How many languages would you like to speak?

Oh, how I wish I there WERE pills we could use :/

There are some languages I'd definitely want to learn instantly.

-Japanese, for the anime

-French... not sure why, it just has a certain attraction to it!

-Could I take some sort of super English pill? Even though a lot of us are fluent in English, there are still tons of words and grammar structures, and such, that we don't know, unless you're an avid reader or a major in English.

-Spanish, for its practicality

-Vietnamese, I'm sad to say that although it's obvious from my name that my parents originated from Vietnam, I'm only able to listen to and understand basic Vietnamese. After learning Chinese and Japanese, my goal is to focus on this.

I wouldn't take a pill for Mandarin or Cantonese, because they both seem to be the languages I enjoy studying! I wouldn't want to take the fun out of that. Plus, I like to feel good about myself for progressing this far in Chinese!

Some languages I want the pill, some I want to learn the old fashioned way.

Spanish- pill. I have no interest in learning it, but recognise it would be wise to know.

Mandarin- pill. I LOVE studying Mandarin but want to be able to talk to people, already! I also am still learning English and will all my life because I enjoy learning the nuances of my native language. So if I could get to where I am in English in Mandarin I would have the thrills of exciting new words on a higher level. That said, no pill for characters, love them too much and if I could speak I could devote more time to them.

Latin- no pill. This is just for fun and part of my quest to understand the history of language.

French- undecided. Tackling the planet by continent... This would get me much of Africa.

Arabic- see French.

That is all I can wrap my head around at the moment.

I would like to speak the following languages:

- mandarin chinese
- polish
- japanese
- russian

where can I get the pills?

Language is a living entity. To take a pill and bypass the living process which is learning is no different than dying, in my opinion.

Like other posters I agree that it would be nice to be able to bypass all of the work in order to communicate immediately.

But herein lies the paradox.

Language is so multifactoral (ex. communicative, cognitive, social, etc.) that taking a pill would inherently counteract the nature of language itself.

Language IS the PROCESS, and without the PROCESS there is no language!

"Languages as a Bridge to the Future"
Hon. Jon Huntsman--Governor of Utah and Nominee, U.S. Ambassador to China

I'm enjoying learning Chinese, so I wouldn't want a magic pill for that.  I appreciate the magnitude of the task of learning a language, so I am not going to think about studying anything else but Chinese... But there are a bunch of languages it would be kind of cool to know:

1. Japanese - I watch a lot of anime, it would be nice to be able to ignore the subtitles.
   
2. Spanish with an Argentinean accent - I have a bunch of Argentinean friends.
   
3. Yiddish - The language of my maternal ancestors.  It seems like such a lively and expressive language.
   

Maybe I'm too greedy, I'll say Spanish, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Portugal, Greek, Arabic and of course, all the Chinese dialects. Without the pill, I think I have to learn the languages all my life!

I wish I could speak more than languages than I can program. If such pills exist , I'd take

- Mandarin, the hardest language on the planet. Every Chinese dialects (Shanghaiese, Hakka, Cantonese ...)

- Spanish, I started back in Junior High school. More native Spanish speaking people than English speakers.

- German, I tried on my own. A tough grammar but very regular. Speak German and you have access to Germany (of course), Switzerland, Austria. In some Eastern Europe countries, people can't speak English but they know German. Useful only on the European continent.

The rest is fantasy

- Japanese & Korean for fun.

- Every Arabic dialects & Turkish to travel in the Middle East.

- Once mastered everyone languages in the world , I'd go for Basque which is arguely one the most insanely difficult and spoken by very few.

My teacher told me not to take pills

I'll stick with Cpod to do my language learning

@dogupatree,

That's true. Non native english speakers always get their messages across because their use a direct and simple form of english without idiom or heavy cultural reference.

@miantiao,

Of course, mandarin will soon be the first language of every chinese citizen and lialects will disappear. But, my last message wasn't about mandarin. For me, the "world's second language" is not english but a pidgin based on english and the differences could increase progressively in the futur between the original english and its pidgin.

However, as you teach english in China you're much more qualified than me on this subject.

@kimiik

Maybe, one day, the only people who'll have a problem communicating in English will be native English speakers.

