Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: which should I learn now?
Message-ID: <D3IovC.LGn@indirect.com>
Sender: usenet@indirect.com (Internet Direct Usenet News)
Organization: Grammar 'R' Us
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 07:59:36 GMT
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Not so very long ago, buttrcup@expert.cc.purdue.edu (Nine Inch Nails) said...

>Hi, I just wanted to take a quick survey. See, I'm weird, and I like
>learning languages for no other reason than to add one to the list of
>languages I know. 

  How about =fun= ones?  I get a real kick out of Esperanto, seeing it 
used by people from some =very= different linguistic backgrounds who all 
wind up using pretty much the same dialect.
  One very interesting part of learning the language is learning how to 
make up new words.  The idea is to do it in such a way that other people 
will understand the word without having to look it up (indeed: if it is 
just now made up, it isn't in the dictionary yet).  It's surprising to 
come across new words invented by people whose native languages are 
Russian, Finnish, Chinese, and Japanese; their inventions aren't always 
the same ones I would make, but they are understandable.
  It's too bad you don't want to learn a =useful= language, or I'd 
recommend English, as the currect best contender for the international 
language.  Oh, wait.  You appear to know English already.  All right, 
then.  Learn the language that the world will be using after English has 
lost that position:  Japanese.

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
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