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I vote for Spanish,
but I think most people are not aware of how many countries in the World speak French
No country outside France is in its entirety French speaking
in belgium and Switzerland french is only spoken in two region respectively, in Africa french is spoken but as a lingua franca between national tribes and it's mostly creole french which the french can't understand. In Canada, only Quebec.
outside of some bureacratic jobs in europe french is next to useless!
there are more jobs demanding u speak german in europe rather than french
these are just some random blogs IMO. I've never met any native English speaker with full Spanish proficiency. It's definitely not that easy. They always have a very noticeable accent and commit a few mistakes here and there. Spanish phonology is very different from the English one; also, there are quite a few grammar nuances to which native English speakers aren't used to (subjunctives, verb conjugations, syntatic constructions, etc). I'd say
aAn Italian or Portuguese native speaker can get full Spanish proficiency easily, an English speaker, not so easily.
Regarding what these Portuguese speakers said, it's definitely not true. Portuguese and Spanish are very similar languages, and the differences between them are very superficial and particular IMO. It's just that there is certain rivalry between speakers of both languages and we mock each other's language.
Personal object pronouns may appear before of the verb according to the following rules:
* If the phrase begins with a verb in the indicative future tense, the pronoun is placed in the middle of the verb, between the radical and the inflectional suffix. It's called "mesóclise".
* If the phrase begins with a verb in all the other tenses, the pronoun is placed in the end of the verb. It's called "ênclise".
* Otherwise, the pronoun is placed before the verb. It's called "próclise".
In the two first cases, the accusative pronouns - "-o, -a, -os, -as", would change to "-lo, -la, -los, -las" and drop the last letter before it if it's an oral consonant, and to "-no, -na, -nos, -nas" if the verbal tense ends with "-m" or "-ão".
In the more formal speech, these pronouns also have mergers with articles; so in some sentences such as "I will give it to him" in Portuguese, if "it" stands for a male noun it would be in Portuguese "dar-lho-ei"; if it's female, "dar-lha-ei". However, as stated before, it's formal speech; in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese this sentence may be translated word by word from English: "eu vou dar issso para ele". Brazilians seldom start a phrase with a verb; generally we start the phrase with a pronoun, even if it is redundant, for avoiding ênclise and - even more - mesóclise, which is often seen as pedantic. As a trivia, mesóclise is often associated with the current president Michel Temer, who uses it very often in his speeches.
No country outside France is in its entirety French speaking
in belgium and Switzerland french is only spoken in two region respectively, in Africa french is spoken but as a lingua franca between national tribes and it's mostly creole french which the french can't understand. In Canada, only Quebec.
outside of some bureacratic jobs in europe french is next to useless!
there are more jobs demanding u speak german in europe rather than french
That's not true about the French spoken in Africa. It is very standard French and perfectly understandable to francophones from around the world. It's arguably closer to European French than Quebec French is.
Maybe Spanish is much easier to learn than Portuguese, but surely you're not suggesting that someone whose goal is to learn Portuguese should learn Spanish first?
I call bs on the comparison chart. To people who are starting from a non-European language English wouldn't be easier than some of the other Romance languages. It has by far the largest vocabulary and the trickiest pronunciation. I would say Italian would be easier to learn to speak than English or Spanish because Italian speakers tend to speak relatively slowly and enunciate every syllable.
I wonder who prepares those charts. If Spanish is so easy, why English speakers won't go beyond "dame cerveiza porl favur?. Portuguese is talking Spanish while using a mouthwash.
English is a very easy language, almost no grammar and most words are borrowed from romance languages, Latin or Greek.
Africans speak more understandable French than Canadians, even considering that Canadian sounds funny.
these are just some random blogs IMO. I've never met any native English speaker with full Spanish proficiency. It's definitely not that easy. They always have a very noticeable accent and commit a few mistakes here and there. Spanish phonology is very different from the English one; also, there are quite a few grammar nuances to which native English speakers aren't used to (subjunctives, verb conjugations, syntatic constructions, etc). I'd say
aAn Italian or Portuguese native speaker can get full Spanish proficiency easily, an English speaker, not so easily.
Regarding what these Portuguese speakers said, it's definitely not true. Portuguese and Spanish are very similar languages, and the differences between them are very superficial and particular IMO. It's just that there is certain rivalry between speakers of both languages and we mock each other's language.
Actually Japanese was "in" to learn when I was younger too and I took Japanese courses for 5 years (highschool & uni) and considered doing a second major in Japanese. It's totally different. Chinese is more than a fad.
