Which languages(East Asia) do you prefer to learn? If you have to choose one.

In these days, I see a lot of people learning new languages in East Asia countries.

I came up with an idea to give you some interesting facts and information in future about the language you choose the most.

Please choose one if you ever thought about learning :)

*If you leave a comment (1 or 2 sentences) why you choose this language to learn, I'd be appreciated it !!!!! 

I chose Japanese because I used to watch a lot of anime, and it got me interested in Japanese culture beyond their entretainment. :)

The bottom four languages are all considered SEA (South East Asia) in English, but Tagalog (live here). Malay/Indo (great language, like Esperanto but real). I'd love Korean too for high paying jobs and k-pop.

I speak Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Thai. So for me it was between Cantonese, Malay and Vietnamese. I want to learn all of them, but the strongest motivation for me is with Vietnamese. Reasons - I like Vietnamese women, Vietnam is fun to visit, and Vietnamese seems to be the Asian language I hear the most often in the US that I don't already speak.

Oh man, that's a tough decision, since they're all SO HARD to learn, and they're all so fascinating and lovely-sounding to my ear. But if I had to pick one it would definitely be Korean.

It may be a slightly dumb reason haha, but I'm a huge fan of esports and video games in general, and Koreans dominate League of Legends, Starcraft and Overwatch like it's nothing. I would absolutely love to be able to watch the Korean broadcasts of these tournaments and watch Korean streamers like Faker and my favourite player Ambition and actually understand what they're saying, that sounds so awesome. There's also some Korean music I love like Sanulrim and Idiotape. And of course, I'd love to visit Korea one day. I guess just being interested in a culture makes me very hyped about learning the language one day.

Too bad there's no place to learn Korean around here (except the Korean teacher at my uni, but he doesn't speak English or Serbian and nobody speaks even a lick of Korean among his students! I wonder how that works and I'm kinda scared to take that class haha).

Forgot to add, the close second would be Chinese, since travelling around China for a prolonged period of time is something I would really, really love to do one day. And I'll probably give it a try next year, as Mandarin is actually a fairly popular language around here.

I appreciate for all of your interests into Asian languages! I hope you all enjoy learning new languages :)

Oh my there are lots to learn from east asian countries. And they're all so hard to learn! If I were to choose, I think I'd go with Niponggo. I also love to watch Anime whenever I have the time so I guess I'm influenced by Niponggo through those shows. You really can't understand what the characters are saying unless you turn the subtitles on and that's where I get to practice listening to their words. Then I'll move on to the manga (comic book) to know more about the side story of some characters which is usually provided for every anime that I've watched. From there I get to practice reading some Japanese characters. Manga are now available online both for Japanese and English translation so I get to switch quickly whenever I'm curious to know about a phrase or two. 

I guess Kosta.Cirkovic is a gamer too based on his post lol. I love playing games and watching esports tournaments but only now do I realize that most of those games like League of Legends and Overwatch have lots of Korean players. If I'm not really fond of watching anime, I think I would've choses Korean as well. But right now, I'll stick to Japanese.

jpormento wrote:

I guess Kosta.Cirkovic is a gamer too based on his post lol. I love playing games and watching esports tournaments but only now do I realize that most of those games like League of Legends and Overwatch have lots of Korean players. If I'm not really fond of watching anime, I think I would've choses Korean as well. But right now, I'll stick to Japanese.

Haha, that's right! I don't watch anime series because I just don't have the dedication to watch anything divided into hundreds of episodes, but I love a good anime movie :) Giovanni's Island and Colorful are some of my favourites, and Your Name as well, even though I know it's super mainstream. They really gave me a perspective of how awesome Japanese sounds. That and the Japanese game shows like Sasuke and Viking, have you watched those? I used to idolise those guys when I was a kid haha.

Which esports do you watch, btw? Any favourite teams/players? :D

Sorry if the discussion is too offtopic, by the way, I just got a bit hyped haha.

Kosta.Cirkovic wrote:

they're all SO HARD to learn

All languages are hard to learn, meaning time consuming, but Malay has a reputation of being relatively easy for native indo-european learners such as yourself.

Sure, I was speaking from my Indo-European perspective. Other Indo-European languages are definitely easier to learn for someone like myself, and a lot of Asian languages are a totally different beast. To be honest, I'm having tons of trouble with Danish already, even though I've learned one Germanic language already, so I can't imagine how tough it could be learning a language so unfamiliar and different.

That's why I've got to try it, though!

Malay/Indonesian feels like Esperanto. Words are legos, things don't conjugate or decline. Very easy language, great for getting your toes wet for a more intense language in the Austronesian family, such as Tagalog or Malagasy.

Thanks for all your comments here.

All of you seem like interested in Asian Languages!

It is great to know what each of you prefers to learn.

I am thankful for that and hope more people participate in this survey :)

For new users, I hope you guys participate in this vote! So I know what language materials I'll need to prepare for you all in the future! :) 

Korean! Your Korean resources are very helpful, so I hope you will keep posting them.

I'm learning Cantonese as well, but I've made more progress in 3.5 years of Korean than in 10 years of Korean. It may be because there are so many more resources in Korean than in Cantonese. Or more likely because I already speak Japanese, so the similarities between Korean and Japanese make the former easy to learn.

Animefangirl wrote:

I've made more progress in 3.5 years of Korean than in 10 years of Korean.

Did you mean 10 years of Cantonese? Incidentally, we have Cantonese Conversations here, claimed by some to be the best listening/reading course for Cantonese.

leosmith wrote:

Animefangirl wrote:

I've made more progress in 3.5 years of Korean than in 10 years of Korean.

Did you mean 10 years of Cantonese? Incidentally, we have Cantonese Conversations here, claimed by some to be the best listening/reading course for Cantonese.

Yes, Cantonese. I can't edit my message any more. The Cantonese Conversations are FANTASTIC. A huge help to my progress.

Recently started watching Korean dramas. 

So started learning it. 

I'm just in love with chinese culture. 

Also I think it has been attacked for so many years and it's really underrated (in my country).

I like to learn Mandarin but I know it's hard work. (huhu!)

Japanese sounds fun too because it sounds like a very expressive language. 

I learned Korean back in the university because I like Kdrama. But, I've forgotten about it too.