The next step is to pick my list of languages to learn. Keeping in mind that I need to pick 10 languages from four families turns out to be much harder than I thought. I didn't know so many languages were in the Indo-European family. Just look at the list from Wikipedia. Who knew that Punjabi and German were considered part of the same language family?? I mean, I knew they all descended from PIE but I didn't know that they were still considered part of the same family.
I've decided on Chinese and Arabic for sure. So, there are 8 slots left. I'd like to get a Slavic language in like Russian. But that's an IE language and I need to be sure of it before I definitely commit to it.
I'd love to get some suggestions from people as to what might go on the list and why. Anyone?
3 comments:
I'd highly suggest Spanish and Portuguese. Yes, they are more Indo-European languages, but you have to think about usefulness as a priority over amount of languages. With French, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese you basically have the official language of practically all countries in the world west of Israel (excluding lots of Europe) and billions of people. Also Esperanto. It's definitely the easiest language you'll learn and you'll find speakers all over the world. If you want hard work then call Esperanto your 11th one because you've already done 95% of the work if you know French and German.
It's an interesting goal, but I'm curious to know your motivation? Why 10? (So you would speak 13 overall?) The deadline you've given is certainly what I would suggest for day-to-day fluency. Keep an eye out on my blog as I will be giving language learning tips over the next few months. (I will be using my written and video blog as a means to maintain fluency in my languages) Do you plan any travelling during this project? If not you will be seriously limiting yourself. I'm curious to follow your progress so I'll be keeping an eye on your blog ;)
All good suggestions. I've got a good handl eon Spanish at this point. It's not a language I really enjoy much but also, it doesnt' coutn toward my goal since I've already studied it for a while and can get by in spanish countries (except Argentina where they speak like a spanish machine gun).
Ultimately, I'm doing this to really challenge myself so that normal considerations of usefulness are a bit to the side, so to speak. I'm really looking for the challenge (which is why I'm considering Finnish) and only tangentially some sort of historical overlap would be nice as well. I've definitely decided on Arabic and Chinese which roughly covers 3 billion people, I'm not sure I could be more practical in that respect.
I picked 10 because I'd read somewhere that was the threshold for the nomer 'superglot' considering that some countries have 5 officical languages 10 is a real stretch for people's dedication and effort. Plus, it's a nice round number ;)
Although I don't have specific plans to travel, I do tend to travel a lot. I'm only just returned from a week in Qatar and based on the events there, I figure I will more than likely be returning on a semi-regular basis. I work in international operations at my company and we have offices aroudn the world. I'll have not shortage of exposure even if it's not the regular daily kind of exposure that would make the effort smoother. But then, if it were easy, everyone would do it, right? ;)
just found your blog through your twitter account (im markitecht btw).
Brazilian Portuguese ought to be on there, and not just because i am a fan...
some good reasons include:
- Brazil is kicking butt in the world these days. The country just paid off their national debt, the currency and stock market is bounding.
- the people are friendly and beautiful, and amazed that you have interest in their language.
- Portugal just officially adopted the Brazilian orthography standards, a big boon to students of the language.
- it's pretty easy grammatically (second person rarely used, first person plural is usually conjugated as third person singular 'a gente')
- though very similar to Spanish and Italian, the sound of Brazilian Portuguese is very different and beautiful. This is where most of the challenge of the language lies, imho.
- Understanding Brazilian music lyrics. I can't imagine life without this capability...
best of luck, anything i can do to help, please email me (markitecht[at]gmail.com) to say hi.
very best,
Christopher
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