Just wanted to add that Chinese can be fun, but if you’re not living there, getting immersed in it every day, it is a VERY long road. If you are employed full-time and have just an hour or 2 a day to devote to this kind of stuff, you could easily be looking at 5-10 years before you’re at a level where it would be useful as a daily language in a professional setting/understand everything they’re saying on CCTV/read a newspaper without referring to the dictionary. You’ll get results a lot faster with something like Spanish, or almost anything else really.
Also, different things might work for different people in my opinion Rosetta is trash, especially for non-European languages.
I used an early version of Rosetta stone about 12 years ago to try to impress a German friend who was coming to visit me. A learned a little bit, but there was nothing in the software that struck me as “amazing” or “transformational” or that would get someone up and running any faster than any other method.
I suppose they may have changed their approach over time, but when I see the ads claiming how effective it is, it sure feels like they they’re taking a pile of oatmeal (it’s not quite excrement) and spray painting it gold to try to sell more.
I learned several languages when in junior-senior high school when back then i wanted to become a diplomat
As i went to islamic school, i gotta learn (compulsory) english and arabic for 12 years of basic ed. Learned french and japanese as additional in senior hi-uni. My goal was to read asterix and manga in its original language hehe. My experience with extra language (from a non-english speaker)
French could throw me off because the spelling vs pronounciation could be a whole lot different. After 18 years of leaving my french course, i forget most of my french vocabs now (Learned it for 5 years) although i could pick up if someone talk to me in french (except if he uses quebecois accent then i’m done) . But at least i still can understand asterix or le figaro, and watch TV5 cable channel. My hubby promises to take me to paris… We’ll see how i will fsre. Anyway, learning french helps me guess spanish and italian. Also there is no special alphabets
German i only lasted for a month. What’s with verb at the emd of sentence?. And unlike french or arabic where there is only feminin/masculin, there’s neutral
arabic: compulsory. Spoke arabic at home with dad as well. However since i decided to leave home and rent my own apt in 2000 post uni i rarely speak it. Now apart from quran, i cant read any arabic without harakah (sound sign). everytime ii spoke arabic during pilgrims, the guy i tried to speak with was all smiles… He said my arabic is too proper and use vocabs only oldies use (dang) Anyway, i feel arabic is harder than french. More conjugations and plurals.
japanese and chinese: try to study japanese and chinese each gave up after 6 months. Too many alphabet characters. At least arabic only about 30 alphabets. Japanese and chinese…
The easiest language to study: indonesian. We have no tenses, no conjugations, just learn verb or noun, and you are safe. I doubt the usefulness of it though
i may go back studying french and arabic if i pass my L3. Heard if you study second language in adult years, it helps you prevent or slow the onset of alzheimer. Dunno if those will help my finance career, but at least learning language is fun