which language is the best one in the word?

Well I find Chinese hard to learn. It seems you have to learn every thing twice, one to speak it and one to read it. I think an alphabet is much similar and more logical than a pictorial language, that’s the main reason most other cultures in the past got rid of pictograms and introduced a working alphabet. If I read pinyin I know what it’s talking about, or at least some of it. If I try reading characters I understand only about 30%, and I find I read the characters in English, not the Chinese sound that they mean.
I think it depends what you’re used to, if you are used to an alphabet learning a second language with an alphabet is easier, if used to pictorial writing, then learning a pictorial language is easier. It is not so good to say you managed to learn something when you were young because it becomes much harder to learn a language when you are older. I was born in Switzerland and left when I was 7 (English parents) and I was fluent in French, German and English, so I would say they were easy to learn at the time, but if I now had to learn Spanish (for example) I would say it was not easy.
The most important language will always be English. For example in 2008 all Chinese pilots and ATC have to be able to speak English, and that is the case for the rest of the world. (Although the French choose to try ignore it as much as possible) It not just Aviation that English is the required language. IF you speak English ask enough people if they understand you in any country and someone will.

I'm a Chinese, too. I think it's true that Chinese is more difficulty to learn. But I think Chinese is the most amazing language on this planet. Of course, I prefer to talk with my friends in English, coz some phrases in English is very splendid, just as the Chinese idioms and proverbs.
But I think Russian is terrible to learn...Too long, like a train, hard to pronounce. Maybe it's better to listen than learn.
My English is very bad, so don't laugh at my poor sentences...

Sanskrit is the most computer-syntax friendly language in the world since it is the most unambigous. It is also THE most difficult to learn. After 2 years of learning it in school, I still cannot form one sentence on my own. All of us used to learn the exam-related question-answers by rote-learning everything.

Hindi and English are the best languages in the world. Hindi derives from Sanskrit. But foreigners (especially Europeans) find it difficult to learn Hindi because it assigns gender to every thing.
For example : police is feminine, circuit would be masculine and thisle-pippette is feminine. People who do not speak Hindi find it hard to assign gender.
Sanskrit assigns neutral-gender also to some things.

Well in Hindi "Meraa naam Indianfighter hai" means "My name Indianfighter is". "Main CDF kaa sadasya hoon" means "I CDF of member am".

I admit that if I speak continously in Hindi/English for a few minutes, I cannot switch to the other immediately.

the gender thing has always been pretty weird for me in the english she/he sepreration....there isent any such things in finnish...tells lot about the culture that have generated the languages...only after some imported gods from middle east came to these woods, our womens were downgrated to property status of mens world....and its propaply a factor why it has been relatively easy for nordics countryes to adjust into equality of men and women...in finnish language word man, doesent mean the human race as well, nor does the the word for woman is anyway derivated form the word man...

The best for you if you know few languages, it would be you could talk different languages in front of people but they don't understand . When my americans friends got too ignorant, i will shout at them with cantonese. And they can't do anything about it, haha:rofl: when my cantonese friends get out of line, I would use Fujianese. The funny thing they all knew I say something bad about them, but they don't know what. Oh well nowadays i am getting too old for this childish action , but I think it is rather fun way to express your displease.

Chinese of course.

I agree with Darth that it will be more important as China rises to prominence in the future, but I disagree in that a lot of people (especially Westerners) outside China would choose it as a second language. I have heard that people in Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and even Indonesia taking up Chinese as a second language, but I guess it'll be too hard for Westerners to learn. Remember when Japan rose to a world power, it only got its language around by forcing the local population to learn it, and after that the local population almost immediately switched back to their old dialects. I can picture Chinese being learned in Asia and amongst Asians overseas, but not among Westerners.

I disagree with Aerodriver that English will always be the most prominent language in the world. You can never say something will "ALWAYS" be. Maybe English will become the most prominent language in the West, but not in Asia. Yes, those pilots are required to learn it, but you'd be surprised how 80% of the time their accent is so deep that you can't understand a thing. Besides, who knows, maybe when China becomes a superpower, American pilots will be required to learn Chinese.

I find Chinese to be the best language, because of all the ways you can use to express one thing, and the high degree of precision of expression. and the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING amount of classics, poetry, and other works that are written in Chinese. I never managed to finish the full version of the "Three Kingdoms", the language was too incomprehensible, despite me knowing how to read WenYanWen (Scholar's Speech). (Oh yea, in Chinese we have basically 2 kinds of speeches, BaiHua, or White Speech, is one that we use in everyday situations, and that everyone can understand. BaiHua is about 2 times longer than WenYanWen when used to express something. WenYanWen is the Scholarly Speech, where all the old works, such as Sun Tzu's Art of War, are written in. WenYanWen communicates in short but precise phrases, if you ever read the Art of War in Chinese you'd know. Sadly most people don't know how to interpret WenYanWen anymore. It's like comparing modern Italian to classical Latin.)

darth sidious said:

well the more language you learn teh better for me English was the worest being sent to an american school without even knowing aphabet is not a easy thing. But later on learning french is not reely hard, as for spanish if you read goood French you can understand half of whats written in spanish

cantonese is a bit tricky for me though never learn anything similar.

