What Is Your Favorite Language

What has been your favorite language to learn?

A2AThis is like asking a parent which of their children is their favorite :-PMost of the languages I speak or that I’ve studied are Latin-based. The first was Italian, but I don’t even really remember learning that one (I started when I was 13 years old … 22 years ago). I mention this because all of the other Latin-based languages that followed were, due to their similarities, mostly learned through exposure rather than study and they weren’t really challenging to get to at least a usable level. I love Latin languages and Italian and Spanish are probably my favorite languages I’ve learned, but I don’t think I’d say they were my favorites to learn.I don’t speak Greek fluently, but I do have a working understanding of it and understand most song lyrics of modern music without a problem (modern laika is one of my favorite styles of music). It was a lot of fun learning what I know of Greek because it was the first non-Latin script I learned to read. That alone was pretty exciting and fun. Again, I love Greek and it was fun to study while I did, but it’s not my favorite.I think that my favorite language to learn has been Czech. I’m still not even at an intermediate level, but this has been the most “foreign” of the foreign languages I’ve studied. There are few similarities with English or the other languages I’ve studied/learned so it’s really been like learning from scratch (there are some similarities, of course, but not even close to the similarities between the other languages I’ve studied). This has been the cause of so much frustration, but because of that, it’s also been so much more rewarding seeing my progress. When I see Czech text now or watch a Czech movie and I recognize a lot of words and understand what’s going on, it’s so much more exciting than it was with the other languages. With the other languages it was like I “cheated.” With this one, though, it’s through blood, sweat and tears … lots of tears. Thanks to my Czech, now I’m also noticing common and similar words in the other Slavic languages like Russian, Slovak (of course), Ukrainian, Polish (I know, I know … lots of false cognates here). Because of this, I’m feeling encouraged to keep learning so that I can “cheat” with the Slavic languages, too. :-)So, it hasn’t exactly been a fun language to learn, but I think the Czech learning process has been my favorite so far.

What is your favourite language and why?

I am a huge language freak and find it hard to pick just one. Out of the ones I can speak, definitely Spanish.Other than that, Welsh (Cymraeg). I’m currently learning it (a very tedious process). Here’s why it’s great.They have a strange alphabet. It is the Latin alphabet, but there are different letters ll (an aspirated l sound), dd (voiced th sound), f (v sound), ff (f sound), ng, y (a vowel that makes three different sounds depending on where it is placed in a word), u (a vowel that makes the [i] sound), w (a VOWEL that makes a sound like [u], rh (aspirated r), and ch (like in Scottish loch).Just the fact that w is a vowel.The words can be long and ridiculous, but the phonetics and spelling are entirely regular and there are no silent letters).It has lots of English loanwords spelled Welsh-ly. Examples: bacwn (bacon), coffi (coffee), ysgol (school), Sbaen (Spain), ffrind (friend), mathemateg (math), Awstralia (Australia), Rwsia (Russia), newydd (new), sgwâr (square), and siop (shop).Bragging rights. “You can speak Welsh?” Well, if they don’t ask what Welsh even is.It has mutations, which I don’t understand. So Cymraeg can become Gymraeg when placed after certain words, and mawr can become fawr.The word for microwave: popty-ping. (Apparently this a more colloquial term)Only spoken by around 500,000 peopleIt has a course on DuolingoIt sounds interesting when spoken, what with all the ll, ch, rh, ng, w, y, and rolled r.It is a very old language with a lot of history and culture associated with it.It’s unique.Cymru am byth! Dw i’n caru Gymraeg!