How to choose a language to learn

There's over 7,000 languages in the world. How do you choose one to learn?

#languagelearning #linguistics #polyglot

[ethanburton]

American SHOCKS Persian lawyer with his PERFECT Persian into WINNING a court case!

[lamMeTV]

For those chronically online Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian and Spanish are very rewarding

[TakaD]

As German I can confirm that we even think in German. It's mostly the words 'Bier', 'halt' and 'schnell, schnell' though.

[langobardx]

"There's an entire world between wishing you spoke a language and actually speaking it".

What an absolute truth bomb. I am experiencing this right now with Ukrainian. I can read really really well, I can write simple sentences without having to check with a translator. I feel like I can listen fairly well. I know a ton of vocabulary but when I try to speak it's like I forget everything. The words just don't come to me. All in due time I guess. I just need to keep trying.

[realgeorge]

I think I may be a fourth type of language learner. In choosing a language, yes, I'm drawn to a few and, yes, I'd be interested in traveling and meeting those speakers but, primarily, I'm motivated to learn a language to forestall cognitive decline. I am 71 years old and I've read many experts who advise language learning for old people for precisely this reason. Really enjoyed the expert witness story, BTW.

[vitorsantis]

The deposition story is probably one of the coolest things i've ever heard

[MTimWeaver]

Your expert witness "you never know when it will be handy" story reminds me of the German tourists who pulled into the gas station I worked at, back in the mid-1980. At that time, I'd been teaching myself German and had taken 3 semesters at our Junior College, for what that's worth.

Anyway, it's near closing time on a Saturday, and they come pulling in, and the father gets out and in halting English asks me if I know where the place he was going was (their hotel in the next town over). I knew it and asked if he was German, since he was having difficulty understanding me. He said yes, so I started giving him directions in German, and drawing a map (we were out or I'd have given him one).

He asked a couple of questions, I answered. He said thank you and walked back to the car. They sat there a moment, and he apparently told them what happened, because everyone was looking at me...then they all waved and drove off.

That was my best "you never know" story, but I've had a couple of others in Spanish, too. It's a really good feeling when you can help someone in their own language.

[Mitomisha]

I went to UPenn for engineering and as such wasn't required to study a language. I like languages though, so I decided to study one anyway and ended up studying Russian for two semesters. I enjoyed Russian, but in retrospect I feel like chose it in part because I felt embarrassed to learn the language that I was actually most interested in, which is Japanese. I had this idea of the cringe white person learning Japanese because they like anime, and somehow convinced myself that this wasn't a good enough reason. I still wanted to learn something that was a bit more "out there" than, say Spanish or French, and I thought I should learn something potentially "useful", so Russian it was.

Fast forward a few years and I've finally ditched that reasoning. I've been studying Japanese for about a month now and in reality, the idea of being able to engage with the shows, music, and games that I _already like_ in their original language makes me more excited and motivated than I ever could be for Russian.

[pseudoNAME]

Have spent the past two years learning a language with 200, 000 native speakers, now beginning to learn a language with 380, 000, 000 native speakers.
As the wise Paul from Langfocus once said, "You don't choose your interests, your interests choose you."

[ace]

I actually transcribe depositions for a living and I would fucking love to read that transcript. Funny story about how that probably went for the transcriber, we transcribe commonly known foreign words, so initially I would have written it as the French merci, but then when you clarified that he wasn't speaking French, I would have gone back and changed it to (Speaking Persian.) because I would not consider the Persian version to be commonly known. At which point I would realize that the bait and switch context would be lost, and I'd have to email somebody to ask if I can keep it as 'merci'.

[tal_cohen]

I'm definitely the anthropologist! I truly feel like I'm living multiple lives through each of the languages I speak, and the feeling of speaking to someone in their native language and having a deep understanding of a different culture is unparalleled and invigorating

[sarahshawtatoun]

I'm an anthropologist type. And a bit of a therapy case. I studied all sorts of languages at different points in school- at one point I even majored in Russian because I love Russian poetry so much. I totally failed at all of them. Then I fell madly in love with everything Czech. Language, Literature, people, culture, country... It's the first and so far only language I ever became fluent in. It was MIRACULOUS! Like having an entirely new world to explore. Now, 40 some years later- I've fallen in love with Moroccan Arabic in the same way. Only this time I convinced myself that since I studied French for so long in school, and since French is spoken in Morocco I really ought to get my French up to a decent level first. I've been working on it off and on for a few years now and though I like French, like France and have a pretty decent vocabulary I just don't have the kind of passion for it I did for Czech. So I'm beginning to think, 'Screw it. Just go for Darija.'

