Many people are simply interested in languages, like a guy from germany I met and was studying Icelandic... because he found it facinating. Icelandic is spoken by 280.000 people, doesn't get more remote than that [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Remember Fljotsdale who was a member here (then unfortunatly disapeared), she had studied some ancient Icelandic, that was surprising... [img]smile.gif[/img]

If I had the time, I'd take up learning German again. I've heard from pretty much everyone, it's one of the hardest languages to learn, but I don't think so, I started learning it when I was about 9 years old. It was a hobby of my dad's and he started teaching it to me so I just learned to enjoy it. In my opinion, anything is better than learning Spanish (sorry Larry), I know that would be beneficial to learn because of obvious reasons, but I just don't really care for it.

German? Hard?! What are they on?! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

One common reason for learning a second language used to be to read technical / scientific journals published in other countries without having to wait for a translation. German and Russian are two languages that jump to mind for those reasons.

Another reason might be to be able to converse with your girlfriend/boyfriends parents if they can't speak your native language but she/he can.

German? Hard?! What are they on?! [img]tongue.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]Well, I do live in an area where the majority of the languages here learned is Spanish and French, which really isn't suprising for a town.

I like to curse at the Mexican gangstas so I study Spanish [img]graemlins/showoff.gif[/img] . By the way, in my area about 37% of all people are Mexican (only 30% or so are leagal however)

There, There never mind, I'm sure it was not all bad :D


Good topic though. My children will have to learn a language at school soon. Historically French and German have both been taught down here. Nowadays Japanese and Chinese is gaining popularity, and it does beg the question why? Why learn a foriegn language at all? Surely by the time they are in the workforce most of the educated world will speak some English anyway? And if not there will probably be sophisticated auto translation devices around anyway [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Better to give them extra English lessons so that they have better command of the lanuage than there dad ;)

I kinda like it to communicate with other people in their language, or at least make an attempt to do so. Speaking several languages isn't really that important to me, but it's fun if you can.

It does make sense, and shows how thoughtfull you are, living so close to other countries Johnny to take the trouble to learn. But why does anyone in Austrailia have to learn French or German? Hell no one bothers to learn the myraid of Aborigonal languages down here :D

Parlez vous Aboriginal ? :D