The European Parliament and Commission are a Tower of Babel with 23 official languages. In practice, though, much work takes place in small and informal meetings where, most of the time, they use English. Everyone seems to get their message across apart from the native speakers - the others have trouble understanding them! Even when they remember to speak slowly, their English is full of cliches and colloquial usage:

"He's as much use a chocolate teapot, old lah-dee-dah over there, when he gets 'is finger out and gives us that flaming report, I'll eat my hat... one sandwich short of a picnic, if you ask me..."  But nobody is asking him, by now, they're discussing Paragraph 27b, Subsection D... in Reduced Instruction Set English.

Won't this happen on a world-wide scale?

As for English speaking countries communicating with each other... what was it Churchill said about Britain and the USA? "Two countries divided by a common language." Judging by some comments on this site...

to answer ken's question.

interesting! i posed the same question to my students, mostly adults and uni students, but focused on english. without failure every single one said they'd take the pill and keep on taking them for as long as they needed to.

reasons varied, but generally time and difficulty were among the main reasons.

mandarin spoken language and chinese written language have become a pleasure for me to study and aquire. unlike when i gave it away after i graduated 8 years ago when it was more of a chore. i enjoy making new discoveries, in particular how a language represents the way of thinking, history, world views and social mores,  of the people that speak and write it.

i wouldn't take your pill ken, cheers anyway, but i enjoy the ride too much.

@kimik

good post, however:

mandarin is a second language for the far majority of chinese. it is learned at school, but by then kids have already aquired a mother tongue that is not mandarin. English as i understand has the most native speakers (ie, as a first language). It is also the number one language as a second language.

in the future, and sadly, many chinese local dialects will gradually disappear as a result of modern technology and the education system which forbids the teaching of local dialects in schools. even in taiwan, a taiwanese friend once told me that when he was at primary school（20 years ago） the teachers would scold or beat the students if they were caught talking to eachother in 台语。the past 15 years in taiwan hasseen a gradual resurgence of the local dialect as represented in movies and music.

language is an essential part of identity. as such, as dialects slowly disappear, so too to an extent will localised identity.

No pill for me!
In a world where the "language pills" were known to everyone and easily accessible by anyone - I wouldn't see a point in taking the pill. (My Chinese isn't good enough for you yet? Here, take a pill of French and once we're done here i'll get back to my studies)

I just love the process too much, the slow progress, the joy of understanding through a chain of thoughts at first and then, more naturally until it's become yours...

Ah!That's the drug I'm taking, every 2 years i start a new language, and everytime it's a new joy that I wouldn't trade for anything.

But that's for languages we can learn... if i could take a pill to learn how to speak to my cat and make him understand the concept of weekends I would right away (the furry ball wakes me up every day at 6 whether he hears my alarm clock or not). :P

I would be more interested in 'retaining pills' that'd store safely what you've learned... 'cause I'm starting to forget the languages I studied first and for which i don't have time to practise anymore (starting with my mother tongue!)... I was advised to use a ladder system to study new languages (if you're starting to learn Korean for example and already know some Chinese, learn Korean using Chinese material, that you might have to check using Japanese material or whatever language you started to learn before tackling Chinese and so on and so forth...) The problem of the method is that (besides being extremely and frustratingly slow), usually, most of the available and reliable resources are usually in English, so yeah...I'd definitely have a go at 'retaining pills' (and cat-language pill)

kimiik,

Great video mate.Gee,I'd hate to try and learn Chinese that way.

As for Ken's question,why wouldn't anyone wanna know every single language ,and every word,slang,jargon in that language if you could just swallow a pill without side effects? Anyhow,that's what I'd go for,even some obscure language only spoken by a tribe on a tiny island in the Pacific [how surprised would they be if you rocked up and started speaking like a native.You may even become a God,hehe].The possibilties are endless.

...sorry. I meant to say "as many pills as my doctor allows me to take" ;)

I would take as many as pills my doctor allows me to.I know this might mean that i wouldn't be able to enjoy the process of learning, but I could do so many other things with my knowledge!! language research, comparison, teaching...Language lovers know no frontiers, and I'm convinced that mastering a language could be just the beginning!

Short-term view and wrong message !

