What is the Best Language to Learn?

Everyone needs a hobby at some point in their life. It can lessen stress, put the rest of your life into perspective, and even make you feel more accomplished. If your hobby is furthering your education or learning more about different cultures, you may want to think about learning a new language.

The problem is you might not know what language you want to learn. The answer will depend on why you want to learn a second language.

Reasons to Learn

Learning a new language isn’t always easy and it isn’t always fun. That is why you should have a good reason to learn one, and not simply out of boredom. Here are some possible reasons, and a description of which language would work best for your purposes.

You are trying to get a new job

If you are trying to get a promotion or start a whole new career, you may want to learn Mandarin or Spanish. In the case of the former, it has the most speakers worldwide, and in turn has the largest business economy. This means if you had to speak to Chinese businessmen, you would be able to do so.

The problem is, Mandarin is quite difficult to learn because of its complexity in tones and characters, so it could take quite a while to master. Spanish on the other hand is much easier to learn, and can help greatly in America, where there are many immigrants that may need your help communicating.

You want to learn something easy

There are quite a few languages which are considered easy to learn by experts. What this means is that they will take less time to learn than other, more complicated languages. These include Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch.

This is because they share many words with English, and have rules that are not hard to follow. Additionally, you don’t have to learn another alphabet when you are studying them, which makes all the difference.

You want to learn something unique

If you are trying to learn a different language than most people know, you will probably want to learn a language that is only spoken in one area of the world. This can be anything from Afrikaans to Norwegian, and you can really choose whatever you like. There are literally thousands of languages that exist, so you can take your pick of the one you think is cool and unique.

You want to learn a popular language

This would really depend on if you want to learn a language that is spoken by many different people, or one country with a huge population. For example, previously it was mentioned that Mandarin has the most speakers worldwide, making it the most popular language. However, it is only spoken in part of the country of China.

Spanish, on the other hand, is spoken by a very large number of people, and many of those people are found outside of the country of Spain. Other popular languages are Hindi and French.

I have no preference; I just want to learn something

If you don’t care what language you learn and just want to study something new, the sky is the limit. You can choose something quite ancient like Hebrew, to something rather useful like French. If it is just for fun, you can even learn vocabulary from many of different languages, instead of just trying to become fluent in one.

Tips

A great thing to remember is that English is widely spoken throughout the world. This is because there are American business dealings worldwide, as well as British influences in many different areas. For this reason, it may be advantageous for people that do not know English to learn it, or even if you already know it, to learn more about it. This would include things like spelling, learning more vocabulary, and perhaps even practicing your writing and speaking skills. Improving your English can help you land better jobs and communicate more efficiently with others.

Once you have decided which language you want to master, there are programs that can be purchased, so you can learn at your own pace. A trustworthy line of them are from a company called Rocket Languages. They offer a free trial to see if it is the right fit for you, and offer you every available resource to make sure you succeed.

Besides that, you can use all the other available resources around you. In fact, there are so many that you may start to become overwhelmed. Between smart phone apps, websites, videos, books, televisions shows, and movies, there are many ways to learn about other languages and culture. You have the option to use as many programs and free resources as you like. You may even elect to get private lessons if you want to learn quickly. These lessons offer a more structured approach to the language learning process, but in turn, may be quite expensive.

Conclusion

The best language for you to learn depends on you and your reason for learning. If you are just trying to find the easiest language to learn, something like French, Italian, or Romanian is perfect for you. If you want to learn a new language to further your career, Spanish or Hindi is the way to go. For most other purposes, you can have your pick. Perhaps you have always loved Brazilian food; you may want to learn Portuguese.

The key is to keep up with it. The lessons at Rocket Languages can help with that and are designed to keep you interested in continuing the program. There are also many languages to choose from, so you can find one to fit your needs.

Always remember to have fun, especially when you are learning simply because you want to. You don’t have to act like it is school. It’s just something you are doing to better yourself and learn about a different place.