Choosing a Foreign Language
The concept of learning a new language can be quite daunting, especially if you don’t even know which language you want to learn! Choosing a language from a culture that interests you is very important. Here’s a breakdown of some of the languages of western Europe:
Aleppo Codex
- Romance languages. This includes western european languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian. All of these languages are based upon Vulgar Latin. While many beginners choose to learn the Spanish language, any of these are good second languages to pick up.
- Germanic languages. Germanic languages are spoken mostly in northern and eastern Europe; languages such as English, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, German, and Norwegian are Germanic. Though some of these languages prove to be difficult to pronounce for English speakers, they are not overly difficult to learn. German in particular is very common for beginning students of foreign language.
- Slavic languages. This includes languages of eastern Europe and Asia such as Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, and Ukranian. These languages are often regarded as being too difficult for a first foreign language, but that isn’t true! While they are more difficult than Romance languages due to the separate alphabet, most students of language find learning the alphabet to be the easiest part. (Note: Drache noted that Slavic languages also tend to be heavily inflected, making them even more difficult to pick up for a beginner.)
- Semitic languages. The most common Semitic languages are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, and Hebrew and they are most common in eastern Europe, northern Africa, and Asia. Like Slavic languages, most of these languages have alphabets separate from the Romance languages.
Those are the primary language groups of western Europe; now for a breakdown of common Asian languages:
- Sino-Tibetan languages. These languages are some of the most common Asian languages. This group includes Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan. Due to the fact that many of these languages rely heavily on inflection, they are not among the easiest languages for a beginner. They also share a large alphabet of over 40,000 characters. While they may not be the easiest, students of foreign language should not let that dissaude them from learning the language.
- Japonic languages. Japonic languages are most common around the nation of Japan. There is a lot of dispute about whether they are true separate languages, or merely dialects. These languages, like Sino-Tibetan languages, have a massive alphabet and thus are much harder to pick up than Romance languages.
There are many more languages in this world that I have not covered! You should use this as a starting point to discover what you would most enjoy in a foreign language. Here are a couple handy links:
Wikipedia is a great resource for learning about language, but there are many other great resources out there. Always be on the look-out for new things to learn and you will be pleasantly surprised.
Tags: tips