   Second language recommendations.
  It's not been long since I got back from Thailand, living and working there for 3 months. It was actually being out of England that made me realise - it might actually be worth putting effort into learning a second language, properly, not the half-arsed way you get in schools over here. I actually began trying to learn Thai, although for the effort I put in, I didn't get much out of it - A few basic words, mostly greetings of some kind, and the ability to read enough to pronounce place names better, of course still requiring the phonetic spelling to help me out. Funnily, management where I was working were French, and the workers all Thai.Before I go any further daring to brave trying to learn another language, what other language would be the most beneficial for working in the games industry? What other language would potentially open the most doors for my career?PS: I expect Japanese to be one of the responses, however, I don't think that's a language I could learn in any reasonable amount of time to some useful degree of proficiency - including reading and writing.   
  European languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian) are very easy to become reasonably proficient in in a relatively short space of time, especially Spanish and especially if you immerse yourself in the language. That said, from a career point of view, I wouldn't bother with a European language. Most continental Europeans speak English to a very high standard, and knowing any of these languages is simply no longer that beneficial to a business. If you're ruling out Japanese based on difficulty, then forget about Thai, Chinese (Mandarin) and most other east Asian languages. Japanese is a lot easier than Thai or Mandarin, which are tonal languages.If I was to pick a language purely on the grounds of career advancement, I'd go with Mandarin. The Chinese will most likely end up becoming the dominant culture (the way the US is now) in the next few decades.;Quote:Original post by ChaosEngineIf you're ruling out Japanese based on difficulty, then forget about Thai, Chinese (Mandarin) and most other east Asian languages. Japanese is a lot easier than Thai or Mandarin, which are tonal languages.I've actually been told quite a few times Japanese is easy, well, easier than a lot of languages - that it's pretty logical. It's the reading and writing that scares me more in all the above (excluding Thai) than the speaking and listening.   ;  I'd also say Chinese or Japanese (or even Korean, if you're brave), with Japanese being the easier by far. I can't really claim any level of proficiency with Japanese, but I don't think it's that difficult once you get past thinking in subject-object-verb order. The difficult stuff are the Kanji, which you don't absolutely have to learn for speaking (but if you do learn them, you need around two or three thousand for everyday life), and the convoluted politeness structures, where, as a foreigner, you might get away with making a mistake or two when starting out. What you might have trouble with though is finding a conversation partner to practice with. But if you are looking to expand your horizons and learn a new way of thinking (language influences our thought patterns, after all), then Japanese is a good bet since it's so different from what you're used to.Germany is a big market for games (going by population, especially if you add Austria and Switzerland to the mix), and most of the games that come out here are of course localized in German, so German would be my third bet. I'm also not sure about the high standard of English on the continent. In France, they might know it, but they certainly don't show it, and in Austria they usually know it but it's pretty basic (we write some group papers in English at university and I usually end up having to rewrite substantial portions). People say that life is too short to learn German but that's simply untrue, and I've personally seen people who come here without speaking a single word and reach a decent level of conversational competency after as little as three months of training. Unlike Japanese, you won't struggle as much with politeness levels (there are only two), but you might have more trouble with conjugating verbs (especially the irregular ones).   ;  Japanese is easier to pronounce but is grammatically more difficult than Chinese. Also, it is possible to learn how to pronounce virtually every possible Mandarin word before learning them because only a finite set of distinct syllables are possible. This is why the language has an insane amount of homonyms (each pronunciation is linked to numerous different meanings, hence why a pictographic writing system is necessary.) It is not nearly as daunting as it sounds, but Chinese orthography will most likely preclude you from ever becoming fully literate in the language.I'm learning it now and having a blast with it. After a year of Mandarin I can say far more than I could ever say after 4 years of French. And I'm half-assing it for now. My spoken ability is still fairly poor (unless I speak very slowly) but I'm confident some immersion will rectify that quickly.   ;  I can't offer advice on a language per say. But I do know that if you can read and write fluently in French that adds 15 points on your Canadian immigration test. And seeing how the current pass mark is 67 points total, you can see just how important French is to the great white north.So if you ever considered moving over to Canada which has a flourishing and strong games industry [or so I have been told] having French under your belt would help that cause out greatly.Then these always working in France. ;);Quote:Original post by Richy2kIt's not been long since I got back from Thailand, living and working there for 3 months. It was actually being out of England that made me realise - it might actually be worth putting effort into learning a second language, properly, not the half-arsed way you get in schools over here. I actually began trying to learn Thai, although for the effort I put in, I didn't get much out of it.Initially Thai language was a branch of sanscrit(-?) ,old Indian.But now it has a lot from other south-east Asia languages and realy hard to lean,though may be easier than Vietnamese.Russian also has something from sanscrit,it was  also  the pre-language for antique slavic,and differs strongly from "roman" languages.In short it will be a hard work- to learn Thai.The knowledge of single basic words is not important here,the main problem will be with structure,speach recognition etc.Afaik in vietnamese the sense of word may depend from accents in parts of word...Chineese seems me more easy-at least you can talk and know what chineese programmers speak about [smile]   ;Quote:Original post by KrokhinRussian also has something from sanscrit,it was  also  the pre-language for antique slavic,and differs strongly from "roman" languages.As far as I am aware of, Russian wasn't derived from Sanskrit, although there are some similarities. Russian is, of course, derived from Indo-European, but so is (almost? sans Finno-Ugric languages) every language spoken in Europe. Can't say if Russian differs much from Italic languages though, since I only speak Germanic ones.   ;  Japanese is actually a very easy language to both speak and read. Politeness levels might trip you up though, and learning to omit the parts of a sentence that are inferred by context or otherwise not strictly necessary takes some time getting used to, but I'd say it's far easier than both English and German.Learning the writing language takes time and effort, and contrary to other posters in this thread knowing it is pretty much essential if you want to speak it well (or understand what other people are trying to tell you.) However, it's most definitely not hard, and when you know it, skimming through huge masses of text for its general meaning becomes a breeze. You'll also learn to appreciate their ridiculous puns puns and clever ways to turn half a page of text into four characters.   ;Quote:Original post by lightbringerQuote:Original post by KrokhinRussian also has something from sanscrit,it was  also  the pre-language for antique slavic,and differs strongly from "roman" languages.As far as I am aware of, Russian wasn't derived from Sanskrit, although there are some similarities. Russian is, of course, derived from Indo-European, but so is (almost? sans Finno-Ugric languages) every language spoken in Europe. Can't say if Russian differs much from Italic languages though, since I only speak Germanic ones.The basque language is neither Indo European nor Finno Ugric, and still has some speakers left:)If you like to learn a language just for the sake of learning one, then I do think Russian is a nice one, as it has in many ways preserved much more of the inflections that both Latin and Proto Germanic had, but have mostly been lost in their present day daughter languages.Other fun languages would be Norwegian and Swedish, because they have this pitch accent (fixed intonation on words), which makes it sound really funny:)[Edited by - quasar3d on May 22, 2009 3:35:49 PM]