Might want to try a different approach next time then.

Next time I'll tell the joke in fake English, then you might get it.

That's interesting, I wasn't aware that "dude" was a standard part of the "proper English" vocabulary.

I'm pleased I could enlighten you. I usually charge for such pearls of wisdom.

Spanish, if you're talking in purely practical terms. romance languages are [censored] dull, though.

languages are fascinating things, though, so if you're looking into it as just a hobby you should shop around. German is the easiest for a native English speaker and from there you could branch into stuff like Swedish. Icelandic is pretty but kind of useless because pretty much everyone in Iceland speaks perfect English. balance what's easiest vs. what grabs your interest the most, or what would help with a hobby or something.

i'm personally most versed in Japanese and Russian, since those are both closely tied to my primary interests.

If in the US, I'd say spanish. Over in Europe, maybe french or german.

Why would French or German be your favourites over here in Europe?

Because he already speaks English, and Montenegrin isn't going to be as widely understood as French and German would be?

Well, I once had a teacher tell me that those two languages would be better for someone who would travel to Europe. Something about how France and Germany are booming in many industries.

That's really a matter of opinion and I was hoping for a more direct facetious remark from the person I directed the question to.

I see, Germany have always been booming but France, not so much.

It isn't a matter of opinion. There are far more people who understand French or German than Montenegrin.

Not so sure about that. We have many eastern Europeans living in western Europe who speak this language, it's probably not so rare as you think.

From my personal experience, knowing French and/or German drastically improves your chances when applying for jobs with the EU, and French is almost a prerequisite if you think of applying for NATO jobs. And in my current job for a Dutch health insurance company I speak with Germans almost daily (usually Germans who work in the Netherlands).

Really? Most eastern Europeans I meet are Poles, I doubt any of them speak Montenegrin any better than I do.

As many have already said (before the convo devolved into "what language goes best with English in Europe") , Spanish is the winner in North America. Being bilingual in English/Spanish opens a huge number doors for employment alone.

And 99% of them are probably emigrants from the Balkans. Serbo-Croatian has about 20 mln native speakers when German has 90 mln and French over 70 mln. That's not counting L2 speakers. What's there to be unsure about?

Are Germans typically more accident-prone?

Learn to speak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsolyáni_language and you among the Gods of Geek.

Spanish is probably the most useful language you can learn if you live in America, if you live in Europe however I'd probably recommend German instead.

C++. It's a widely used programming language that isn't owned by any corporation as far as I know. If you look at employment/salary prospects by field/major/specialization, software engineering and programming have consistently been close to the top for a while.

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Jokes aside, I find English to be perhaps the best widely used human language.

Note: To understand my anolysis, you have to understand some computer-science related concepts:
-Lookup tables. A lookup table maps an input value to an output value in "constant" time (actually based on its load factor, but I will omit that for simplicity). For humans: lookup tables are "difficult". The human brain is designed to derive concepts rather than memorize them by rote. (On an unrelated note: for computers, derivations are difficult and lookup tables are easy.
-Constant space versus linear space. A constant-space solution to a problem means that its required memory/storage space never exceeds a given amount no matter the size of the input problem. On the other hand, a linear-space solution requires memory that scales up on the same order as the input problem size.

My anolysis - English is perhaps the best language widely used today because:
-It has an phonetic alphabet. As far as linguistics go, the phonetic alphabet (where letters and combinations of letters dictate pronounciation) may be the best thing since written language. If you know a language's alphabet and the pronounciation rules given the alphabet, it means that you can use a constant-sized ruleset to pronounce any term in the language. Even better: if you come across a term you have never encountered in that language, you will be able to pronounce it, or at least pronounce it badly.
The good news: Pronounciation in English can be solved in constant-space. You only need to memorize the rules for pronouncing letters, and then you can extend these to any term you encounter. If your brain is configured to think in English, you only have to maintain a lookup table mapping terms and contexts to definitions: mathematically, Table(String,Context) = Definition.
While English does have some quirks (such as "island" being pronounced as "eye-land"), they aren't that bad considering that most other language have much larger structural problems. For example: in the Chinese language, there is no way to infer a character's pronounciation from how it is written. This means that if you are configured to think in Chinese, you have to maintain 2 lookup tables (and remember that lookup tables are difficult for humans!): A table mapping characters and context to definitions, and another table mapping sound/phonetics to characters. Mathematically: the Chinese language has a pronounciation function that takes linear space.

-English does not attempt to impose arbitrary genders on inanimate objects, unlike some other European languages such as Spanish and French. The problem with assigning genders to inanimate objects is that it's another unnecessary lookup table (extra storage overhead with no linguistic benefit). It's the equivalent of defining a data structure in programming with a field that never gets used. It's taking up space for each instance of the data structure, but it has no real purpose.

-English has no specific accents or tonality. I know some European languages have various accents (usually placed over vowels). The Chinese language takes accents/tonality to another level, where if you use a different tone/accent, you can end up with a different term entirely. The problem with accents and tonality? It makes a language harder to parse if you are listening to it. Furthermore, tonal languages are actually considered very difficult for current computerized sound processing technology. So if you're talking to a computer... speak English - the computer might just thank you.

-English has prefixes and suffixes. This means that you can dynamically invent terms in a logical manner and other people should have a good idea of what you mean.

-English has much potential for phonetic-directed data compression if you include "textspeak" (for example: "C U Later" or "gr8 b8 m8, I r8 8"). While the use of textspeak is frowned upon in academia and business (and also on forums because it prevents non-English speakers from using translation tools), IMO textspeak is a good thing because it attempts to minimize the number of characters/bytes that a message would take. In fact, this was its original purpose: in the old days, text message lengths were limited due to technology and texts were typed on a telephone-style keypad, so it made sense to compress them.

-English readily borrows terms and definitions from other languages, keeping it flexible, adaptible, and current.
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Is English perfect? Not exactly.
-Pronounciation "quirks" (see above example on "island" being pronounced as "eye-land") and nonuniformities in changing singular terms to plural terms (for example: mouse becomes mice, however house doesn't become hice. And moose can be singular or plural)
-Synonyms. From a utilitarian perspective, synonyms in a language are just clutter in the lookup tables.

Haha no, the explanation is less interesting than that. People who live abroad but work in the Netherlands (regardless of their nationality) are required to have health insurance in the Netherlands, so most Germans that call are people from the border area who've just landed a job in the Netherlands and want to apply for health insurance. Most of them seem to be construction workers for some reason. Thus far I haven't spoken to a single German who actually had an accident.

Dammit. Beaten to it.

Martian. For when the Alien overlords return to their colony.

The one that sounded the most interesting to me. Who cares about practicality, just go with your heart.


Because there are a lot of Spanish immigrants coming to the US from the south, who generally have large families. Hispanics are now the second most common race after Caucasians there, surpassing African-Americans.

Or maybe you could calm down, mister Internet Policeman. It was a joke, and now you're the joke for taking it too seriously. Buuut I expect nothing more from you, I've seen that non-stop for the 1+ year I've been here.