Fascinating Question

Saw this on Twitch.

If you could instantaneously learn one additional language, what would it be?

I've often wished I could just magically pick up another language or six. I certainly wish I'd paid more attention to foreign language classes in school.

I've got my personal preferences narrowed down to a list of three top contenders:

1) Japanese
2) Canonese Chinese
3) Mandarin Chinese

Japanese - on the face of it - is certainly not the most practical choice. That said, I own a lot of Japanese movies and watch a lot of Japanese entertainment. It would certainly be nice to know what folks are saying. And I have several Japanese friends. Would be nice to be able to converse in the language.

That argument actually works just as well for Cantonese. There's a lot of Cantonese speakers in the Bay Area and a fair number of my friends speak it. Most of my Hong Kong martial arts flicks are in Cantonese as well. In terms of a wider scope of use, I could get a lot more milage out of Cantonese as it's spoken in communities along the Pacific Rim and most especially in Hong Kong.

That leaves Mandarin. It's the "official" language of China and is spoken pretty much everywhere in the mainland. China's a growing power, so it would pay to be able to speak the "official" language.

All three languages make use of the same essential character-set. The Japanese refer to Chinese ideograms as "kanji". While the pronounciations differ, the meanings are essentially the same. Mandarin and Cantonese use those sets as well, though there's the added complications of "traditional" vs "simplified".

*sigh*

Or I could just suck it up, take some classes, and actually try to learn.

But where's the fun in that?