Learn Spanish. It’s more useful.
No, learn German, good for technology.
I think you need to learn Russian, it’s important.
But… but… I don’t want to learn any of those!!!
How do you deal with a scenario like the one above? Do you go and learn a language simply because others want you to? Have you ever changed what language you studied because of peer pressure or because you don’t want to look stupid to your friends or family?
If you learn a language simply because others tell you to, you will fail.
Simple as that.
You just aren’t going to succeed if 1) you don’t truly love the language you are studying and 2) you don’t have any interest in the language.
So why waste your time trying?
This is how to really choose what language to study.
- Don’t give a shit about what other people think about your language. You’re the one studying it.
Why should the fact that your mom doesn’t think you can use it in a future job or your friends don’t like someone from that country hold you back from studying it? Learn whatever language you want to learn. It’s your life, isn’t it? Enjoy yourself.
- Learn your language because you want to. Don’t learn it simply because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do.
I don’t care if half your local population speaks the language, if you have no interest in it you aren’t gonna get very far.
- Learn a language you have a legitimate long term interest in.
Some people become constant wanderers, always looking for new languages to learn. If you are going to put all this time into something, chose something that you have a long term interest in, so that you’ll stick with the language rather than constantly losing interest.
Other important things to keep in mind when choosing a language to learn include:
- Resource Availability – Let’s face it, a language such as Navajo is going to have less resources than, say, Spanish. The internet is great for resources, but some languages just won’t have many.
- Native speakers to talk to or at least listen to – It is incredibly useful to be able to talk in your target language with native speakers, or to at least be able to listen to audio clips of these speakers. This’ll help you an incredible amount when trying to figure out pronunciation or when trying to get rid of an accent.
- Encouragement from friends/family – Though I said earlier that you should learn a language even if your friends or family don’t like the language, support from these people is still very important. Your relationships with the people that are most important in your life shouldn’t end simply because of another language. Some things are more important.
- Amount of time you are willing to put into learning said language – it takes a whole bunch of time to truly ‘learn’ a language. Are you willing to put in that much time?
So, what languages are you studying?
