I find myself working overseas and running into people from around 80 countries on a daily bases. This is truly a polyglot’s oasis:). At the end of each day, I have a pounding headache from switching and studying languages throughout the day. I studied 15 languages over the past 20 years but settled on maintaining and improving only 6 of them due to time constraints. I looked at my life and decided how many languages I can incorporate or realistic handle. The formula I used was 30 minutes of reading/listening or speaking daily, 3 hours every single day. Once I completed this calculus, the next decision was which 6 to focus on for the forseable future. I literally went back and forth for 3 months dabbling with languages using LingQ, Duolingo, youtube or whatever resources I had available at the time until settling on my final list…I even spoke to different people like from Netherland, Lithuania, Sweden, etc…asking how do you say this in your language. The interesting thing is that no matter the country of origin, all the people from the 80 or so countries were awesome and all worth knowing. But, time is limited so here are the six languages with my current speaking ability and some notable mentions:
1- Spanish (C1/C2), my main interaction was with Spaniards and they were awesome and it seems alot of folks spoke this as a 3rd languages w/English being the lingua franca
2- French (B1/B2), also awesome people and they were relieved when I switched from English to French w/ a decent parisienne accent
3- Macedonia (B2), some of the best Balkan hospitality and I get to speak to Bulgarian people too…two languages for the price of one, I’ll take it…I was even able to have some conversations with Croatians which was cool (I studied Serbo-Croatian in the past)!
4- German (A2), so let me break the myth here, NO! not all Germans speak perfect English or even good english, the 20 plus germans I encountered were more than happy to carry a conversating with me in my crappy A2 level German
5- Arabic (A2), well I am in the middle east so when in rome! People are great and the culture is wonderful…the various dialects, well, that sucks but I’m starting to understand when they speak back to me and I do have a arsenal of perfectly pronounced Arabic phrases which make people think I can actually speak it well…if only I knew what they said back to me lol
6- Italian (B1), Love the language, culture, people and the fact that I could actually understand it before even studying it…Spanish facilitates this:)
Notable mentions:
- Russian, none around to speak with and while I would love to read Dostoevsky & Tolstoy, I rather speak to live people…plus, Arabic makes my brain fire on all cyclinders!
- Swahili, I wasn’t expecting this one but the Kenyans are awesome people
- Romanian, such an interesting language vulgar latin roots w/slavic mix…very exotic!
- Serbo-Croatian, love it, studied it in the past but didn’t make the cut and won’t be maintaining it but I can turn on a crappy A2 level conversation if need be.
- Turkish, again awesome Balkan hospitality, love the people and culture but I already have to deal with German grammer and that damn second verb
If you like, I would be interested to hear how you reached your decision to learn whatever languages you chose…for motivational purposes.