Yea yea yea I'm copping out, whatever. I know it sounds like I'm cheapening my education or whatever, but I just want to get FL shit out of the way. I can't place into anything other than 101, so I'm starting from scratch. I have no interest in making the requirement more than just a requirement.

I took Spanish in high school but haven't retained much of anything. I didn't really like the culture aspect of it, and I can't roll my tongue so that makes things difficult.

I was told French might be a good choice for me. My mother and brother speak operational French (or whatever, they're not fluent but it's the equivalent of 300-level speaking). maybe it runs in the family.

TWW ho?

10/28/2010 2:42:53 AM

latin

10/28/2010 10:53:59 AM

I'd say spanish is the easiest language at NCSU. mainly because there are so many options for professors who are easier than others. and in general, spanish is pretty easy, especially if you already have SOME experience in it.

10/28/2010 11:03:50 AM

Go get your FL waived. Just jabber on in an obscure language to professor-forget-his-name and he'll sign you off. He doesn't speak every language, just passes you based on your rhythm, accents, etc.

10/28/2010 11:08:49 AM

French and Spanish are both easy and share many common themes, so your Spanish background could help in French as well. Plus if you ever go to Europe your limited French could be of some help (besides in Spain of course)

10/28/2010 11:20:43 AM

Spanish.

10/28/2010 11:42:44 AM

i took 3 years in high school, managed to place into 102 after i did not take any thing in senior year, got a B+ in 102 and an A in 201, if you place into 101 and you took spanish in high shcool you will get no credit

10/28/2010 12:34:12 PM

^Yea I know I won't get any credit, but I know almost nothing from my Spanish classes that were 7 years ago.

10/28/2010 1:53:34 PM

I too recommend Spanish (it's amazing how logically it's put together and the strong correlation between spelling and pronunciation), but if you'd rather not go through that again there's Italian, which is just a little bit harder, but without the orthographic mindfucks of French (or the epic cross-confusion and heavy nasalization of Portuguese).

I don't think German or Latin would be good ideas because of their heavy levels of inflection and declension, and you should stay away from anything not normally written with the English alphabet and perhaps a few diacritical marks (stuff like that l with the slash, or the o with two acute accents, make the Eastern European languages questionable at best).

[Edited on October 28, 2010 at 3:00 PM. Reason : or there's the comedy option, the Persian language, a.k.a. Parsi, not Farsi

10/28/2010 2:58:33 PM

I'm not including that I took 101 and 102 German, but that I did so horribly and learned so little that it's not even a consideration right now. I like the language and culture but oh god.

Ugh, I can't roll properly for Spanish but it honestly looks like it would be the easiest.

10/28/2010 3:05:35 PM

I think Spanish is the way to go. If you had it in high school, some of it will come back as you start to get into it again. At least it did for me. I placed in to some non-intro Spanish class, but decided to start from scratch with the intro class anyways, because I didn't feel I kept enough from high school, and I wanted to build it from the ground up. And Spanish has the added bonus of utility. I've actually used it at work, even though my Spanish is very limited, but I don't see how I'd ever use French or many other languages living in North Carolina.

If you are really worried about having to speak the language, Latin might be the way to go. Not many people speak it, so I'd imagine that its much more based in written assignments.

10/28/2010 3:52:16 PM

However, Latin (at least Classical Latin, not the later forms butchered to sound more like the native languages of the priests or scholars using it) does have almost the same correspondence between spelling and pronunciation as Spanish; you just need to memorize which vowels are long and which are short, and it is too easy to pronounce all of them long, as in Spanish or Italian.

Still the problem is with all those goddam declensions and conjugations
First of all, even the nouns have to change form based on their position in a sentence, and there are 7 cases, and the transformations depend on which of 5 classes (or declensions) they are in
The cases are
Nominative (subject)
Vocative (address)
Accusative (direct object)
Dative (indirect object)
Genitive (possessive, sometimes as the object of a preposition)
Ablative (signifying some sort of relationship, sometimes as the object of a preposition)
Locative (signifying some sort of spatial relation, sometimes as the object of a preposition)
AFAIK for the Romance languages, the accusative case of nouns became used in all situations, the vocative case for pronouns was subsumed into the nominative, and the ablative, locative, and some uses of the genitive were merged into a "prepositional" case, which is much simpler although not as simple as "Subjective vs. Objective" in English.

As for conjugations, there are 5 classes of verbs and well over a dozen combinations of tense and mood, including single-verb forms for the perfect tenses (no "have (past participle)" here), a future participle, passive vs. active participles, and six types of infinitives (which is why verbs in Latin dictionaries are listed by the first-person singular of the present indicative, rather than the infinitive as in most languages).

10/28/2010 8:18:06 PM

Maybe I'm just really sharp, but I think you've had some experience with languages.

10/28/2010 11:26:51 PM

latin is very hard and a useless one to learn, it is a dead language for a reason.....

11/12/2010 1:28:30 AM

I think you're an asshole for not wanting to actually learn a second language, but Spanish would be easiest. It's a big program with plenty of relatively easy intro professors. The inability to roll your "rr" sounds means next to nothing -- a point or two off of oral tests at most. Hell, I wasn't great at trilling even when I was more or less fluent, and I did just fine.

French is next to useless. German pretty much is useless -- many if not most Germans speak English. Even a very limited Spanish vocabulary can help you communicate to the hordes of hispanics living in NC (especially combined with their limited English vocabulary).

11/15/2010 10:16:51 PM

Spanish would be the most useful.

I thought Japanese was pretty easy to pick up on. Once you get past the different character set, it's pretty straightforward.

11/15/2010 10:35:34 PM

hey there's plenty of french speakers on our continent, it isn't useless

11/17/2010 11:40:23 AM

Quote :

"The inability to roll your "rr" sounds means next to nothing -- a point or two off of oral tests at most. "

I agree with that. I took 3 Spanish courses in undergrad at State. I only once ever had an oral test, and it was to have a short conversation with a partner student in the class, where we got pre-plan what we would talk about so the rr could have been completely avoided. So I got through 3 Spanish classes with 3 different professors, and never once would have been required to be able to pronounce the rr sound.

11/17/2010 5:55:38 PM