Which language should I learn?

If you're not sure which language to study, here are some factors to consider:

Availability | Usefulness | Difficulty | Languages in demand by employers


Availability

Are materials and other resources available for the language you want to learn? Are there classes in your area? For the popular languages, like French, Spanish and German, this shouldn't be a issue, but it may be difficult to find resources and/or classes for the lesser-studied languages.

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Usefulness

If you want to learn a language with a large number of speakers and which is spoken in many countries, the ones to choose in order of 'usefulness' are: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu.

This list is based on the number of speakers, the number and population of countries where the languages are spoken, the number of major fields using the languages internationally, the economic power of countries using the languages, and their socio-literary prestige.

The languages with the most speakers are:

Language L1 speakers L2 speakers Total speakers
English 380 million 1.135 billion 1.515 billion
Mandarin Chinese 941 million 199 million 1.14 billion
Hindi 345 million 264 million 609 million
Spanish 486 million 74 million 560 million
Arabic (Modern Standard) 0 million 332 million 332 million
French 74 million 238 million 312 million
Bengali 237 million 41 million 278 million
Portuguese 236 million 27 million 264 million
Russian 148 million 108 million 255 million
Urdu 70 million 168 million 238 million
Indonesian/Malay 44 million 155 million 199 million
German 76 million 58 million 134 million
Japanese 123 million <1 million 123 million
Nigerian Pidgin (Krio) 5 million 116 million 121 million
Arabic (Egytian) 78 million 25 million 103 million
Marathi 83 million 16 million 99 million
Telugu 83 million 13 million 96 million
Turkish 84 million 6 million 90 million
Hausa 54 million 34 million 88 million
Tamil 79 million 8 million 87 million

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Notes

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Difficulty

Each language presents you with a different set of challenges. Languages might have complex inflectional systems, complex writing systems, irregular spelling systems, and/or complex phonology. Generally the more a language differs from your L1 or other languages you know, the harder it is to learn.

For lesser-studied languages it can be hard to find language learning materials and courses. In some cases you might have to learn another language first, e.g. when learning indigenous languages of Latin America it helps if you know Spanish and/or Portuguese as most materials and courses are likely to be in those languages. Many languages are undocumented and have never been written, so training in field linguistics is needed in order to acquire them.

For English speakers the least difficult languages are probably: Scots, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Portuguese, Norwegian and Swedish.

Arabic, Korean, Japanese and Chinese are often considered among the most challenging languages to learn for English speakers, and speakers of other European languages. Learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese is certainly challenging, and Chinese tones can be difficult to master. However, Chinese grammar is relatively straightforward, compared to European languages.

Other languages present you with even more challenges. For example, some indigenous languages of the Americas have extremely compex phonology and syntax, small speaker communities and limited materials and resources to help you learn them. Navajo, for example, apparently has no regular verbs at all.

Pronunciation

Languages may include phonemes that don't exist in your L1 which can be difficult to recognise and pronounce, especially if they are rare phonemes such as clicks, ejectives, ingressives, etc. Some languages also have tones or pitch accent, which can be tricky to master.

Languages with relatively few phonemes include Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian and Malagasy. Those with large inventories of phonemes include Taa, Xhosa, Zulu, Chechen, Lithuanian, Vietnamese, Romanian, European Portuguese, English, Hindi, Danish and Arabic.

Orthographic depth

Some languages have shallow orthographies, or in other words, there is a straight-forward relationship between the pronunciation of words and the way they are written. These include Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Italian, Georgian and Welsh.

Other languages have deep or opaque orthographies. That is, the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is much more complex, irregular and eccentric. The orthography may not have changed in line with the pronunciation and reflects how words were pronounced in the past. The spelling of words may have been deliberately altered to show their origins, or to distinguish them from words in closely related languages. Words may have been borrowed from other languages, and retain their original spelling, although not their original pronunciation. All these things have happened in English, which is why English spelling is somewhat chaotic. Other orthographically deep languages include Japanese, Danish, Faroese, French, Tibetan, Mongolian, Thai, Khmer, Burmese and Lao.

Language Learning Difficulty for English speakers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

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Languages in demand by employers

If you want to learn a language in order to improve your employment/promotion prospects then choose one that is in demand by employers. The list below gives you an idea of which languages are in demand and is based on job ads posted on recruitment sites. You can find links to the recruitment sites on the Careers using languages page.

Note: languages are shown more or less in order of popularity with employers.

Africa

English, French, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese.

Americas

English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese.

Asia-Pacific

English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese.

Western Europe

English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish, Greek, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic.

UK

English, German, Arabic, French, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Mandarin Chinese.

Source: http://uk.businessinsider.com/adzuna-jobs-data-top-languages-for-the-highest-paid-jobs-in-britain-2016-9/

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From: https://takelessons.com/blog/what-language-should-i-learn-z14


books Books on how to learn languages
Language courses, dictionaries, etc.

Links

MLA Language Map Data Center - information based on census data about which languages are spoken in the USA: http://www.mla.org/map_data

Most common languages spoken in the U.S.
http://www.immigrationdirect.com/languages-spoken-in-us.jsp

10 Best Languages to Learn Right Now (i.e. in 2010 in the USA)
http://www.toponlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/10-best-languages-to-learn-right-now/

BBC Voices - details of the languages spoken in the UK, with numbers of speakers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/

What is the best language to learn?
https://lingualift.com/blog/what-is-the-best-language-to-learn/

Most popular languages (2016)
http://en.bab.la/news/language-worldcup-2016

Language learning tips

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