If you’re a polyglot who learns languages for fun, you might choose languages from a particular family or region, or languages that have contributed to your mother tongue. Or you might choose ones that are completely unrelated to one another in order to challenge yourself. These are possible pathways a polyglot might pursue.
Another possible polyglot pathway that I came up with the other day is especially for dog lovers: learning languages from regions associated with breeds of dog. For example, if you have an Alsatian, you could learn the Alsatian (Ëlsässisch) and speak to your dog in that tongue. Or if you have a Bernese mountain dog you could learn Béarnese, and chihuahua owners could learn one or more of the languages of Chihuahua state in Mexico, where their dogs originate. The most widely-spoken of these is Tarahumara (Rarámuri ra’ícha).
Do the languages you study have a particular theme or connection?
I would not class myself as a true polyglot, as I have never managed to maintain fluency in more than one additional language at any one time, but I learn languages mainly in connection with travelling to or living in the places where they are spoken. The motivation is, in part, practical. But that could hardly be said to be true of Welsh, since I have very rarely needed to speak it. Also, part of my motivation for travelling is my interest in languages.
Surely you should speak bärndütsch to your bernese mountain dog…
I don’t think there is much of a connection between the languages I’ve studied. But there is a very obvious connection between the languages where I’ve had any kind of success: they’re all Germanic.
This is hardly surprising given that my mother tongue is Danish and that the two languages I was taught at school were English and German, but still it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that I’m only good at learning closely related languages.
Looking over how I’ve learned what I’ve learned, I’d say it’s either for practical reasons or because I’m curious about how language works. (I am a total geek who is interested in how everything works.)
I picked Spanish in high school because of the choices available (the others were French, and German), I thought it was the one I’d be most likely to ever use, living in an area with a lot of Spanish-speaking immigrants.
When I started college and was looking at language options to fill out my breadth requirements, I picked Japanese because it was the furthest possible thing from Spanish (it was the only non-Indo-European language available at that moment). But now I’m trying to increase my knowledge of Japanese because I’ve become a big fan of anime.
I’ve learned a little bit of Polish and want to learn more because my favorite fiction author is Stanisław Lem, and I’ve read all his works that have been translated into English. I’d like to learn enough German to understand instructions for playing board and card games because I someday want to go to a famous gaming event which is held in Essen.
I’ve learned a little bit of Indonesian and want to learn more because I’d like to learn an agglutinating language, and I’m intrigued by its history. And I’ve learned a little bit about some other languages because I wanted to learn their writing systems.