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What are the criteria you use to decide the languages you will learn?

Number of speakers? Professional requirements? Cultural factors? Travel? Other justifications?


How do you decide what language(s) you should learn?


I would like to learn either French or Italian for two main reasons, which are professional reasons but, above all, for pleasure. I would like to pick French as it is more spoken than Italian, but I would go for Italian if I consider which one I like most. How do you make your decisions on how language to choose?

Dec 1, 2015 4:12 PM
Comments · 7
2

I learn languages for fun, so my primary motivation is more about films. Generally speaking, I'm interested in learning languages from countries with a more vibrant cinephile culture or whose films I gravitate towards. Then there's a question of sonority. Certain languages and accents just sound pleasant to me, like the lilting quality of Swedish. Of course, they are the land of Ingmar Bergman too, but that's not why I'm pursuing the language. :)

December 1, 2015
1

I base it on a vague feeling of which language has the most benefit for my per hour of time invested.

 

So that depends on the difficulty of the language, how many speakers it has, how many of those speakers do not also speak a language I know, possible career benefit but mostly on my connection to the country.

 

And a little bit on how interesting the language is, but I'm not going to learn any language just for fun.

December 1, 2015
1

Torusan, films are an interesting reason to learn languages. Thank you!

 

Juan Camilo and Bouchra, thank you.

 

Emily Horch, thank you so much for your comment. I'll take all that into account.

December 1, 2015
1

Hi Mr. Bear, 

 

I speak both and find French to be very useful professionally and Italian (so far) not at all.  However, I agree with you that Italian is ''more fun'' and I continue to learn it as I really enjoy traveling/living in Italy and being able to talk to people while I am there (and Italians really do like to talk).  

 

As you already know, there are more French speakers and at least when speaking of the French (vs Canadians or Africans who also speak French), there are fewer who are able/willing to speak English, so French becomes quite important if you want to do business with French customers.  

 

Having said ALL that, I'm so glad I learned Italian (and continue to learn) as I have had so many great experiences that without speaking Italian I would not have had.  And who knows...maybe someday I'll have the bonus of using it for work?!

 

If you do learn French first, it is quite easy to learn Italian after as they are very similar -  for example, it took me 3 months of study to pass the B2 exam for Italian.   And the Italians are more forgiving of errors, so I'd say learn French and then have fun with Italian.  :-)

December 1, 2015
1

Hi .... from me the choice is very simple because it's related to the language the most spoken in the word . For exemple in my case , i m arabic and i have a good french but i want to improve my english because it's very necesary in my job ! 

December 1, 2015
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