"the smaller university of Britain" - what you mean? There are loadsa uni's here...

Baths a lovely city, and the students are pretty darn awesome. What you going to study there?

I am not sure between a L2 in History in Bath and a M1 in programing elsewhere. "the smaller university of Britain" oh sorry it must be wrong. I red somewhere that it was the most recent university of Britain.

English: Since I live in America
Chinese: Since I'm Chinese
Spanish: Since my school required 4 years of one language and this is what I chose.

I'd love to learn Japanese; they offer it at my high school, but I wasn't able to make room for it...

I just figured out that you must not understand what is L2 and M1 (I thought that was European conventions), I am trying to find a translation.

English: American, etc. > learned
Japanese: Learning, idk, didn't want to learn spanish or French, shoulda taken latin instead... > Learning
german: Awesome language, anyone? > want to learn
Spanish: Pretty useful in California. > Want to learn

Well firstly I don't know what L2 and M1 are (I assume Ba and Masters?).
Not sure if Bath is the newest, it is quite possible, but its not noticably so - its only 1 year younger than mine (Warwick).
Well go for it - Baths a really nice city with lots of history, a very large posh sector, and lots of awesome students.

@figlesquidge : * a second year of Bachelor in History in Bath or first year of Master of Computing Science elsewhere in Britain I hope.

@ Kingdroid : Latin is so dead

@cham - have a look in Warwick for CS

Latin is a language, as dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans, and now it's killing me.

@figlequidge : I don't choose the University : my University must have a partnership with a british one for CS. No doubts yours in pretty good though, I will check it this week.
I hope it isn't an University in London since it must be very expensive living there. (I also hope to avoid northern England and Scotland as well since the local accent is hard to understand and since it must be so cold)

I realised that, and I assume you're coming in on Erasmus.

They teach Latin at my school, and I hear it's very hard... I feel sorry for the kids in AP Latin.

What's with everyone taking German? Apparently it must be cool, because it is... rather useless.

I suppose there was a time when that was the language to learn if you were looking at mechanical engineering or whatnot, but that time is passing. Only obi seems to have a relatively good reason for wanting to take it lol.

When it comes to the usefulness of languages, I think that's paramount. I myself starting taking French in 7th grade (age 13), because the only other option was Spanish I wanted to be different.

But if I hadn't taken an interest in Africa, all this French schooling (this is my.... 8th year. Holy shit) would be utterly useless. I imagine, without practice, that I would forget most all of it within a year or two.

So yeah. Lol. My advice, unless you have a special interest, is take Spanish (if you're American), English if you don't speak that... basically learn your neighboring country's language.

Lol. Though that seems to happen a lot anyway. I imagine many Poles speak German, many Spaniards French, and many Turks Arabic.

Right? I mean... it just sort of makes sense to do it that way. All this "I took German, or Russian, or Japanese" just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me unless you're like, really into opera, literature, or anime respectively.

Not hating though, not at all. Language learning is a blast imo.

@Thucy

I had to take a language in HS. I had to choose between Spanish, French, Latin, and German.

I took Spanish in Middle School and didn't really like it. There was no way in fuck I was taking Latin. So, that left German and French and German seemed like more fun.

Native English, intermediate Latin, beginner German, and some scraps of the Spanish I took three years of a while ago.

woah, Aberacht, I saw your name and got really, really confused for a second.

Yeah, when I joined this site and I saw you in the forums I was also confused for a moment ^^"

Native English, ten years living in China has given me fluent Mandarin and high school French that I've mostly forgotten but has come in useful when traveling in former French colonies like Morocco.

Queen's english is the mother tongue.
Enough French for basic conversation and reading.
Not as much Spanish as I would like.
French/Spanish from school, when for a brief period I thought I might like to work with languages.

@chamois
The West Country twang from those good folks from Somerset (and Avon) may be just as challenging as a Northern English or Scottish accent :-)

Just to get a somewhat different native language in here:
native german (no reason for that ;) ),
fluent english (as I plan to move to ireland next year that'll be usefull),
basic latin from school (yeah, latin - there is no reason for that at all ;) ) and
basic spanish from university (just for fun).
Additionally basic words (hello, goodbye, thank you, odering a beer etc.) in french, chzech, polish, italian, arabic and almost every other native language of a country I've been to (as a form of politeness as a guest).

By the way, the only good reason I ever found for my latin is the fact that it helps to learn romanic languages (portugese, spanish, french and italian).

@Thucy
I'd like to stick up for learning German as a second language since I think it has pretty wide applications. Behind Chinese and English, it's probably the most important international business language as the German-speaking lands are so important in Europe. Otherwise, it is indispensable for studying many of the humanities: musicology, art history, or philosophy all have a huge body of essential work in German. If someone wants to seriously study any of these, they pretty much cannot escape the language. Es ist auch sehr schön. Then again, I am biased ;)

@Urel - ordering a beer in arabic? :S

As for me, I am a native English speaker. I've learned German to an intermediate degree and Azerbaijani to an intermediate/beginning level. I've learned scraps of French and Danish, but have basically forgotten them.

As for why, I learned German so that I could study music in Germany and possibly art history there too (although that never panned out). I studied Azerbaijani because I really wanted to study Turkish but it wasn't offered at the institution so I figured, "well, they're basically the same language so why not?" Turned out to be a good choice since I found a little bit of work translating Azerbaijani. As for why Turkish/Azerbaijani, I'm really not sure... fascination I guess.

I plan to get better at Azerbaijani (and possibly add real Turkish on there). I want to learn Persian, too, some day. Polish keeps catching my eye but I'm not sure if I can handle a Slavic language.

@chamois: Bath is cool. You'll be a hippy in no time. Scotland may be cold, but it has the best IT courses.

@Urel: Latin also helps you with English. I'll just say one word - 'roots'.

Native English speaker. Studied high school Latin and French, picked up a little bit of Greek, more Turkish than I need outside Turkey, and am now in the process of picking up Chinese. I like to learn languages naturally, at the time they are necessary.

I'm very suspect of everyone claiming they were "born" speaking a language.

Yeah I was nowhere near that quick it took me months before I started speaking English. Even then it took a while before I stated making sentences, so I'm told.

Midwest American English, took Spanish 7-12 grades and was an exchange student in Chile, where I learned Spanish infinitely better than in the 6 years in school

@figlesquidge: yes, of cause. I'm not ordering for them. I'm not a muslim and there are allowed to sell alcohol - just not to consumpt. Although I've seen that as well. ;)