Your story also really resonates with me since I had a similar experience with Czech- I had gone back after a break and was studying it again when the Revolutions started happening in 1989. And there I was, speaking a language that had suddenly gone from totally useless to just about the most relevant thing I could possibly have learned.

[zenbrandon]

Your channel is the best. I find myself thinking about a topic and somehow you read my mind! I've been learning Japanese for a year now, and i find myself fighting the urge to jump ship and go all in on Chinese haha. This video will help me stay on track

[mmmrose]

I enjoy studying Dutch it’s not terribly difficult for an English speaker and it’s a fun language I don’t know why

[DP-hiyo]

Can you make as many videos as possible where you just tell stories? You're an amazing raconteur and I could listen all day. I've never forgotten your story about meeting the possible time traveller in Grand Central Station. Anyway, I learn French because I love it. That's it. Merci

[hannat]

If time wasn’t scarce I would learn: Icelandic, Brazilian Portuguese, Greek, Georgian and Farsi. Just because I love the sound of them. I remember I had a colleague from Iceland and loved listening to her speaking the language. The sound of Icelandic just makes my heart sing. Before learning any on the list, I’m super keen on re-learning my 4th and starting my 5th some time soon.

[gusinfante]

As a linguist and language teacher, I love languages - no surprise. And, as a language teacher, sometimes is really good to start a language from scratch, so that I feel in my students' shoes. Plus, you always learn new approaches, activities, etc. I've now completed 2 years of Welsh and the respective A1 and A2 exams. I'm loving it! Celtic languages have really interesting features.

[Bucolick]

'learn a language as a sandbox example of how to learn languages'. Me me me. It's me. But this is a niche subgroup of language nerds surely. Mostly I fit in the anthropology group.
I love etymology and the history of language so I wanted something Indo European that wasn't Romance or Germanic. Enter IRISH!! What a dream of a language it is. Along the way I've learned so much history.

[larrytruelove]

I study Spanish because:
1) My high school Spanish teacher set me afire with a basic knowledge of Spanish.
2) I visited four Spanish speaking countries in the 1980’s.
3) I live in a major Texas metroplex where 25-40% of the population knows some Spanish. 25%, it’s their first language. One out 20 people on the street do not speak English fluently.
4) After I retired, I volunteer teaching English. This year I will teach basic English to Spanish speakers who know very little English.

[achb]

My problem is that I love so many languages, and I love learning new stuff in another language, preferably one that is totally different from every language I know, so sometimes it’s hard to choose.

I first started learning languages because I love different writing systems (arabic, devanagari, Thai, Korean, etc.) My goal is not to be able to speak that language perfectly, but to just get a taste of it, of the sounds, of the grammar, of the particular quirks of that language.

I’m not really interested in the well-known languages like Italian and Spanish. Everyone tells me to learn Spanish because so many people speak it, but I’m not interested in that at all (maybe because I had to learn Spanish in school and really hated it afterwards haha). I don’t want easy, I want complicated and totally different, I want „a challenge that tickles my brain“ as you said!

I want to learn some minority languages of the country I live in as well. The other day I heard some people talking Tagalog or another related language on the bus and now I want to learn Tagalog so bad haha.

Lately I’ve been learning some words in languages that I’m interested on apps like duolingo or memrise, and the one language I have fun with, that I look forward to, I search for more learning resources. If these are good, I continue to learn that language more in earnest.

For example, I love learning Chinese characters and my goal is to one day learn Chinese or another tonal language, but at the moment it’s too much effort for me (I took a Thai class for half a year and oh boy the tones, that put me off of tonal languages for a while)

Sign language is also a totally different language I want to learn, but there are no courses near me at the moment, so I have to put that on the back burner until I get the opportunity to study it in person.

Also, I want to learn Lingala or another Bantu language, but there are nearly no good resources online for them or any African languages except for Swahili. Memrise has an albeit very short course for Yoruba and recently added Swahili, but I need a textbook as well to study earnestly. I guess I will start to learn them when I move to a city with an African studies department.

At the moment I’m dipping my toes into Turkish and Indonesian, which are relatively easy and for which I found good resources at my library and online, to get a feel for them. I don’t yet know whether I want to continue learning them, but any knowledge in a language is a win in my opinion because you form a connection with the culture and language.
I try to maintain the two languages that I have a higher fluency in by reading books and listening to audiobooks to maintain them in a way that is a bit more fun than learning grammar.

Anyway, I have a looong list of languages I want to learn one day and I’m looking forward to it