How to Choose a Foreign Language
Perhaps you have always thought about learning a foreign language, but you have held back because you couldn’t decide which one to pursue. Even if you restrict yourself to major languages like Chinese (1.4 billion speakers), Spanish (392 million speakers), French (130 million speakers), and Russian 277 million speakers), you still have a lot of choices.
I can’t tell you which language to study, but I can suggest a handful of questions that will make the choice easier---or at least enable you to narrow down your choices to a manageable list:
1. Do you want to learn a language for work/business and/or to enhance your resume?
If the answer to this question is yes, then you have immediately narrowed down your choices. Consider which non-English-speaking countries are major players in your industry. In most cases, you will arrive at a short list of candidate languages.
If your industry is so global that no single foreign language stands out, then I would recommend one of the following:
- Spanish
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Japanese
- German
- French
The above list is based on the following criteria:
- Each of these languages is a “major” world language, spoken by at least 120 million people.
- Each of these languages is spoken in at least one of the world’s major economies.
- There are plenty of learning materials (textbooks/audio CDs/ etc.) that can help you to learn any of these languages.
2. Do you want to learn a difficult language or an easy one?
Not all languages are equal. Some languages require much more study than others before you can read a newspaper or hold a complex conversation. In general, Western European languages are comparatively easy for native English-speakers to learn. Middle Eastern, Slavic, and Asian languages are more difficult for us. Therefore, if you decide to study Arabic or Chinese, you have more work ahead of you than the native English-speaker who studies Spanish or German.
Western European languages are easier to learn because they share many common roots with English. Many words are the same or similar. (For example, the German word for “apple” is Apfel.) While English grammar differs substantial from that of French, German, or Spanish, the grammatical rules that govern Arabic, Japanese, or Thai seem much more “foreign” to a native English-speaker.
3. Which cultures fascinate you?
This may seem like a trivial question, but an interest in the culture in which a language is spoken can be a major motivator. In my own case, I was always interested in East Asian cultures, so Japanese was a natural choice when I selected a foreign language to learn as a college student. On the other hand, you may be drawn to Europe, the Middle East, or Latin America.
It all depends…
There is no universally correct answer to the question: Which language should I study? Right now Chinese is considered to be a “hot” language to study; but Spanish may be far more useful for you if you live in El Paso or Miami. Similarly, French has recently been cited as a language “in decline”--- but French is quite relevant to your career if you work for a French company, or plan to sell your company’s products in French-speaking Quebec.
My only absolute advice—all things being equal—would be to limit your selection to the major languages. If you learn Lithuanian or Ojibwe, make sure you have a good reason for doing so.
Here again, there are exceptions to the rule. I have a friend whose wife is from Bulgaria. Bulgarian is not a major world language. (There are only about 10 million native speakers.) But Bulgarian is the language of his mother-in-law. I probably don’t have to tell which language he is currently studying.
