My vote goes for German too. I studied it a couple of years at school and university, but…
Then of course Irish and Scottish Gaelic. And Hawaiian. 
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Hi, Susanna! In case you didn’t know todays edition of - Cyflwr y Cyfryngau on Radio Cymru was recorded in Finland, and should be available shortly after one: Nice to hear a Finnish woman say she was disappointed they didn’t see the Gymaeg version of Y Gwyllt in Finland.
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I take your point, Aran, but surely this is a “chicken and egg” type of situation? I mean, you could end up spending money and resources in advance on a language for which the demand is less than expected. On the other hand, the “referendum/poll” may show that a particular language is in unexpectedly high demand!
A possible way around this…perhaps a sort of “rider” could be included in any “referendum/poll” making if clear that SSi may not necessarily be in a position to offer a particular language, but is just trying to suss out the level of demand in order to be able to plan for the future?
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I’d almost swear we’ve spoken about this on twitter yesterday however I’m not sure it was you though.
Oh, yes, I’d go for Deutsch too as I’ve learnt it by myself and didn’t speak it already for a while. I wonder how much I still really can. Yes, I know @aran, I’ve said once upon a time it was brillant course I did that time, in which I was taught everything at once (reading, grammar, speaking …) but that’s why I’m even more curious how I’d do things SSi way now that I finally am reconciled with it. 
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Something for the Scandinavian languages (that is, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish) would be quite useful, I think. There aren’t many good resources for them, they are mutually intelligible (that is, if you speak one of them, speakers of the other two will usually be able to understand you), and while most people who live there do speak English, people who wish to work there pretty much have to learn to speak the language (or at least be willing to learn) because integration is considered extremely important.
Having said that, I can’t imagine any of them being particularly popular options, because unless you intend to move to Scandinavia (or you just really like the films and television they produce), they are probably less “useful” than other languages, so I can definitely see them having to wait, but if there were enough interest to make it worth your while, this is definitely something I’d like to see.
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I’ve tried to learn Swedish but failed. It would be awesome to see the Scandinavian languages here
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Hawaiian? Ooh just imagine the bootcamp…
But seriously, so many languages to choose from. Perhaps incluse some wildcard or other, an underdog language, something that needs saved, as well as the mainstream ones.
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Good point. And taking Danish in particular as an example, it could lend itself to the SSi approach because the spoken language bears even less relationship to the written language than English does, i.e. it’s not very phonetic. This is, I believe, partly because of rapid “developments” in the spoken language in recent decades (some would say it’s not a development, just people speaking sloppily). Whatever it is, the written language doesn’t help a learner much with pronunciation.
I don’t think Swedish and Norwegian are quite as difficult in that respect, although the fun thing with Norwegian is the number of dialects, and the fact that they have two fairly different ways of writing and spelling. One good thing from the reading point of view is that Bokmål written Norwegian looks very similar on the page to written Danish, so if you learn either one thoroughly, you get the other one “for free”, but only in terms of reading (and maybe writing). The spoken forms are another kettle of fish. Alexander Arguelles has some very interesting videos on youtube about all this (and many other linguistic esoterica).
Edit: and on your “usefulness” point, there is also the fact that most Scandinavians speak excellent English, so it’s not like most of us actually “need” it, at least for casual visits. Going there to live and work is another matter.
Edit: I dug out the Arguelles videos I was thinking of:
Danish
Swedish
Norwegian Bokmal
Norwegian Nynorsk
Fascinating stuff. He has others on Old Norse and Icelandic.
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There’s a reason why I put “useful” in quotes.
As for the spoken languages, they’re actually almost as similar as Northern and Southern Welsh as taught here. If Scandinavia were all one country, they wouldn’t even be considered separate languages.
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I suppose a “some day” dream of mine for what SSi could accomplish would be a “learn a language, save a language” or “buy a language, save a language” scheme, wherein a portion of the proceeds from popular or “useful” language lessons helps fund creating courses to help save the indigenous languages around the world that are at risk of dying out. Unfortunately, I don’t know that this concept would be an easy sell. People are willing to go in for this scheme and pay basically double price for something when it’s as concrete as, say, shoes (e.g. Toms), but language is different and often a touchy subject, as we all know well. A certain language is not seen as a “necessity”, especially if it’s not a dominant one.
As an alternative, so that the price of a particular lesson set doesn’t scare off otherwise interested buyers, would it be possible for SSi to set up a monthly “Language for the Future” subscription? In return for supporting SSi in developing whichever new language, be it a “useful” one or an endangered one, subscribers would receive a monthly newsletter on progress, with guest pieces on the native culture of and/or issues facing whichever language is being developed, and possibly the chance to beta test new lesson materials before they’re released into the wild. I would gladly subscribe to this!
