Very sexy.
How clichéd of me!!
Italian. I've never got around to learning it.
Yes, the languages are related - both are Semitic languages , in fact both of the central Semitic family (of which the third common language today is Amharic, spoken in parts of Ethiopia). Also, since Hebrew and Arabic have always been (and still are today) spoken mostly in the same region next to each other, they influence each other, and many words in one language are similiar to their roots in the other. A lot of Arabic also makes it into Hebrew 'slang expressions. Although most native speakers would say they sound quite distinct, by other people the sound of Hebrew (especially in the common middle-eastern accent) can be easily confused with Arabic.
They are not mutually intelligible, though (any more than German and English are, for example, both being west Germanic languages), and are written in different scripts. And considering how closely the native speaker populations are mixed in Israel (where the vast majority of native Hebrew speakers are, but the second most common and official language is Arabic, spoken natively by over 25% of the population, and by the absolute majority in all surrounding countries), the state of Arabic proficiency among most Hebrew speakers is quite abysmal, one has to admit.
Obviously though, Arabic retains a lot more diversity (having ~280 million people natively speaking it as the majority language of ~25 countries in Asia and Africa) with the standard literary form distinguished from the local varieties spoken by most people, which in some countries and regions can have some difficulty understanding people from others. While Hebrew has some diverse varieties too, they are mostly historical and marginalized today (especially after the "revival" by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in the late 19th century imposing a new structure making modern Hebrew a partly artificial language) and a lot of the diversity was lost in a few generations of blending, as the vast majority of the ~7 million native speakers are in one very small country, so the modern varieties of "dialects" within the country are rather minute and go unnoticed by non-natives.
Thanks alsbergt, I was always too afraid to ask, she was a sweet girl, but fresh out of 2 year mandatory military service, and I'm afraid she would have kicked my ass if given the proper occasion
French, Russian, Japanese
I speak fluently English, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, I am studying German now and know a little portuguese.
Which one is exciting? Depends for what... I find French the best for literature/Reading. English and Spanish for music and fun. Italian for speaking. Arabic for swearing and not being understood (most of the time). German (as in the real thing) is exciting for one thing but will reserve it for me. I hate the sound of Portuguese of Portugal. It does sound like someone dragging a cheese grater on your eardrum but Brazilian Portuguese sounds so romatic and sexy.
Once I am happy with German and 'Brazilian' Portuguese then I would love to learn Hebrew. It's sounds very similar to Arabic but has a sexy sound to it. (Yael Naim songs in Hebrew sound so good... Specially Baboker).
AlZ you are really incredible - i am so jealous!!!
would love to know how to swear in arabic and fight in italian - the 1st thing i thought about your comment on german was a dominatrix scene - so i'll keep my mouth shut!!!
portuguese - i've only ever heard the south african version, and it sounded soft and flowing...to my uneducated ear in any case!
where/why did you learn them all?
If I only had time..... Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Finnish, Italian and Sing-Language!
Yes DO ̈!!!!!!!!!!!!
No contest:Spanish I am at "Dos cerveza",and I working on "Tres ceveza"
next semester is all "vino "
For me it's Portuguese! But of Portugal (yes, I am bizarre ).
My daughter started learning Portuguese through singing the songs- she is fascinated with it-sounds so weird to me and where would she use it? Maybe I'm just jealous - I haven't nailed the moves like her yet!
Dos cerveza?? What u from Andalucia now?? Dos Cerveza S !!!
Here's the reason I fell in love with Brazilian Portuguese:
Hi, if you were given the possibility to learn one or several languages, which ones will you pick and why?
It could be any languages including latin and the 4 languages of Switzerland.
In my case, it would be German, French and Chinese. Maybe also Japanese if I won’t confuse it with Chinese.
For me Danish, or the very similar Scandinavian languages. I could speak and understand on a low level and could read BT Aviser. But use it or lose it, and now there is hardly anything left.
But Danish like Spanish/Mexican are Latin or Nordic languages you can get your head around wit ha bit of effort. Maltese on the other hand… I tried but could not even get the basics.
Spanish, because I love the different dialects across South America and would like to be able to distinguish them. Also the fact that South Americans don’t use the controversial Castilian lisp typical in most of Spain.
I spent years in and around south America with my base in Mexico City and came to the conclusion that it was either sink or swim so I had to learn. I loved it, then going to Spain I got very dirty looks with my butchered Chilango Spanish in Madrid.
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Didn’t expect to see “Hebrew” as a popular answer. I guess it’s nice to be able to read the original bible and actually understand it without translation, but it’s probably one of the least useful language to learn, spoken by 9~ million people who for the most part speak English well enough.
Japanese and Korean would be “exciting” for me because of the unique intonation, would be fun to imitate that.
What I would really love is to be able to imitate all English accents.
Finnish.
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Finnish is hard to learn.
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