The Difficult Choice

What language should I learn next?

...And where do I begin?

It's not that simple of a question as you may initially think. Picking a second language involves a much more complicated decision making process than the average fast- food order. As someone who is absolutely fascinated by language and all of its aspects such as: morphology, phonology, orthography, and syntax, I can't stop myself from dabbling into various languages. This can become a stressful issue at some times. I have gone into studying a language that is so different from my own that I found myself giving up too quickly. This method, for most, usually ends up in disaster. A language like Japanese for example, has so many deterring factors that makes it one of the most difficult languages to learn. This particular language has cultural, lexicon, syntax, and a writing system so vastly different from English that it is overwhelming. These factors are what pull or push you away from what you are looking for.

First of all, to set a baseline, my native tongue is obviously English. In high school and college, I spent my time studying Latin American Spanish. During those times I was constantly looking for the next language, and dabbled into anything from Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and American Sign Language. Most recently, I started working on Swedish, all on my own. You may be thinking, "how did I get to that? How did I make the decision to learn an obscure language like Swedish?" The answer was, " I like the sound, the melody, how it is written, and how easy it was to remember words." In fact, I was picking up Swedish faster than Spanish and that was one of the reasons why it drove me to continuing down that path of Swedish fluency.

Let me tell you why I am sharing this with you. I want to help you. When I was learning my first language, I had the choices of French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese and Chinese, which was increasingly overwhelming for me. I know what works. I know how to help you make the better decision. There is no right or wrong language. You have different tastes than mine and I cannot change that. Do not feel like you are alone in the world. Most people have no idea where to begin and are lost in the vast world wide web of unacceptable and unreliable sources. Such sources that speak of learning a language for the sake of popularity, dispersion, and population, are not reliable because they do not encompass the full view.

This blog is to stop those problems from happening to you. It is to educate you properly, guide you in the safest and wisest direction, keep you humored, and especially keep you encourage so that your self esteem remains high. The last thing I want is for you to lose interest in something so beautiful and wonderful. Language is fun, and enriching your knowledge with a part of someone’s culture is one step closer to communicating with them. I will be practical and easy to comprehend. Most importantly I will help you go through the thinking process of how to choose from your favorite languages, ones that seem of great interest, have pleasing sounds and an eye-pleasing writing system. All languages have these factors and many more and it is up to me to help find one that best suits your tastes and experience level. I have laboriously sought after many sources in my life and after being able to learn and understand the basics of at least two foreign languages, I can say that I am qualified to assist you in your time of need.