hard.)

> What's the most useful language to learn for an American that wants to travel?
Apart from the obvious answer (English), the second most-useful is probably Spanish . Also reasonably easy to learn

> Is there any point in mastering foreign languages, or should I just try and get the gist?
just for getting around while travelling, and for some basic bonding in a bar, the latter.
But already in that bar situation you'll quickly notice how you get excluded from the conversation, and even being made fun of/ snubbed.

Actual conversation level can be acquired after several months immersion though. Depending on your ability it can be from 3 to .. uh.. 12 maybe. For the less able of us, maintaining motivation becomes the main problem.

>>1207237
You forgot Belgium, Switzerland, Haiti, all of central Africa.

French really is the second best language in the world. Easy for English speakers to learn and very useful.

>>1207220
drop russian a tier and this is spot on
idk how they're memes tho

>>1207310
Nah, Russian is genuinely useful in all the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries and isn't so hard to learn.

China is meme tier because it's only useful in one country and very hard to learn
Arabic is one step above because it's hard to learn but can be useful in many countries

Afrikaans. It's got pretty much the same grammar as English, and its vocabulary is dead easy.
But it's even more useless than Dutch, so yeah.

>>1207316
>Russian
>not hard to learn

Nigga wut.

>>1207432
> even more useless than Dutch
shut your damn mouth

>>1207451
Dutch still useful in some West Indies locations.

>>1207452
South Africa, but only the people who speak Afrikaans

>>1206935
>German
Dutch is probably easier than German.
Italian *might* be easier than both.

Spanish is arguably the best language for at traveler, especially from the USA.

>>1207316
>Nah, Russian is genuinely useful in all the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries and isn't so hard to learn.
If i wanna visit eastern europe, will knowing some russian get me by?
Are all those slavic languages similar to russian?

French Canadian here

Learn Spanish over French
French is much harder than English or Spanish

>>1207316
Chinese works in PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore and there are many Chinese communities EVERYWHERE like Canada and Australia. Arabic is meme tier because there are so many dialects and you'll look like Moses if you speak Classic Arabic

>>1207298
Belgium and Switzerland aren't relevant, because English is so widely spoken that nothing else is necessary for travel there.

So perhaps central and eastern africa, and haiti, but the likelihood of traveling to any of those places seems relatively low.

>>1207734
Outside of the PRC, though, you can get around without any issues at all with just English.

>>1207096
>turkic
They mean turkish... right?
Turkic refers to more central asian, like the Ughyurs.

>>1206930
desu I'm a 2nd gen hispanic that was raised around spanish, I can sort of understand the shitty cholo spanish that's commonly used by the "less educated" population, but any more than that and my brain shuts off. Seriously, it's like my brain intentionally shuts off when somebody speaks spanish, I'm usually good with languages and learning them, but Spanish is fucking impossible, kinda sucks desu.

>>1207435
Less hard than Arabic or Chinese for sure

>>1207532
In many countries yes

>>1207734
HK speak Cantonese and everyone speaks English too. They hate Mainlanders so idk why you'd bother with Mandarin when you can use English. Singaporeans speak English perfectly.
Again, Chinese communities in Anglo countries speak English.
I like Mandarin but unless you want to live in China it's a waste of time.

>>1207735
>he's not a real traveler

>>1207734
Arabic dialects are a meme. They are mostly mutually intelligible. As is the idea that MSA is uncommon. It's used everyday on TV and such.