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German or French?
- Thread starter DeSnousa
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I'd say German. It's much more interesting and you will probably pick up on the closeness to English quickly. Technically, it's easier to pronounce because you actually use all the letters in the pronunciation. In French, you remove half the letters and say the rest.
It may be the case that French sounds better to many people but who wants it to sound nice when you're swearing at someone anyway?
The case for French is that Portuguese has something in common with French but I'd still say that German is a better language to learn.
It may be the case that French sounds better to many people but who wants it to sound nice when you're swearing at someone anyway?
The case for French is that Portuguese has something in common with French but I'd still say that German is a better language to learn.
Isn't that map missing all those French Canadians?
and not just those French canadians....that map doesn't show the large number of people in North Africa that speak French
for travel, there are many more places where speaking French would be more useful than speaking German
Yeah, but most of them don't actually speak French, only Québécois.Isn't that map missing all those French Canadians?
Silly sounding dialect. FWIW Spanish was my first/home language, though English is now my dominant one. I learned French fluently while living in Switzerland and took classes in German and Mandarin Chinese over the years.
IMHO German ultimately bears very little real resemblance to English, since the Normans brogught so much French into the mix. Switzerdeutsch or Dutch have many more similarities to English. Strangely, I tend to confuse German in my mind with Chinese of all things, perhaps because they share some sounds or more likely they are both weak languages I use less often than the others.
By contrast the Romance languages (at least Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese) are all pretty similar. For example: it's fairly straightforward for me to communicate in Italy or generally understand the gist of what a Portuguese speaker is saying. My mom actually went around Switzerland and France speaking Spanish with a French accent for year or two before she took a refresher class, and many of the maintenance folks I befriended in school that came from all over Southern Europe ended up speaking a weird amalgam of the different languages amongst each other after being employed together for a few years.
All in all, learning a second Romance language can IMHO be more useful than learning German as it allows you to expand more easily to the others....
B
A very important consideration. And it is true that more Germans can (or will) speak English than the French do or will.
French will also be useful in Vietnam, Quebec, a few African and South American countries.
Thanks all for the input, I agree with this statement and have decided to give French a go. I love the sound of the language and later on in the future it appears that I might learn Italian.
Spanish is extermly similar to Portuguese, I communicated with some Argetinians quite well. So I will also persue Spansih which should come naturally.
Who knows maybe oneday I will also learn German, as I love the German people.
Due to the similarity between the Latin-based languages, I found myself slipping back into French when I took Italian in college.
german, i speeak german and it isnt that hard, well it seems. Grammar rules stay the same, a ton of words are fun to say, such as funf though french is prettty cool. good luck
though french is prettty cool. good luck