Learn Foreign Languages

You might already have some experience in learning foreign languages. Many people do. If you have already known what languages you are willing to learn and master, that’s excellent.

But if you haven’t, you might still have the question in mind: which language should I take to start with?

I told you in my previous blog posts that it depends on where you want to go. But one voice in my heart always yells, “That’s not the answer you are looking for.”

I assume that people that have ever had asked this question don’t intend fully towards a specific language or only look to hear some general tips on foreign language learning, or just want to quickly pick up one foreign language.

However, what will you do if somebody tells you that any language will be the same in terms of complexity once correct techniques are applied?

The truth is that everyone’s experience is different with a particular foreign language from others’ depending on the unique background of their own. What language did you learn at school? Did you have any good or bad experience with it?

Therefore, never take what other people say seriously when it comes to what language is easy or difficult. It’s meaningless that you will definitely have the same experience just because somebody else did with Chinese. Actually, Chinese is one of the simplest languages in the world.

Chinese is a tonal language with much less grammar than other alphabet-based languages like English and German which have huge vocabulary and strict grammatical rules. To switch from one to another is really demanding. That’s why many people think that Chinese is a nightmare. But a baby can pick up a tonal tongue like Chinese easier than an alphabetic language.

The top languages that are most popular are English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Arabic and Russian.

Most of them are included in the UN official languages. 1/4 of the Europeans speak German. And it is only second to English on the Internet. It is not listed in the official languages of the United Nations because more of political reasons than anything else. So I include it in the top foreign languages to learn.