I'm a language nerd, I do this shit for fun, I'm currently working on Spanish and Japanese, so I should make mention of the fact that I LOVE learning new languages and I am dead set on being able to speak at least half a dozen languages fluently within the next 5-10 years or so, so doing this sort of thing is something I don't really consider "work", it's fun, I like it.
However, I'm anal retentive about not wasting time on a language that will turn out to be less useful than another one I could be learning, which is why Chinese isn't high on my list (I don't plan on visiting China, and a lot of people in HK speak English) nor are the Scandinavian languages (everyone there speaks fluent English).
However, for quite a while I've had my eye on Eastern Europe, and now with all the activity on the forum recently even more so. I'm particularly interested in Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Czech Republic, Latvia and Estonia...and maybe the Balkans. Just Eastern Europe in general, in other words.
Now, this presents quite a problem as far as languages go because Romanian is a romance language and not in the least bit related to the languages of any other surrounding countries except Moldova, which shares its language with Romania (i.e. Moldovan = Romanian, same thing even though the Moldovans don't like to admit it). Most other Eastern European countries use a Slavic language: Czech, Russian, Ukranian, Estonian. I know that a lot of Ukrainians understand Russian, but I had heard before that they HATED speaking it because it's thought of as "the language of the oppressor [Russia]", though I just read recently that people in Kiev use Russian more than they use Ukrainian, sooo....?? Czech is Czech and no one else uses it (fuck!), and I believe they speak Russian in Belarus primarily, and Russian is also used in a lot of other former Soviet satellites despite the fact that it's not an "official" language there.
So...you guys who have been around Eastern Europe: what's your opinion, if you had to make a list of Eastern European languages to learn in order of priority (usefulness)???
However, I'm anal retentive about not wasting time on a language that will turn out to be less useful than another one I could be learning, which is why Chinese isn't high on my list (I don't plan on visiting China, and a lot of people in HK speak English) nor are the Scandinavian languages (everyone there speaks fluent English).
However, for quite a while I've had my eye on Eastern Europe, and now with all the activity on the forum recently even more so. I'm particularly interested in Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Czech Republic, Latvia and Estonia...and maybe the Balkans. Just Eastern Europe in general, in other words.
Now, this presents quite a problem as far as languages go because Romanian is a romance language and not in the least bit related to the languages of any other surrounding countries except Moldova, which shares its language with Romania (i.e. Moldovan = Romanian, same thing even though the Moldovans don't like to admit it). Most other Eastern European countries use a Slavic language: Czech, Russian, Ukranian, Estonian. I know that a lot of Ukrainians understand Russian, but I had heard before that they HATED speaking it because it's thought of as "the language of the oppressor [Russia]", though I just read recently that people in Kiev use Russian more than they use Ukrainian, sooo....?? Czech is Czech and no one else uses it (fuck!), and I believe they speak Russian in Belarus primarily, and Russian is also used in a lot of other former Soviet satellites despite the fact that it's not an "official" language there.
So...you guys who have been around Eastern Europe: what's your opinion, if you had to make a list of Eastern European languages to learn in order of priority (usefulness)???