MademoiselleFifi

Oh, be a little more adventurous. (If "easy" and "widely-spoken" were the only criteria, you may as well stick with the language you already know-- English). Out of the three, I'd definitely pick Italian, for its beauty. And I disagree about its being "useless" outside of Italy; it's the most useful of the three for enjoying opera and ordering in restaurants.

travel_buzzing

>>The Dutch are still very mad at the Germans for their WWII atrocities.

although its an exaggeration, there is generally feeling against the germans by dutch (although its usually in a more light-hearted way).
A bit like Irish towards English.
Or Finnish towards Russians.

There are actually plenty of Spanish in Spain trying to practice their English on you. This will go for Italy too.

Why don't you get a couple of subtitled films out in each language and see which one you actually prefer.
you'll learn a lot more if you actually enjoy the language!

ethrush

It's ridiculous to say that "no one in Spain speaks English"! And the figures from the European Union- what criteria were they using? One doesn't necessarily have to be fluent in a language to use it at a tourist level. I've been plenty of places where people in stores and markets knew a limited amount of English, but enough to carry out transactions.
As for learning a language- if you use tapes in your car and other strategies, you can learn useful phrases in several languages (although I agree that you don't need to learn Dutch- most of the people in Amsterdam speak English better than most Americans!) Learning how to say "I'd like", "I need" and "Do you have" plus some relevant nouns and verbs in the infinitive will get you a long way.

Jake1

Just my opinion: If you don't plan to use the language other than your week-long vacation in that particular country, then actually spending time and money "learning" the language doesn't seem very practical. Of course, if you have plenty of time and money on your hands, or if you envision needing the language beyond your vacation, or if you just find "learning" or "collecting" languages interesting, then go for it.

Certainly travellers should show respect for the countries they visit by making the effort to learn some basic phrases--both practical and polite.

Jake1

Oh--if I were to pick one, I'd take Italian, just because I love Italy. Second choice Spanish--there is an outside chance that you'd actually have an opportunity to use it someday for something other than a week or two touring Spain.

Mincepie

I agree ethrush....parts of Spain are inhabited by English people only!!

I give the original poster a lot of credit. Many tourists travel abroad and just expect everyone to speak English. Also fun to have a go.

I think I go with Spanish, because it will be more useful back home. You can do a lot in a year. My husband did Spanish tapes before a trip to Chile and in 6 months he had learned a lot. I don't know where you live, but here in Maryland our local library let him download the pimsleur tapes(they cost about $750) for free. He would listen to them back and forth to work.

Another thing I do when travelling is make myself a restaurant dictionary...you could do that for each country you visit.

Good luck and have a great time.

kenderina

Yes, I agree with the restaurant dictionary. Even when you have some knowledge of the language...you get puzzled at restaurant menus Food names sometimes are very "local" or different from what you learn in books when learning a foreign language. It happens to me in UK !!

murcia

Only one possible language to go through the mysterious fabrication of a philosopher stone: french
http://www.apartrental.com/blog/

DAX

If you're fluent in German, why not learn Dutch? You'll pick it up faster than learning any other language. They will warm up to you and Dutch is a lot easier than German to learn. It's true the Dutch is not fond of the Germans, of course they wouldn't say that to a German like logos. I guarantee you that you won't get a smile if you say something in German.

karameli

As another poster said, if you're fluent in German, you can probably understand Dutch fairly well. I would cast another vote for Spanish, especially if you live in Florida; a working knowledge of conversational Spanish is helpful everywhere in the US. Depending on where you go in Spain, it may be difficult for you to communicate -- there are huge differences in dialect between regions -- but knowing some Spanish will help you understand French and Italian too, as all romance languages have similarities (and cognates) to help you out.

logos999

>It's true the Dutch is not fond of the Germans, of course they wouldn't say that to a German like logos.
That's a complete misunderstanding! Both love to tease eachother, you'll only find that out as a native speaker. The languages are very similar. It's something like big country vs. small country.

DAX

I believe you logos, let's just say the Dutch is just more fond of the French, the Brits, the Italians and the Swiss. I find the Dutch to be very open minded & outgoing people and they rarely have anything negative to say about their neighbors, except when it comes to Germans, they tend to make less than positive comments. But then again the Swiss does the same.

