Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin) ,Korean, or Taiwanese ?

nangua75 wrote: Just a question to clarify topic, if I may.
What do you mean exactly by "Taiwanese" ?
Min-Nan hua (Chinese dialect spoken in Taiwan, AKA Taiwan Hoklo) ?
Because in nowadays Taiwan, the language used at schools & universities is Mandarin Chinese, written in traditional characters.


sources:
[url=http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien]Wikipedia: Taiwanese[/url]
Languages of Taiwan

fin wrote: If you could learn one language, what and why would you select?
Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin) ,Korean, or Taiwanese ?
You decide

This: Taiwanese

I'm learning Japanese for the moment.
But have as goal to learn Mandarin, Thai and Korean too ^^

This might help you guys decide anonym.to/?http://ho...ages/index.html

About Mandarin or Taiwanese since they are both different dialects of the Chinese language, I would recommend Mandarin first as it's understood almost everywhere in Taiwan and in the whole China as well. Lots of people knows or are learning Mandarin in Hong Kong and Singapore. Also many overseas Chinese people as well. Some people in Taiwan cannot speak or understand Taiwanese like in Taipei area.

I always think go for the dominant main language first(Mandarin) to be understood by most, then learn the other dialects(Taiwanese).

I am currently learning Korean

The list of languages by number of native speakers and in order are:

1) Chinese (Mandarin)
2) Japanese
3) Min Nan (Amoy, Hokkien, Taiwanese)
4) Korean

So, it would be good to learn Mandarin Chinese first as it has the highest number of native speakers (but it might be biased as China have a huge population number, so that might skew the statistics). Therefore, Japanese would be a good second choice.

I was looking into learning a new language, the language of the future so to say. Learning Chinese might look like a logical choice by looking at the stats, BUT average educated Chinese person can learn English much faster than average non Chinese speakers learning Chinese. So you might be able to speak some Chinese, it'll be quite limited compared to the English spoken by the Chinese, no matter how broken their English is. Of coure there are exceptionally talented linguists out there. but are any of you?

I was looking into learning Hindi because of their large population and their super trippy psychedelic music, but for the same reason, I chose not to pick Hindi.

As for Japanese, unless you live there, it's almost impossible to master the nuances. And they have way too many big words!

I'd say learn Russian, Arabic, or Spanish. I'm teaching myself Spanish right now.

cantonese is common in most western countries

cantonese is common in most western countries

Taiwanese

1.Korean
2.Japanese
3.Taiwanese
4.Chinese