And it's a number's game. It's not just for people who want to go into International Business.....in our Internet Age, EVERYTHING is international business. Doesn't matter what field you go into. You always need a "buyer" who buys your product or your service. You make food or beverages, you need buyers. You paint paintings or make art work, you need people who "pay" you money OR appreciation. You are a musician, you need "fans" who "buy" your music (with money or appreciation). You are a performer, you need audience members. You are in the IT industry, you definitely need buyers. Doesn't matter what field of profession you go into, the more "buyers" the better. And if you can all of a sudden have access to an extra 1 billion potential buyers who buy your product, your food, your software, your invention, your service, your art, your performance, your ideas... why not? With the internet, you don't have to fly to Asia to make use of that market, you just need a way to communicate to them.
When I was in France last year, we were dealing with wine chateaux owners. These people are not in International business, they grow grapes their entire lives. They see Chinese buyers visiting their competitors who now make 10x the profit. They know that they need to change or they'll get bought out & swallowed up. You have no idea how many small estates have been swallowed up already. They don't even step out of their tiny town in Bordeaux--let alone flying to Asia. But Chinese people will travel to come to them--or their competitor.
That's why our French teammate said "The word 'Chinese' is like the words 'Open Sesame'." And we are talking about the most narcissistic, xenophobic country (I know cuz I've lived & worked there)!
Chinese now and Japanese then are totally different. Japanese people were powerful, for sure, but their number's just too small. When every one spends a dollar, it adds up.
1 billion vs 127 million.
I speak fluent Cantonese too (I've actually acted in Cantonese hahaha). I picked it up in highschool cuz I thought one day it'll be useful. Well, not really. It's more of a "cool" factor. Sometimes I whip it out and show off a few sentences of Cantonese in front of Cantonese-speakers, but apart from impressing them there's very little practical value. Almost all Cantonese-speakers speak Mandarin, or at least understand Mandarin. Well, except the octagenarians from the country side.
In Taiwan people also speak Mandarin (I've spent the past half a year in Taiwan, flying home in 2 days, yay!). Yea it's kinda different. Taiwan's Mandarin to Mainland China's Mandarin is like Canadian English to American English. People notice small differences (what do you mean you call it a beanie? It's a TOQUE! ), but everyone understands each other.
I totally agree with you that the economy shouldn't be the only reason to learn a language. I LOVE languages! I've even learned BISLAMA cuz I volunteered & lived in the South Pacific for a summer and many villagers only spoke Bislama so I had to speak it. Bislama has gotta be like...the least practical and most useless language to learn in the world...but I HAD A BLAST! I had so much fun learning & speaking it plus I love the island culture in Polynesia.
But....don't forget the OP asked "What language is the most beneficial to learn in the global context." So.
Yea...the economic successes of China will probably not last FOREVER like till the end of time....but I think for the next few decades if not century it's here to stay......Have you visited Shanghai or Beijing? If not, you should. Everyone should.
I have traveled to almost 50 countries around the world and every single continent (except Antarctica) and I've never seen anything like China.
My dad visited Shanghai TEN YEARS ago and said, "It's more Manhattan than Manhattan." And that was 10 years ago, and Shanghai is a city that changes every 2 months. I have a friend who flies to Shanghai for business a few times a year and he said every time he goes back it's different.
And I used to be super anti-China. I had this terribly condescending, indignant, sneering attitude towards China, which probably stemmed from years of painful weekend Chinese school my parents forced me to do and my rebellious nature as a teenager that antagonized everything my parents mildly represented, including the Chinese culture.
But in the past year, after understanding China more, I've completely changed my view. You don't even know half of it if you haven't seen it. Like I said.... almost 50 countries and nothing remotely like China.
Right...Japan's Tokyo's very impressive too, but how many Tokyo's are there in Japan? How many Tokyos is Japan capable of having due to physical limitations?
I said that Shanghai's impressive....but there are many, MANY more major cities in China that are just as impressive.
Heck! Even the "secondary cities" that nobody has heard of will make you drop your jaws. It's like coming to this random corner of China, a "smaller" city that nobody outside of China really knows about...and you are like.....HOLY SHXT! THIS "random small secondary city nobody has heard of" is a jumping super capitalist MEGA METROPOLIS!! The power really lies in China's size. It's a number's game.
It has the kind of power & resources that Japanese people could never even dream of. And the scariest thing... they know how to best put their resources and power to use.
ANd yea....people don't like it when you learn their language to make money. But it's CHINESE PEOPLE we are talking about! CHINESE people!! Who LOVE to make money! You learning their language just because you want to make money will impress them. It'll be seen as a very positive, highly-valued quality. I know cuz I don't have that quality. hahaha.
Native English speakers has to be more than 340 million surely? Unless you are actually only counting the English themselves as the native English speakers? :-)
Yes it sounds too formal, too literary. But there's plenty of writers that use it.
now that I think of it it's used a lot in the imperative form, for example ("cómete esto", "cómprame una hamburguesa") but not so much in the third person, for example.
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