What Language Would You Learn?

[Fynn]

Japanese grammar is almost insultingly simple compared to the utter incomprehensibility of the writing system.

[Peter1986]

Japanese grammar is almost insultingly simple compared to the utter incomprehensibility of the writing system.

I wouldn't call it "insultingly simple", it is actually very different from English grammar.
Yes, you can probably understand the idea that an entire sentence can work as an adjective for a topic and such things (for example, the sentence "people who don't drink coffee prefer tea" would look kind of like "concerning not-drink-coffee-persons, the way of tea is good"), however this is clearly a very different kind of sentence structure that might take some time to get used to.

[Fynn]

Relatively speaking. The writing system is incredibly broken with the amount of readings of each kanji and kanji combination (each reading borrowed from a different part of China at a different point in time, making it seriously messy). Really, compared to that, the grammar is really simple. I'm saying it as a speaker of a language with eight functioning grammatical cases, grammatical gender and God knows how many declensions, so that may be what makes me consider Japanese grammar really simple.

[Sephiroth]

No additional language. I am fine with German, English and Japanese. French would be cool I guess but no must. Of course I will always be improving my English and Japanese and even my native language but those are my mains and that's enough for me.

Maybe the language of love?

[Peter1986]

Relatively speaking. The writing system is incredibly broken with the amount of readings of each kanji and kanji combination (each reading borrowed from a different part of China at a different point in time, making it seriously messy). Really, compared to that, the grammar is really simple. I'm saying it as a speaker of a language with eight functioning grammatical cases, grammatical gender and God knows how many declensions, so that may be what makes me consider Japanese grammar really simple.

I am not saying that Japanese grammar is necessarily difficult, I am just saying that it is very different and that some people might have some mild difficulties to get used to how sentences are written - especially casual speech.

But yes, a lot of languages are significantly more complicated - I started looking at Finnish grammar some time ago, and that language seems to have a lot of suffixes such as "-ssa", "-lla", "-lle" and so on.
Russian seems even more complicated and has a huge number of endings for all kinds of things, but that's relatively trivial since it isn't really a huge grammatical obstacle - you can often just look up the endings while reading a text and piece things together from context.

[Freya]

Fynn's Polish was a bitch to try to learn. I gave up on that fairly quickly.

Right now i'm a bit obsessed with Korean stuff so I'll go with that for instant learning.

[Peter1986]

I have found a book at the university library that apparently calls itself "Finnish for beginners".
I hope it has a lot of example texts, since I think that's one of the best ways to start learning a language while also building up your vocabulary, at least in the very beginning.
There are a couple Finnish lecturers and students there though, including at the library itself, so I might practise on them after a while.

[DMKA]

Binary

[TheKeybasHKey]

Either Japanese, French or Portuguese.

[Yar]

I would love to learn German, French or Portuguese.

Or something cool like one of those languages they speak alllll the way up in Northern Canada

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

Relatively speaking. The writing system is incredibly broken with the amount of readings of each kanji and kanji combination (each reading borrowed from a different part of China at a different point in time, making it seriously messy). Really, compared to that, the grammar is really simple. I'm saying it as a speaker of a language with eight functioning grammatical cases, grammatical gender and God knows how many declensions, so that may be what makes me consider Japanese grammar really simple.

As someone who took Ancient Greek and Japanese in university (as well as having French as a second language), I can say that Japanese grammar is way easier, especially given the flexibility of the sentence structure. Grammatically the largest hurdle are particles. Also, linguist have no clue where to put the Japonic languages relative to other language families.

Grammatical gender, declensions and conjugation are a bitch. Ancient Greek had 3 grammatical genders, 5 declensions, and I forget how many verb tenses and modes. Plus when you get into like Homer and other poets where POETIC STRUCTURE IS PARAMOUNT, then spelling kinda dies. I am surprised I actually passed (barely). Hell, the prof taught Latin too and told us she marked us kinder because it was a harder language. (SIDENOTE: Oh, and Fynn she was Polish and told us to call her by her first name because she wouldn't force us to butcher her last name!)

Oh, can I add that I always found Latin to be interesting though never bothered to study it.

[Fynn]

Yeah, I can see why she'd say that XD My first name is pretty straightforward for English speakers, but I'm sure you'd butcher my last name if I didn't tell you how it's pronounced (hint: Cz is pronounced like the English Ch as in cheese, and the stress doesn't lie where you think it does )

[Mr. Carnelian]

German. I already know a little - enough to get by as a tourist - but I'd love to be able to speak it fluently, mainly because my Dad lives in Switzerland, my step-mother is German and my sister (who lives with my Dad) speaks German better than she does English.

[Madame Adequate]

Quenya.

[Mirage]

Japanese, because it's the hardest out of the languages I'd like to know.

German and Spanish I can learn the old fashioned way much more easily than I could learn Japanese.