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I’d gladly pay whatsoever subscription to SSi (well there are some financial limits though ) no matter would I learn all those languages or none at all. I love the idea of what SSi is and what it might become one (not so distant) day and this all worths to give whatever we can. I’m only a learner (sometimes annoying one) but I feel like being in HQ of the project being alowed to support the whole idea, enterprise or whatever and I have no demands of having anything in return. No matter how I react from time to time (mixture of Balcanian blood gives to my temperament (unfortunately or not …), I’m EXTREAMLY HAPPY I was told SSi exists and I support the idea all the way. I think @megan_rhys_phillips (as I’ve read somewhere) that SSi was originally meant to be devoted to “saving” indigenous languages but we members just want to have some more additions of “more useful” languages as the way how we’re taught is so brilliant.
I love your idea Megan.
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I think this is part of our very near future… 
@gavinM - yup, I hear your points, Gavin, and they’re good ones. What we’re really trying to solve here isn’t so much which language to do next, as how to get the resources to accelerate our production of material…
So, for example, we’re not publishing as much Welsh as we’d like because we’ve got bottlenecks with time for mastering the audio tracks (which is currently all done on a volunteer basis) and time recording the tracks (likewise, except for me).
It wouldn’t take much for us to be able to accelerate significantly - and that would also make it possible to start moving faster with a number of other languages.
If we set up a ‘buy in advance’ approach, and had (for example) £1000 come in for German, then we could spend it on producing material for German - and it wouldn’t matter if not many other people wanted that material (er, if that makes sense!).
I think the next step is Megan’s idea - a Growth Club for SSi - and I hope we’ll be able to make an announcement about that next week! And then we’ll be following up by looking at ways we can commit income from affiliate sales to particular languages (for example, we could commit to spending any income from people buying Benny Lewis’s ‘Why German is Easy’ on German course development, etc) - and then in the autumn sitting down and talking to a few people about how to do a Kickstarter campaign to take SSi out to the other Celtic languages.
One thing is for sure in the middle of all this jigsaw puzzle - SSi always has been and always will be about loving smaller languages - so I’m very confident that we will produce more courses for smaller languages in the next 5 years than we will for larger ones
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Although you aren’t really looking for which language to do next, on the subject of languages to be saved, then I’d think Breton would be a good candidate (although from what you’ve said in the past @aran it has been in your sights for some time. Welsh and Irish (not sure about Scottish Gaelic) already get a fair amount of official support. I don’t think that is the case with Breton (at least not nationally - maybe there is regionally). If you do start offering it, perhaps you could offer it both through the medium of English and the medium of French. From Wikipedia:
Breton is classified as “severely endangered” by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 33 percent between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709
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For purely selfish reasons, I would like to put in a vote for Japanese. I’ve been wanting to learn some for a while (my SiL is Japanese), but now I’ve done SSiW I can’t bear the thought of going to a ‘traditional’ lesson and sitting through the painfully slow progress!
You’ve spoiled us all, Aran!
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Years back, a friend decided to learn Norwegian. He went on holiday there and tried to speak it. Everyone he tried with was insulted. They thought he was accusing them of not being fluent in English!! I met a chap from the Netherlands on a course. His English was totally fluent, as was that of a traffic cop in Rotterdam who gave us directions!!!
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In the Summer I am surrounded by Scandinavians in Piemonte who love Italian wine and come back every year as I do to taste yet more Italian wine. So, if there was an SSi course in one of the Scandinavian languages I would definitely take it. On balance I tend to meet more Danes, then after that Swedes and thirdly Norwegians. So for me knowledge of Danish and German would help me make more friends and enrich the whole Summer.
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If anyone is interested in learning Modern Greek then I am your person!
Speaking of which, @aran are there any plans to revive the tourist course? I imagine that there will be a lot more people interested in learning a basic tourist course in Greek than there will be interested in learning Greek in general.
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Hi Millie - as part of the new tool, we’re going to be able to add different sets of ‘seed sentences’, which will allow us to add different kinds of additional courses much more quickly - tourist, family, that sort of stuff…
But I think we’ll need/want to do some testing about tourist vs main course - because it may well be that the main course could be offered on a taster basis and get people using some Greek, while increasing the likelihood that they’ll get addicted to the process and carry on…
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With the greatest respect, I am still going to butcher other peoples’ languages and have a go at speaking them no matter how brilliant they are at speaking my own language.
Maybe we should disarm them by telling them that we speak Welsh and can’t speak English - so unfortunately they have to suffer our attempts at speaking Norwegian or Dutch or Zulu etc. (I notice that no-one has yet asked Aran if he is going to offer a course in Zulu),
Justin
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I have a contact in place for a whole bunch of southern African languages
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