QotD: I wish I could...
Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
The best logic for my answer comes from the fact that not playing an instrument has never been a source of frustration, while not speaking a language has been annoying at times. If I could speak any language fluently, I'd want to speak Japanese. For practical purposes -- we have Six Apart KK in Japan and it would be wonderful to be able to communicate with people. And, when traveling, it would be nice to explore and not feel like a total outsider.
That said, learning to speak Spanish fluently would also be nice since I'm Cuban and that would be a tie to my roots.
So speaking a language definitely wins this race. But, if I could do both, I'd love to be able to play the clarinet.
Comments
Hey, silly. How about the banjo? Remember the banjo??? :)
i can play the clarinet a little, and speak a little bit of spanish. choose the language, definitely.
What about speaking French? :-)
Mena said: «learning to speak Spanish fluently would also be nice since I'm Cuban and that would be a tie to my roots». Really?? I didn't know that. Maybe you have ancestors in Canaries. Cuba and Venezuela hosted a lot of immigrants from the islands during the 19th and first half of the 20th century (there is some information about this topic in this article from Pennsylvania State University).
There's a great language learning method sold by Pimsleur - it's strictly listen-and-respond, and quite effective.
Quite expensive too, except it can be found on E-Bay for 15 bucks, and that gets you 30 half-hour lessons. Just search Pimsleur. You'll get a CD burned with MP3 files.
I just wish you could speak slow English ;-P
I always wish I could play the "Banjo" and then I would be the first from the "South" to play the Banjo and sing Blue Grass [From the South of India :)]
I speak :
English (20% American 30% Queen's ( not NY) 50% Indian
Russian
Hindi
Telugu
Kannada
Malayalam
Tamil
Smattering of Swedish and French.
I wish I could add Spanish to this list.
I can speak Spanish (but read it much better than I speak it). I also played lots of instruments when I was younger (clarinet was my first), but I'd still vote for playing an instrument -- two, actually. I'd love to learn the piano and tenor sax. They're such cool instruments, especially in jazz.