Here is the type of video that encourages native english speaker to stay monolingual when in fact the so-called "world's second language" will also be a second language for them in a close futur.

[TED] "Jay Walker explains why two billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English -- "the world's second language" -- by the thousands."

I speak English, Tagalog, vernacular(not written) Cantonese and conversational Mandarin. However, I do want to make my Mandarin fluent...I　ａｌｓｏ　ｗａｎｔ　ｔｏ　ｓｐｅａｋ　ｉｎ　Ｋｏｒｅａｎ　ａｎｄ　Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ．

Oh, and I forgot Minnanhua (Taiwanese) the first language of my parents-in-law. But not as important as the others I mentioned above, because communication works fine in Mandarin.

My choices and reasons are quite pragmatic:

Cantonese, because I will stay in Hong Kong for good. Would not need a complete pill here, because I got some of the basics down already.

French, because my brother is going to marry a French girl.

Korean and Japanese, because many of my friends are from Japan and Korea.

well now that you mention it, I wouldn't mind learning Somali - There are tens of thousands of Somalians that migrated to my area and about 100 or so work my employer. It would be nice to learn, but in reality, I have my hands full with just trying to learn Chinese at this point.

You see, I am with the people who say that learning is half the fun. I am litterally putting myself through 6 credits of Mandarin in my college for no *apparent* good reason (to my advisors and mom). It is soooo not one of my majors. But I do 3 hours of homework a night sometimes willingly. That being said, there are a few languages I'd love to pick up that I just don't see myself getting around to. Spanish and French, especially. I struggled for four years to get the gist of Spanish....and just couldnt do it. The verbs killed me. So if I could take a magic pill, that'd be the language!

Why isn't anyone interested in any language from Africa - apart from Swahili?

(Just wondering.)

Here would be my list in no particular order.

Any and all Asian languages

Spanish

Portugese

German

Swahili

Gaelic (so Ken when are you going to start up GaelicPod?)

French

Italian

American Sign Language (OK, so it's not a spoken language, but would still be nice to know)

So many to learn and so little time in the day

Many people have already commented on this to the point where I don't even want to read them all, but I think about this all the time in a different context.

When I die and go to heaven per se, do I want to be able to just know languages, and the answer is no.

The feeling of accomplishment is so rewarding, I also think there might be a little ego involved. I enjoy doing something that most people consider to be difficult, with a somewhat natural ease.

If everyone in the world could just know languages it wouldn't make me feel special anymore.

I have also pondered this in Matrix format, the way they could just upload martial arts programs and anything else they wanted.

Take 'em all! It would be wonderful to be able to converse with anyone in any language, and the joy of the language learning process could be somewhat replaced with the joy of learning new things about people and their cultures.

Hmm, good question.

1.Russian

2.Japanese

3.Shangainese

(Mandarin isn't on there because that would mean no more Chinesepod!)

Ohhh...and of course I chose to study Chinese at the time, but that was WAY before chinesepod and I only had modest success before I lost interest.

This is kind of an interesting question. It kind of depends on your motivation for learning the language in the first place. Of course, after you get a little proficiency in a language, you see more ways to apply it and your original intentions change.

Before I took the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitute Battery) test in the Air Force, it was suggested that I study a couple of languages from different families that had nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with the languages that I already was familiar with. (I was a little familiar with Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Arabic). I choose to study Turkish, Tagalog, Urdu, Navajo and Quechua. Today, I couldn't tell you more than a handful of words or phrases in those languages, but it definately opened my eyes to different ways to communicate and helped me immensely on the test.

Also, when you study a lot of very different languages, you'll notice the universal similarities that all languages have.

PS: I learned Spanish to talk to a girl I liked. She is now my wife.

I would take them all. Why be limited when you could run into someone interesting in the one language you left out? The point is that learning a language is a great step towards understanding the culture and people.

I can speak English, Tagalog, and Mandarin. I want to improve my Spanish though, and learn Japanese.

How I wish there were like upload programs straight to the brain, just like in the Matrix.

"I know kung fu." hehe

if we could learn a language like T.H. White's Merlin lived, backwards?

You took the pill and every feature of the language you used fades away? You'd start speaking like Cervantes and end up like a baby. Would you like to catch such a small glimpse of a language?

