Which language do you like most/is the most fascinating?

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I love learning languages. The variety in alphabets/writing systems, the sounds of the languages, the way things are phrased and understood, the dialects and how the histories and cultures are embedded in the language make them endlessly fascinating. And it feels like each language opens up a whole different world for you to explore. I especially find the writing in Japanese and Mandarin really intriguing, because it?s so different and beautiful. I also like the way Spanish, French and Swedish sound. And am also slightly tempted by Greek, Swahili, Arabic, Korean and Hebrew.

But if I had to pick just one, it would probably be Japanese.

written dutch seemed goofy to me as a kid.

Did it? I saw your post about Finnish.. (which I HIGHLY agree on.. repeating letters and umlauts make it a joy to look at)

I felt the same way with Dutch... I always felt the sight of double vowels and the mysterious "ij" was fascinating.

to TranzteKk and Kiprobalhato for liking Finnish!

My great grandfather and grandmother were both from Finland, more specifically Vaasa. So it would be a shame if I didn't!

Hey Kip

I've been learning Finnish seriously for about 3 months. We'll ignore the first year after I started, as I got diagnosed with Aspergers and so was just a tad distracted (i.e. I didn't pick up my textbook for a year).

I love how 'different' Finnish is, both the sound of it and the look of it on the page. It's taken me a while to get the hang of it, at the beginning learning the words was so hard (in comparison with Italian) as the sounds and spelling were so unfamiliar. I've spent a lot of time on Memrise, and now I'm starting to get comfortable with quite a lot of vocabulary. There is still a long way to go, but what I love about Finnish is how predictable it is. Don't let people scare you off with how hard it is, if you are really interested in it.

I?d say, don?t let people scare you off learning anything.

I second this! And if you really like a language then you'll enjoy the learning process so much that it won't feel very difficult at all.

TranzteKk, that makes sense. Where are you from?

Moomingirl, mä voin kirjottaa sulle suomeks tästä lähin jos se auttaa opiskelua!

I'm from the States, more specifically from Ohio. I've been offered to go visit family in Finland and on the Swedish border for a few years now and have never acted on it.

Also to whomever asked how hard Finnish is to an English native? In my opinion, not too difficult. (Which may seem crazy, but I'm one of the few who think Polish is very easy and it's regarded as the most difficult language in the world!)

It's very logical, coming from a background of learning languages such as Japanese, and isn't too difficult grammatically. At least in my experience, anyway! Lexically it's different than English but there are some familiar words in Finnish here and there, but that shouldn't stop you! Many languages aren't too much like English, unless it's Dutch or Frisian. Grammatically I can't think of any languages that have a similar grammatical structure to English.

i wonder if you create your own language how hard it will be to learn it? probably the temptation to tweak things around to make it easier for you would be awful.

Kiitos Riikka, mutta nyt puhun vain vahan suomea.

hey Mooms, since the two languages are closely related, how well can you understand written or spoken Estonian? (if at all?)

Honestly Kip, I still don't understand enough Finnish to be able to answer that. From what I have read, I believe they are partially mutually intelligible.

You'd be better off asking one our resident Finns about that.

yep, i think so too.

i still prefer the finnish Y to represent [y] over estonian Ü. looks cooler.

one of my languages in progress has [y] and i use 'y' to transliterate it.