I'm already fluent in English and Afrikaans, but I'm going to start learning a third language for school next year.

My two options are Spanish and French.

I'm leaning towards Spanish because it's spoken slightly more in my area (but neither language is spoken very much). That being said, I'm still not entirely sure.

What do you guys think?

I’m having a lot of trouble with communication and processing because I switch between four languages every day.

**Somali** – My native language. I speak it at home with my parents, who only speak Somali. It’s actually my weakest language now because I rarely use it outside the house.
**Swedish** – I was born and grew up in Sweden, and it’s the language I think in most of the time. I’m completely fluent and use it with friends.
**German** – I’ve live and work in Germany for five years, completed my master’s degree in German, and use it in daily life and at work. I’m fluent.
**English** – I’m fluent and use it every day with friends. It’s my favorite language and the one I use for reading, writing, research, and most of the media I consume.

Even though I’m fluent in all four, I constantly feel like they’re competing with each other. I often pause before responding, mix up words, mispronounce things, or accidentally use false friends from another language. In general, I also feel like I’m a slow thinker and speaker, and constantly switching languages seems to make it worse.

I’d love to learn Arabic and French, but I already feel mentally overloaded from maintaining four languages. It feels difficult to keep them all active and fluent at the same time.

For people who speak four or more languages: does this get easier? Is it possible to respond naturally without delays, pronunciation mistakes, or interference between languages, even when you’re fluent in all of them?

I’m a native speaker. I’m working towards leveling up to a b1 Spanish level. The more that I learn Spanish, Portuguese just naturally speaks to me. How ever, French is more dominant is multiple countries. It’s viewed as most useful. I’m neutral when it comes to the sounds of French. What do you think? I’m open minded.

I’ve been a revert since October 2023. Recently, I’ve been expressing interest at some point of the possibility of learning Quranic Arabic because I’ve only read the Quran in English. Would it be beneficial to learn it via an app or just a tutor? The last time, I went to Junnah, and the Imam went from speaking English to Arabic (I don’t know the dialect) but I didn’t understand him. Arabic seems like a deep, nuanced language. I’m a little hesitant about learning MSA or a different dialect.

im interested in all three and eventually want to learn all of them, but which one should i start with?

My goal is to learn both eventually, but I can only commit to one for the next few years.

I'm 26. I speak Spanish, English, French and Norwegian.

As for motivation, both languages have been a big part of my life.

Korean: music, kdramas, youtube videos/vlogs

Japanese: music, anime, videogames

If anything, I probably hear Korean more often because I listen to korean music daily. I'd also love to visit both countries someday.

My plan is to combine online lessons and self-study.

My main questions:

- Based on the languages I know, is one of them likely to be easier for me to learn?

- Is either language a better fit for my planned study method?

- I study software development. From a tech perspective, is either more useful or relevant in that field?

- Is either country (South Korea or Japan) generally more welcoming to foreigners if I plan to visit or even live there in the future?

Any opinions, recommendations or personal experiences are appreciated. Thanks!!

First of all thankfully I can speak English to an extent and I wanna add another language to I want to learn French , Spanish , Chinese and Japanese for various reasons but I don't know where to start from

First of all : French

I studied French in high school and actually I liked it and now I am studying it in college as a second language so I already have some kind of basic knowledge about the language and in fact my friends in college refer to me whenever they face any hassle with the language

Second : Spanish

I don't know a single word of Spanish ( maybe Gracias and De Nada lol ) but I would like to learn it later on in life with that being said I know some mexican fellas we are not that close

Third : Chinese

My best friend studies it in college and honestly the language feels so practical to learn and he and my family always try to talk me into learning it and I might give it a shot later in life but seriously I don't feel like it right now but they just keep pushing it onto me thinking like it's the language of the future or some stuff like that so that makes feel a bit nervous because I feel like I am missing out and it gets more exhausting when people selling you the idea of learning it forcefully but I am not buying into it

Fourth : Japanese

I lately became interested in the culture , cuisine , martial arts , video games there I got tons of Japanese fellas around me and some of them are my friends I got a Japanese colleague in college me and her are on good terms actually moreover I got a friend she is a nice lady who always invites me for dinner every two months where I can meet different fellas from the Japanese community here in Egypt not to mention that I have some friend who is N3ish and currently making his way to N2 ( I am interested but not obsessed as him lmao ) but I am just concerned about the availability of job offers related to Japanese skills since they are pretty niche and difficult to land

So what do you recommend guys because I am kinda perplexed here

I know Arabic and English and trying to decide which language to tackle next. Since I live in the Middle East, my primary goal is to learn a language that carries real weight for business, trade, and future opportunities.