Ah, responded before reading the question... foolishness. I enjoy the learning process, so I guess I probably would not take the pill. However, if it made it easier for me to remember what I'm learning, I'd take it. I just don't want the whole shebang upon consumption.

I currently speak French and Spanish well enough to make my way around, though in no way would I consider myself fluent. I'm learning Chinese, and would like to learn Hindi at some point as well.

i woudn't take the pill either. we cherish languages by the hardwork and pleasure we get by learning them. from my mother i heard "my son", from the poets many rhymes, many songs. those experiences make a learned language an indelible memory.

It is necessary to forget, but some things ought to be remembered. Our emotions and feelings do this job. A language without associated emotions would be soon forgotten.

Lydia1981:

I would be the first in line to take the pill, because to me the fun part is using what you've learned, although there is enjoyment in the learning process, by far the best part is when you're able to hold conversations with people of other races and cultures.

Also language learning is time consuming and for a language glutton like myself who wants to be fluent in like 12 different languages, I don't have enough time to learn everything I want to know.

I would not take one pill!

Language learning is a very relaxing activity for me,

and taking a pill would take the fun out of it, like others have said already.

do you realize this forum would not exist if everybody would take such a pill? talking about language learning would be useless then..

btw, some people have the so-called 'language pill' from birth, such as the English 'autist savant' Daniel Tammet who speaks at least 11 languages without much effort..

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet]

I'm with Bazza - as many pills as there are languages.

Does anyone know who holds the world record for being fluent in the most languages?

I love languages... I can't put a finger on how many. I have "experience" in 13, from picking them up here and there; I'm like linguistic silly putty. I love history, so the ability to read things in the native language are a big thing (I'd *love* to have some "texts" on ChinesePod, poetry or pieces of historical texts as you get further up). Being able to communicate with others and get your point across, knowing what the words /mean/ when you say it, why people choose the words they do... Anyway, I'd want to hit fluency in those I'm not already fluent in (I'm fluent in English and Danish).

huibert:

Hopefully soon Mardarin Chinese will become the "Universal Second Language".

The signs are everywhere that Mandarin may soon eclipse English in importance on the world stage. I guess we'll just have to sit back and wait to see.

Oh also, after looking over my list, I forgot

- Taiwanese

- Sichuanhua (dialects if Sichuan)

- Fujianhua (dialect of Fujian)

- Classical Chinese (yeah as if that's even possible...but if there were the magic pill...)

Ken....

what are you trying to tell us? Have you got any of these pills? If so, I want all of them! I have no objection to spending my life as a language pill druggie!!!

So yes, maybe I will miss the learning process. However, I say "I can't wait to be fluent in Chinese" at least once a day. So, why not get it done? I really want to learn every language, but let's face it...I haven't got the time nor the brain cells to do that! So Ken, if you've actally got some of these pills then send me a giant box full of them....better yet...I'll go pick them up!!!

Tibetan and Chinese, because I need them now.

All the others I would learn for the fun of learning a language.

Gosh - a hard one. I've already had some experience learning French, Italian, German, Mandarin and, due to my upbringing, Malay and some Cantonese. I've always thought that the only operation I would countenance (without being ill) is one that would help me plug in programmes that help you 'know' something straight away, like in the Matrix.

I just want to be able to speak every language!

How many pills? How many languages? This depends on what places I go to, what people I meet. My desire to learn a language must be triggered by the need to communicate. So far this has made me learn

Dutch (my mother's tongue)

English (the universal second language)

German (our neighbours' language; I once had a girlfriend there)

French (our holiday language, when we drive a few hours to the South)

Italian (the language for better holidays and for beautiful music)

Spanish

Swedish (and some Norwegian and Danish)

After the experience of alway talking a little bit of the language in Europe, being in China was frustrating, so I decidded to learn some Chinese.

What comes next? That depends where I go. I have been in Yemen, and if I go there again (for work) I will start to work on Arabic. Without pills.

Huibert

I don't know if anyone is counting the ability to communicate fluently in their choices ... I can not communicate fluently in any language.

But I have been known to say a string of words that may be occasionally understood in

English

German

Spanish

Italian

Chinese 汉语

Russian

Yupic Eskimo

Cheyenne Indian

In all honesty, English is about the only language that I would not have problems in for most of the day.

