Cunning Linguists

[khaosworks]

So... should I take up German or Spanish? Which would be easier, given I think and speak in English?

(Yes, playingpossum, I already know your vote.)

Comments

[katyhh.livejournal.com]

German and Spanish aren't really related much at all, I'd think (I learned Spanish for three years.)
So - I would *think* it is easier to learn Spanish, but of course I'd vote for you learning German. Hey, I mean, how many Spanish filkers do you know? *g*

[liret.livejournal.com]

I've tried to learn both, and had a lot more sucess with spanish.

[tarkrai.livejournal.com]

German. No, not biased at all...

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

Learn German. Do post-graduate studies in Germany. We would be so thrilled!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

German is hellishly difficult; I'm having a much harder time with it than I do with French.

So go for German -- "We choose to do this, not because it is easy, but because it is difficult."

[gingicat]

Well, you know more Germans personally. But word order in Spanish is closer to English. Both have a lot of English cognates; complementary sets, in fact. :)

[goldispikes.livejournal.com]

German! Because it's industrial. And uses logik.

[cellio]

What do you plan to use the language for? Is this just a hobby? Do you want to be able to hold conversations? Do you wnat to be able to do research with non-English sources?

How are you at holding a complex thought in memory until you get to the verb that ties it all together? :-)

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Well, ideally, I'd like to be able to hold conversations in it, but it's more of a hobby, with non-English source research a secondary consideration.

Yes, I'd heard that about German...

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Having already studied Yiddish, you will likely have a fairly easy time with German. So I'd suggest learning that first (if only not to have almost-comprehension moments when around German speakers; there's a great deal of overlap, but there are points where it's necessary to actually know the language being spoken), then moving on to Spanish afterward, as it's a whole other ball of wax of another color.

German

[etherial.livejournal.com]

No one who speaks German could be evil.

Re: German

[nightface.livejournal.com]

LOL

thank you

[daveon.livejournal.com]

German grammer is very non-intuitive for English thinkers. I can handle French but German and I never saw eye to eye.

On that shallow basis alone I'd suggest Spanish. Plus if you live in the US, isn't Spanish a must? ;)

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

Spanish.

It's a totally cool language, and globally, more people speak it than German.

Besame mucho!

B

[playingpossum.livejournal.com]

*waves hand frantically at back of class*
pick me!! pick me!!

[kyttn.livejournal.com]

Personally, I find German easier to internalize than Spanish, but that may be because I grew up hearing it spoken. Many words are similar enough to English words that the vocabulary becomes more simple to learn.

That said, Spanish is probably more useful to someone living in the US. In our area there has been a great influx of spanish speakers, and I can see that it would be tremendously helpful for me to learn the language.

I think it depends on who you want to be talking with. You've got enough German friends that I'd think German would be a very good choice. However, you may come in contact more often with Spanish speaking (and non-english speaking) people on a daily basis.

Learn both?

[(Anonymous)]

Since you're asking, you probably don't have a strong preference either way, nor any particular reason to learn either one. But given where you live right now, Spanish would seem to be the obvious choice as the language to learn first of the two.

Once you learn it to 'travelling Spanish' level--which is no more than minimal competence, far from fluency, and won't take that long--suddenly, most of the Central and South American countries open up to you. So many new lands and cultures close to you will become much easier to explore (and just the learning of the language will make visits to them more likely).

Go for Spanish first. You may not be living so conveniently close to all those beautiful Spanish-speaking countries in a few years time.

[it-aint-easy.livejournal.com]

I think you'll have an easier time with Spanish (which is ironic, since English is derived from German). German twists word order around more, and has more sounds that will be new to an English speaker (I don't think Spanish has any). So naturally, I'm currently studying German. So are several other filkers, so you could get some support that way. And there is the sizable native German filk contingent, as others have pointed out.

[yong-mi.livejournal.com]

Another vote for Spanish.
This way you can research Confederate holdouts who ended up in South America!

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

Spanish is easier, and more useful for conversation, especially in the US and nearby countries.

German is more difficult, but much more useful for literature and research, especially in the fields of science and music.

Question no one has asked: how is it that these are the choices between which you are deciding?

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Because either one might be useful for research as well as conversation.

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

But how do these criteria exclude, for example, French, Russian, Japanese?

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Tried French and Japanese. Not terribly successful at the latter, and very rudimentary with the former. Not particularly interested in Russian.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

If you have even rudimentary French (which you say you do), Spanish will probably come much more easily to you than German. As others have said, it's quite probably more useful in the US.

However, if you're thinking of taking a class in one of them, you might think about German instead - given that it *is* a bit more difficult, the structure could be useful. (And you could write filksongs in German...hmmm.) Spanish would probably be easier to pick up yourself.

*shrug* As they say, it depends what you want it for. Either one would be a good choice.

[plaid-dragon.livejournal.com]

I know when I was in school that the folks who did both French and German found German by far the easier. Can't comment as I only did French. I guess that, as you already have rudimentary French, you might grasp Spanish faster. Personally I would pick German as being more useful (but then I live in Europe) and also becasue there are numerous German filkers and it might be a useful language to have.