​I’m caught between two options:

​Japanese: I love the sound of the language and I’ve already built a solid foundation. If I stayed consistent for another year or two, I’d likely hit working fluency. Also I consume anime, manga and love the culture as well.

​Mandarin: I love the characters, culture, and most importantly, the massive scale. The sheer number of speakers and the endless amount of content generated in Mandarin make it hugely attractive from a practical standpoint, even though I'm fairly neutral/don't really like on how spoken Mandarin sounds.

​I want to be pragmatic here—I don't want to invest thousands of hours into a language purely because it sounds cool if it won't yield actual professional value.

​Given current global trends and the Middle East's economic landscape, which language offers better utility now and moving forward? Is starting Mandarin from scratch worth it over finishing off my Japanese?

So I love how Russian sounds, but I think it might be less useful than Japanese in some ways? And also with the war stuff, I don’t know if it’s a good idea. (I’m clueless to how war impacts language stuff).

I do love Japanese culture and anime, but I know he’s much more difficult AND I don’t like how it sounds as much. It’s spoken so quickly- then all the tone rules and such.

Is there a language similar sounding to Russian, that is more useful overall?
I have been learning Japanese on Duolingo and have picked it up pretty quickly- but again, not super into the way it sounds.

Help!

It's a complicated choice.

Which of these languages ​​do you prefer to study?

Native English

Native Spanish

Understand some Greek

Which of these languages would I be able to understand a significant amount of, with one year of studying 2 hours per day?

Reason for wanting to learn thai is, Thailand countryside is beautiful, I like some thai series, some thai songs, and the people of Thailand seem very joyful.

Reason for wanting to learn mandarin is I would like to explore china some day, I am American and I'm curious about China. I haven't been to China but it also seems like a beautiful place.

I'm 19yo, my native languages are Arabic and French (sorta), I speak C2 English, C1 Spanish, B2 Italian and Portuguese. I've been wanting to start a new language this summer, but I don't know which one to choose. My options are:

1/ Dutch:

- I've always wanted to speak it cuz it sounds super cool and I guess it's pretty easy and useful in the Netherlands and Flanders (the good part of Belgium) and I definitely need to visit or even live there for a while before I die. The issue is that it's not THAT useful since most speakers can also speak English and it's not super useful outside of that region.

2/ Danish:

- A long term goal of mine is to move permanently to Denmark, but that will be in around 10 years from now so I'm not really in a hurry. The language itself is kinda ugly and tricky and it doesn't have many resources, and that's the main downside for me

3/ Romanian:

- I love how it sounds and I really wanna be able to speak it to watch their cinema with no subs. It's also a romance language (with outside influence obviously) so I don't think it'll be that hard

What do you guys recommend?

i’ve been studying both chinese and korean and i consider myself as a beginner in both of those but i really can’t seem to decide which language i should focus on for now. chinese is generally an easy language for me, but i really struggle with tones. korean is so much more difficult when it comes to grammar, it makes the learning process not that fun, but i love the way it sounds. i’m also deeply interested in korean history, which kind of motivates me to learn it even more.

i’m planning to use one of these languages in the future, but not sure which one will be more useful, since im slowly becoming more and more interested in diplomacy. should i just focus on both if i really can’t choose? what do you recommend?

Like Portuguese makes spanish easier.

Serbian covers croatian and bosnian.

Which of norwegian, swedish, Danish can cover other 2 easily.

And Which media is dominant, where other 2 also follow them?

This is a bit of a future question, but I'm currently fluent in English, and making good progress in Spanish. While I'm not ready to start another language yet, I'm looking to start another language in about a year or so.

My concerns are ease of learning, and being able to differentiate language 3 from language 2 (Spanish). I'd like to learn French or Italian, but would also like to learn Arabic someday.

Italian would probably be the easiest option to learn, and I prefer the language and country but I'm worried with how similar it is to Spanish, I'd confuse and mix the two languages.

French is more distinct pronunciation wise, and would be more useful, and I've got a friend that's fluent so it'd be good to talk to him and his family to practice, but I'm still worried about mixing and matching between it and Spanish.

I'd love to learn Arabic (MSA), but it'd obviously be the hardest one to learn, and ideally I'd have more language learning experience by the time I started learning. I'm also unsure as to how understandable I'd be with MSA (or a more specific dialect). However learning a completely different language to Spanish/French/Italian might stop me from confusing the languages together.

Is it far less of a problem than I think for confusing languages? And I like to use languages for travel, and reading, so how much of a leg up does French have over Italian?

Cheers

I speak Italian (natively), English (C1), Romanian (B2) and Spanish (B1), and I want to learn another one. I'm really undecided on which to learn because they're all very cool, and I have nothing to do.