Robespierre

What are your career ambitions? If you foresee a position in international trade, I think French would complement your English and German nicely. If you want to work in the service sector in the US, Spanish would be a logical choice (especially in the Southwest) with the caveat that you will need to learn two dialects to cope with both the European and American variants.

logos999

You always love your neighbor ;-)

GSteed

Practical...Buy an English/Italian dictionary. Do the same for the other languages. I courted my now Polish wife with this system. I pointed to English words...she read the Polish. She set up the Polish word and I read the translation! Most languages have 500 words that comprise 90 percent of spoken conversation. Vocabulary is more important than grammar. Learn the Italian names for common needs...

lauralamb

I don't think there are two different kinds of Spanish. There are some diffences in vocabulary and minor grammar variations between Latin American and peninsular Spanish but someone from Guatemala for example will still be easily understood in Spain and vice versa.

suze

While I disagree that "everyone in Amsterdam speaks English" (as I did not find this to be exactly true), I do think that's the easiest place of those you mention, not to know the local language.

bocacpa

Jessie44: I've been told that the Spanish we hear in Florida (Caribbean, Latin & South American) and the Spanish of Europe are very different.

IMHO try to learn a Western Hemisphere dialect, as it will be more useful day to day, and on your trip you could probably get by either way.

kenderina

There is only one Spanish language..as there is only one English Language
There are dialectal differences between the way it is spoken in America (the whole continent) and the way it is spoken here, in Spain. But most of them are in colloquial language, kind of different "slang"
There is no more difference than there is between American and British English (I would say there's even less).

Christina

I had a friend from Colombia who used to get made when people referred to Spanish as a "dialect" in various countries and saying it was a different language. I have studied Spanish several years but don't speak it nearly as well as French (partly because I don't use it as often, so it's a constant struggle to brush up), and I was going to disagree with the person above who claimed the pronunciation was "uniform" or something. I think there are some word differences that are a little more than slang (maybe not, might be called slang -- just usage to me, such as the verb for the action of driving a car, etc.), but the pronunciation is definitely not "uniform" in all countires that speak Spanish. They pronounce certain consonants differently in some Latin American countries from Spain, and even among countries in Latin American. However, it is certainly not "very different" (the language). For someone learning from scratch, a lot of those fine points are irrelevant, as they should be learning the basics and standard Spanish.

Sure, maybe it would be easier to learn Dutch if you know German fluently, but what is the point. I really don't think some people understand how long it takes to get fluent in a language, or some people are using the term fluent very very loosely. My brother lived in El Salvador for a year, total immersion, as he was in the Peace Corps, and took very intensive all day classes for a month before going, and even he said he wasn't fluent in Spanish within the first year. He did become so after living there, and working there, for several years.

The OP hasn't even said how she plans to learn this language, but you can't become fluent by reading some books and listening to a few CDs, and for Dutch, I imagine that would be all that is available, anyway (plenty of classes in Spanish, that's for sure, and some will be around in Italian). I doubt if the local community college is going to have Dutch classes. There are some linguistic geniuses who do speak several languages fluently, and pick them up fairly easily in a year or two, but these folks are very rare.

I love to study languages and both my parents were language teachers, so I study them somewhat because I like the process and language. But I choose languages based on my own interests and needs, and would never spend a year studying a language that I had no interest in but a trip for a few days to that country, and it was going to be of no use to me in any other way. I always have interests in the art and literature, press, film or something of that country that gives me a reason to want to learn the language. Spanish is one I wanted to learn not for the art and literature as much as French, but because I do like to travel to Spanish-speaking countries and knew I would be doing that repeatedly. Also, as I said, my brother and his wife/kids speak it fluently, as did my father.

I've had a little itnerest in Italian, can read some just because of its similarities to Spanish and French, but don't agree that it's so helpful for opera or restaurants. First, not that many people like opera (I don't) so who cares about that. YOu can always read the synopses in English, and frankly, I can't usually understand most opera singers regardless of what language they are singing in, even if I know it. I think most Americans know basic restaurant Italian, anyway, so you don't need to study it for a year just for that reason. It would be more useful and more fun than learning Dutch, though.

I did study Dutch a little, actually, it's not that I'm unfamiliar with it -- still have some Dutch grammar books around, but never got into it.