Yes, pills please, yummy! I haven't got many years of study left in me.

Languages to use:

Cantonese

Greek

Vietnamese

Italian

Mandarin

Languages to enjoy knowing:

Pali/Sanskrit

Spanish

Catalan

Arernte

Tibetan

Russian

Maori

But I'm greedy :-)

The first one I'd take would be a French pill. I keep bumping into attractive French-speaking people, and can't even remember how to conjugate really easy verbs.

come to think of it, seeing that I work in Switzerland, I would go for German if they did instant pills!

I would definitely take an extra Chinese (普通话) pill, and a Japanese one. But as an MD, I advised myself to stay off pills as much as possible, so I'll definitely stay on TCM for now.

I have taken the Mandarin pill already and......

......You know they say that Chinese medicine takes longer to work than western meds ......

我想学中文，日本語も習いたくて, 한국어도 하거십고, and if I get my way French/Spanish too.

大家加油！頑張って、皆さ〜ん！화이팅!

I am British and its true. I often have drunk fights in Churchs, usually using a cricket bats.

Nonetheless I ensure my drunken bat wielding anger is only expressed in the most elequent English.

As for the question: Shanghainese.

When people in my office dont want me to understand they use this. (they also start to speack very quitely - as if to say we dont want you to understand).

This would also let me intergrate better into Shanghai and ze customers.

Second: sign language

laodai, I also have problems with the English...they drink too much, fight too much, go to church too much, play too much cricket, etc. etc. Oh wait, you meant English as in the language. :)

(just jokes my English friends...I'm half British myself and love all from the UK!).

I struggle with the English.

I mean, I struggle with English.

Is this a navel-gazing exercise or are we brainstrorning for your next business venture, Ken?:-)

This is an amusing question. People have made the point here about the journey being important but I would prefer to save my eyesight from trying to zoom in on every supporting beam and truss that make up a chinese character if there was a shortcut that I could wash down with a glass of water.

I suppose I would take the pill hoping that it were not available to others but if it was then it would be taken without question - like immunising a baby from measles.

To come up with a list I would still put my native language, English, first. I would mazimise my ability with my native tongue first - to be able to manipulate English like Shakespeare or a great orator would be most gratifying.

But if it has to be a "new language", it would be correlate to where Ryanair fly out of Dublin! France, Spain, Italy German so I could enjoy weekends away more fully.

I would take Chinese because of the population of the country and because it is a language I have started learning so the rising level of commitment makes it harder to stop now. Plus I enjoy the cerebral workout that comes with trying to learn the language.

I suppose what it boils down to is how you see foreign languages - are they a pest, a barrier to proper communication on an equal level, a basis for discrimination: "Must have fluent English". Or are they a thing of beauty cloaking a culture that enriches us the more we strive to learn about it.

I wouldn't want the pill to be just a desk reference inside my head but would want those linkages and bindings between my mother tongue and the new language to exist there too.

Besides English, the only language that has direct, practical and immediate value to me is Spanish, which (ironically) I have no burning desire to learn. Nonetheless, I have thrown myself into it and am enjoying SPOD immensely. And I haven't spotted much difference between "intellectual curiosity" and "pragmatic real-world use" as a motivator.

I currently toy (with varying degrees of dedication) with:

1-Russian (college major)

2-German (had it since High School)

3-Mandarin (charter poddie)

4-Spanish (just started in earnest)

5-Modern Hebrew (a recent obsession)

6-French (more literary knowledge)

7-Italian (enough to appreciate opera)

I can slug my way through a Czech conversation, get the gist of a modern Greek newspaper article. I'd *LOVE* to study one of the Native American Indian languages in use around here, but you wouldn't believe the politics involved in getting information together.

Mostly, I cultivate a "news" vocabulary, so that I can make the rounds on the web of various international newspapers and/or listen in to radio streams with varying degrees of success.

=====

*I have three "dead" languages under my belt from college; Greek, Latin & Old English, but I assume the original question focused on modern language.

I've never been able to pin down a favorite language, so I would of course take them all. Some have mentioned that it would take the fun out of learning... so how about a pill that just speeds up the learning process a bit? At this rate, it would take all my life and then some to learn every language I like.