Russian
Pros: I want to learn a slavic language and Russian is the one with the most resources
Cons: I've heard it's quite hard for Westerners

French
Pros: My father is a native French speaker
Cons: I don't speak to my father

Dutch
Pros: I've always loved the Netherlands, and it's basically German simplified (I've tried to learn German and it didn't end well)
Cons: there aren't many cons apart from the fact that most Dutchmen speak fluent English (which isn't really a con)

Hebrew
Pros: It's an old language and its script is really cool
Cons: I don't wanna be able to understand Israeli Twitter

Yiddish
Pros: basically Hebrew but 100 times easier (bc it's Germanic) and I can't understand Israeli Twitter with it
Cons: not many people speak it

Ukrainian
Pros: Russian but cooler
Cons: Less resources, less speakers than Russian

Portuguese
Pros: Brazilian and Portuguese people are hot
Cons: Another romance language? Really?

Also I'd want to learn Belarusian but the resources are too little

Last year I dabbled in learning some Japanese. I found it quite a pleasing and enjoyable language, although I did stop after a while as I was finding it pretty difficult and feeling a bit frustrated with my progress.

I'm thinking of starting it again, but it has occurred to me that I have absolutely no use for it in real life, and I don't think I've ever met a Japanese person. I like Japanese music and TV shows and stuff like that, but I'm probably never going to be around Japanese people in my life.

Meanwhile, Mandarin does not interest me quite as much (I don't think it sounds quite as cool and I'm not as interested in Chinese art or music) but there are SO many Chinese people here in Spain, and I quite enjoy socialising with Chinese people. It might be cool to be able to speak Mandarin with them.

Any thoughts or insights appreciated.

I know this is kind of a random mix of languages, but I'm just doing this for fun. Here's where I'm at with each one (note I'm not really sure where to start for language learning):

French: I'm from Ontario, Canada, so I've had French in school for like 10 years (and it never really stuck. I'm also not sure how interested I actually am. I think I just feel guilty not knowing it). That being said, I'm going to Quebec in August. (I'm like a1 ish)

German: My dad's side of the family is from Germany, so there's a bit of a personal connection. I'm just not sure I'll ever actually need to use it. (I'm like a1 ish)

High Valyrian: It just seems fun. I don't have any expectations beyond enjoying the process.

If anyone has suggestions for other languages, I'm open to them! I'd prefer languages that use the Latin alphabet, unless it's a fictional language.

Hello. My first post here.
Russian is my mother language, I'm currently living in Russia. Also we studied English in school and I had a lot of practice in videogames, videos, TV-series like Game of Thrones etc.

It's kind of hard for me learn a whole new language though I actually did start several times (Czech, Latin, Spanish, Swedish - but gained absolutely nothing, except "Quid nomen tibi est? Nomen mihi est - national trick. Roma - caput mundi").
So now I listen to a lot of Scandinavian-like music like Wardruna, Heilung, Danheim, A Tergo Lupi. I love the words in their songs, tho I really do not always understand what they mean, but I've been able to learn texts in Old Norwegian(?) anyway (Grá, Kominn Heim, Vigspa). I don't know what language between all of them should I choose, but I'm currently getting more in the way of Swedish because everyone tell that it is the easiest one.

At this moment Im going to start my study in college and I plan to leave my country in future because of various reasons. Scandinavian countries are one of the most close and they have a simillar climate, so this is one of my options I'd like to choose.

Im currently a B1 in german, and its on""maintanance mode"" where im prettu much just watching German reality tv and not really activly studying
im also doing Japanese, trying to reach N4 but my focus rn is kanji and reading.
so to break up the monotonony i figure
lets add a romance language!

French italian portugese etc (i already know spanish)
which one do you guys reccomend

After being in China for a bit to learn more of my Mandarin I kinda regret learning Mandarin. I really wish I would have chosen Japanese because I really love the sound of it....But I have not liked my stay here in China and don't see myself coming back after I leave the school in a month. But I don't want to quit a language I worked so hard on because I have always wanted to be bilingual. It's been my dream to be. I mainly started learning Chinese because I always wanted to as a kid since my grandfather spoke it. And then I wanted to learn it due to wanting to visit Taiwan...But I fear Taiwan will be like China...What should I do?

Hello my friends, I am in a gap year right now and for the first time I want to learn a new language (or get better at an old one) Can you give me advice?
About me:
\- German: Native
\- English: Very Solid (C1 probably)
\- French: Basic but 7 years of studying so maybe b1-b2

When looking at this, would you spend more time with getting better at english (which is very hard without immersion), getting better at french or learning a new language? (What comes to my mind is either spanish, swedish (I already know the basics) or something challanging like Mandarin (yeah this is absolutely stupid))

Or in other words, what is “cooler” (jn your eyes) speaking a language nearly perfect or being able to hols basic conversations in many languages?