Choosing Your Foreign Language- 5 Days of Foreign Language

This post is part two of a five part series. See part one.
Check back tomorrow for the next post in the series!
See all posts in this series.

Yesterday my post talked about why learning a foreign language is a good idea. Today’s post will talk about which foreign language to choose.

What are some criteria for choosing a foreign language? Interestingly, a few of the reasons of why also apply to which- being a missionary, keeping generational connections strong, being more adaptable for the workplace, etc.

There are over 500 million (give or take a few million lol) English speakers in the world and many countries have English as the official language but there are a vast number that do not speak or read this language.

So how to choose which language to tackle for a second language? Here are a few thoughts I have on this.

1. Think long-term. Learning Yiddish may be fun at the start but will it be used when classes are over? For our family, my son wishes to have a military career and Germany is a possible post location when he is older; German would be a relevant language to learn. My daughter wishes to be an editor- this opens many doors for language options. Your family’s long term goals are most likely different than ours. If you and your family are anticipating missionary work, what country will you be going to and what is the language?
2. Think regionally. What language is most prevalent where you currently live? You may move and that may alter the most widely spoken foreign language but start where you live now. We’ve generally been around more Spanish speaking people than other languages {besides English} so this would be a great choice for our family because the opportunity to use the language was higher. However, since we’ve moved, European  languages have become a factor in our decision.
3. Think similarly. When a language is similar to your own, you my be able to assimilate it better. For instance, many words in Spanish and English are either related or are the same word. The word may have be taken from either language and then absorbed. This may not be an option if the other points don’t match up. In that case…
4. Think differently. When the language that you have chosen is not a similar language to your own, its great difference may make it easier to learn. The contrast will cause your mind to {hopefully} analyze it differently. And even if it isn’t ‘easier’, according to the article quoted from below, the difference will make the grasp and use of the language more than just “a sort of half-voluntary action, like swallowing or breathing, hardly at all under [one’s] own control.”

   The language chosen should differ widely from the mother-tongue of the student, because sharp contrasts, as of black ink on white paper, more readily fix the attention and stick in the memory.- "Why Learn Greek and Latin?" by R. L. Leighton, Head Master, The Grammar School, Bristol
   Volume 10, 1899, pgs. 104-109

5. Think globally. This could almost go with ‘think long-term’. What I mean by ‘globally’ is what language is the fastest growing in the global sense? When I Google ‘top 10 foreign languages’, Chinese is the #1 language based on population, with Spanish #2. If we were to have looked this information up, say 10+ years ago, would Spanish have still been at #2? The ‘minority’ {according to US standards} languages are becoming the dominating languages.
   

   Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.
   (Dave Barry) emphasis mine

Those are my thoughts on choosing a language to learn. I wrote a post a while back on the languages that we are attempting in our homsechool- and the why of each one. You can search Google to come up with many different criteria for choosing a second language.

How do/did you choose which language to learn as a second language?

Tomorrow’s post will be about Foreign Language Programs & Curriculum for the language you have chosen to learn. Come back and read!

Over 60 bloggers, over 300 posts! Check out all the other topics on the 5 Days of Blogging…

“God is good” in 5 Languages {according to Google Translate}:
Latin: Deus est bonum.
Afrikaans: God is goed.
Bengali: ঈশ্বর ভাল . (Īśbara bhāla.)
Filipino: (Ang) Diyos ay mabuti.
Icelandic: Guð er góður.