Langague of the future ? Chinese !!! with the rising importence of china today its hard imagianing chinese not being a major langague in the near future. just look at the endless possibility there are in china knowing chinese will be a major advantage in teh near future. I find it odd that many chinese hear give up learn chinese for Japanese or Korean seriously in the future you arent going to need japanese unless you will travel to japan but for chinese there are endless uses

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The language of the future is English. Chinese is an extremely difficult to learn becasue it involves memorizing extra parts: The definition, the pinying, the and the word itself. Latin based languages only involve two. English is ver easy to learn, and is already rooted everywhere. if Chiense is the language fo the future, then why is it mandatory in china to learn English?

People argue since China makes up 1/5 of the world population, Chiense shoudl be a future language. But really, those chiense will be speaking english in transactions with foreigners

KYli said:

The best for you if you know few languages, it would be you could talk different languages in front of people but they don't understand . When my americans friends got too ignorant, i will shout at them with cantonese. And they can't do anything about it, haha:rofl: when my cantonese friends get out of line, I would use Fujianese. The funny thing they all knew I say something bad about them, but they don't know what. Oh well nowadays i am getting too old for this childish action , but I think it is rather fun way to express your displease.

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That's one of the reasons why Chinese os so hard to learn...There's about 5 or six differnet types of Chinese. Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese, Sichuanese, whatever it is they speak on Taiwan, I guess it would be Taiwanese. In English there is no "British", "New English", "Texan", and "Californian". No matter where you go, it is easy to get around reigonal accents and slang. Well, maybe there is a Texan:rofl:

By the way, does Manchu still exsist? I find that is a large gap in my knowledge of Chinese history that I do not know what hapened to the Manchus after 1911. Where did they go? Are there still any around? Maybe I'll make a thread about this in the history forum.

"The language of the future is English. Chinese is an extremely difficult to learn becasue it involves memorizing extra parts: The definition, the pinying, the and the word itself. Latin based languages only involve two. English is ver easy to learn, and is already rooted everywhere. if Chiense is the language fo the future, then why is it mandatory in china to learn English?

People argue since China makes up 1/5 of the world population, Chiense shoudl be a future language. But really, those chiense will be speaking english in transactions with foreigners"

I learned Chinese in four years in China... Now I still know how to speak, read, and write Chinese without taking a single Chinese class.

Maybe English with Westerners, but I imagine they'd be using Chinese with other Asians.

And yes the Manchus still exist, but pretty much assimilated into Han now.

I don't find the different dialects difficult, since everywhere in China Chinese is taught in Mandarin, so theoretically I could go to GuangDong or Hainan and speak Mandarin and they'd understand? I don't know, never been there. But I have been to Xi'an, and they speak Mandarin very well...

MIGleader said:

The language of the future is English. Chinese is an extremely difficult to learn becasue it involves memorizing extra parts: The definition, the pinying, the and the word itself. Latin based languages only involve two. English is ver easy to learn, and is already rooted everywhere. if Chiense is the language fo the future, then why is it mandatory in china to learn English?

People argue since China makes up 1/5 of the world population, Chiense shoudl be a future language. But really, those chiense will be speaking english in transactions with foreigners

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Chinese is not extremely difficult to learn. Personally I only learned Chinese for few years but I have no problem to read very complicate text. As long as you learn the basic, you could form sentence and pharse quick easy. In english you need to learn so many vocabulary and there are lot of grammars in order to write anything good.

English is mandatory because America and British has been most powerful nations in the world. You need to learn english in order to do business with world class campanies.

Do you know that there are many people in the West nowadays want to learn chinese. In chicago, they even teach chinese in pre-school, and let alone all the school that Chinese government open all over the world to teach Chinese. Chinese has became a major second languages for many people. Not only people in the west but also people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Korea, singapore, Mongolia and Thailand has becoming to promote Chinese language.

Personally I love Chinese because I am extremely fond of the chinese poetry and traditional writing. And the history of our language has passed from thousands years ago, it would be a shame for us to give it up just because we have make little convenient. I think people who did not have full knowledge of Chinese writing will never understand the important and beauty of the chinese writhing system for Us chinese.

Finn McCool said:

That's one of the reasons why Chinese os so hard to learn...There's about 5 or six differnet types of Chinese. Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese, Sichuanese, whatever it is they speak on Taiwan, I guess it would be Taiwanese. In English there is no "British", "New English", "Texan", and "Californian". No matter where you go, it is easy to get around reigonal accents and slang. Well, maybe there is a Texan:rofl:

By the way, does Manchu still exsist? I find that is a large gap in my knowledge of Chinese history that I do not know what hapened to the Manchus after 1911. Where did they go? Are there still any around? Maybe I'll make a thread about this in the history forum.

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There are not only five and six different types of chinese language, if you count the the minority languages and different division of ten main chinese languages. You will have over hundreds. The Language Taiwan use is mandarin, but there are Min nan(Holo) which is Fujianese and Hakka.

You would not have problem in China also, most chinese do know how to speak Mandarin. It is the standard language for all Chinese.

Manchu is still exist, but they has been assimilated into Han now. They are as much Chinese as we Han are.