Spanish and me

[samuelzz10]

Where I live, it is mandatory you take spanish in either highschool, or in a Jr. High highschool class. My 4th grade social studies teacher had a bullshit theory that by 2020 all of the world would be speaking spanish.

[Silverdream]

I heard somewhere that Spanish would be a dominant language in the United States in around 25 years.

[Whiteagle]

I heard somewhere that Spanish would be a dominant language in the United States in around 25 years.

Funny, I've heard the same thing about Chinese...

[Zupponn]

I heard somewhere that Spanish would be a dominant language in the United States in around 25 years.

Funny, I've heard the same thing about Chinese...

Funny, that's what they said about German years ago...

[Ben-Jammin]

Funny, that's what they said about German years ago...

Did you know that the founding fathers originally considered making German the "official" language of the U.S. during its founding? True story.

[Keldoclock]

Languages worth learning, in no particular order:

English (no shit sherlock)
Spanish (for South America and Spain. Brazil... we can live without Brazil as long as we can keep the Brazillians)
German (Powerhouse of Europe)
French (lotta academic stuff in French)
Mandarin Chinese (ching chang chong, China's been on the rise for a while)
Russian (Biggest country in the world, pretty much everyone in the rest of the soviet bloc can understand you, .Runet is a useful thing.)
Hindi- (Lotta indians out there, although most of them can speak at least broken english (hooray, imperialism!))

Really with one germanic, one romance, and one slavic language, you can't go wrong. Add in some stuff to cover the rest of the globe along with English (yes it's germanic but I don't really think of it as such), and you're pretty much set for life with only about 5-8 languages.

[IVhorseman]

English is totally germanic! babble at any german dude for a few minutes, and you'll still at least be able to vaguely figure out what the other is talking about and referring to.

[Ben-Jammin]

I agree, I've gotten to the point now to where I can watch some movies and instantly recognize German and what they are implying when they speak it without subtitles.

[Zupponn]

Thank the Anglo-Saxons.

[Keldoclock]

(yet it is not nearly as close to German as, say, Dutch)

[Rody]

(yet it is not nearly as close to German as, say, Dutch)

Which results in the annoying tendency of not knowing the word; because it sounds really similar to a known word, but then translates to an entirely different one instead.

[Ben-Jammin]

There was a German foreign exchange student at my old school that told one of my friends that if you mispronounce even the slightest syllable in a German word you say something completely different. For instance mispronouncing the "ei" in "Nein" would change the meaning of the word from "no" to something entirely different.

[Silverdream]

There was a German foreign exchange student at my old school that told one of my friends that if you mispronounce even the slightest syllable in a German word you say something completely different. For instance mispronouncing the "ei" in "Nein" would change the meaning of the word from "no" to something entirely different.

That's a terrible example.

[Ben-Jammin]

Thank you for your input, but I can't help that it was like two and a half years ago and that I have a poor memory.

[Zupponn]

If you spell pines wrong you get penis.