The abundance of languages on this planet makes for great fun, but it doesn’t make it particularly easy to decide what language to learn.
It’s not a choice most of us make lightly, either. While it’s relatively easy to become conversant in a language, really learning a language to fluency usually does take a investment of several years even in an immersion situation where you’re surrounded by native speakers.
To help you choose, here are a few ways to decide what language to learn whether you’re starting your first foreign language or your fifth.
Your Heart’s Already Decided
I know “follow your heart” sounds like trite and flippant advice, but when it comes to something as personal and long-term as language learning, your interest in the language is critical. If you feel inexplicably drawn to a language—whether because you love the native speakers’ culture, you enjoy the sound of the language or you find the language unusually expressive—take a shot at it.
If you’re not really sure, give it six months and see if you see feel as passionate. And don’t worry about it being a “useless” language. Remember, too, that if you’re that intrigued with the language, you’ll find ways to incorporate it into your life and make it useful.
Personal Usefulness
Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish are all considered “useful” languages, but if you never plan on living or working with anyone who speaks these languages, they’re not likely to be useful to you personally.
Often this is a matter of job duties. If you work in immigration on the West Coast of the U.S., many of the East Asian languages will be useful. Of course, if you plan to work in Kenya, Swahili will be far more useful. Choosing this way boosts your motivation because the more you learn, the closer you’ll get to your work and personal goals.
The problem is when you’re required to take a language in high school or college and offered a limited selection. You might only get the most commonly taught languages like Spanish, French, and German. One way to solve this problem is to choose a language that’s a lingua franca among the people you think you’ll be working with (for example, Russian if you plan to work with people from the former Soviet Union or French in you plan to work with Middle Easterners).
Another solution is to choose a language that’s related to the one you really want to study. Choose French or Spanish if you can’t get Italian or German if you can’t get Swedish. Keep in mind, too, that any language study will make it easier to learn the next language.
Ease of Learning
There is a very valid case to be made for choosing what language to learn based on how easy you think it will be. If you’ve never had any experience learning a foreign language, the idea of having to “memorize” all those strange words and comprehend seemingly nonsensical grammar rules can be intimidating. You wonder how you’ll manage to do it or even if you can do it.
The human brain is an amazing thing and its capacity for language learning is hard to fathom. It may be even harder to believe that you are capable of learning and communicating clearly in a foreign language. And then there’s the matter of getting over the nerves that many of us have when we actually try to use our first foreign language.
Dealing with all that and the complexities of a “difficult” language can be overwhelming. Starting with an “easy” language, however, will give you some quick results (communication skills) to build your confidence. It also lets you flex your language learning muscles more thoroughly, so you can find the instruction methods and memory techniques that work best for you.
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