My magical pills would include:

1- Japanese

2- Shanghainese

3- Cantonese

4- Hakka

5- Korean

6- Thai

7- Gaelic

8- Dongbeihua

(Everything is in order except the last, just because it's Number 8, doesn't mean it's not more important that many of the others).

The point would be, out of interest, fun, to more easilly assimilate into other cultures to learn about the people. Especially Asian, most especially Chinese.

I don't think I'd really want to take a pill.

It's too much fun figuring out linkages, making connections, and sometimes being WAY off the mark on your assumptions.....

It's that early stage of language learning (after you've got the bare essentials down) that I love the most. I guess I'd take a pill once I get to the *evil* tough grammar stage.

apart from German (which is my mother tongue) I speak English fluently, Spanish and French comfortably, Arabic "nearly comfortably"....but working on it. I've reached that stage in Arabic where I'd like to take a pill. The early fun stage is over and now grammar is just getting the better of me at the moment. I also did half a year of Japanese, but at the time it was a toss-up between Japanese and Arabic so I had to make a (difficult) choice. I guess it's never too late, eh?

Well, and I'm slowly starting to get a feel for Chinese and loving it.

There's only one language I'd want complete fluency in, the Language of Love!!!!!!!!1 xoxo

Continuing in a science fiction vein, I bet most of the folks here would go for Vernor Vinge's JITT (Just In Time Training) to learn Chinese, despite the side effects. It's a minor plot point in the novel Rainbows End.

I definitely liked the babelfish idea of Douglas Adams: Pop it in your ear and you're able to understand them all.

On the other hand: Could I have an antidote pill to (later) switch off a language? Some languages would probably start annoying me (e.g. Vogon).

When you're about to start shipment of the pills: Please inform me of prices for Arabic, Hindi and Russian. Shukran!

I'm pretty much fluent in Latin, modern Italian is pretty good, French and German are good. Always wanted to have a bash at a cyrillic language, maybe...

Never mind then....just Hindu and Arabic

if you can read it and are able to pronounce it in normal speech it count´s (I guess) ;-)

I would probably take a Hindu and Arabic pill, to save the rest of my summer. Does speech-reading count as a language?

i suppose ken means that for some people it's the conquest of learning that is the fun, so the pill would be meaningless..? i see your point if that is what you mean, but i admit that for me i would take the pill ;)

I forgot to mention baka unege but I wouldn´t use that bad word ´cause it means "stupid women"

If I could I´d defenitively take the Japanese Pill (´cause Anime is normally released in Japanese and it takes a bit of the fun to have to read the subtitles all the time ). I already learned haijaku (probably not written correct but who cares), baka, bakaru,mina, domo arrigato. ;-)

It would be easy for me to say I'd take them all, because that's useful, HOWEVER, I'd miss out on the fun of learning.

If it wasn't possible to overdose like Jonny Mnemonic and fry your brain, I'd want to able to speak as many as possible. Possibly French for starters, & rekindle my attempts from High School. Main course of Japanese, Spanish & Cantonese. And then a dash of fine Italian for desert :)

Jive is the name of the urban African American language.

Can I suggest a rigorous course in "jive", i.e. "jivepod".....

If it was that easy, then all known languages.

daolin,

welcome to our little community of language lovers. I meant if the pill had no side effects.

Which pill would I take?

What do I want with those languages?

I can communicate in 4 1/2 languages (DE, EN, NL, FR and CN is the 1/2).

So Spanish, Russian and Hindi are the only ones missing to cover the remaining big chunks in the world.

However, not being interested in the latter two , and,

having found Spanish quite complicated (spoken passé simple),

I'd go for Papiamento,

in order to cover the Carribeans properly.

To make it a proper philosophical question,

could this pill have some side effects (as in real life),

like study-pain, much_work, less-time for hobbies, partners, children, work, etc.etc.?

Otherwise we'd take them all,

wouldn't we? (----> Babylon, could we then understand each other? I doubt it).

Being so realistic, the answer is given in real life,

no we don't take all those language pills

(because of the 'side effects').

Hey, this has been my first entry in this forum!

I need two (excluding English) to get into grad school-- Chinese and Japanese, and 3 to graduate (a random European language, probably French).