During this worldwide COVID-19 scare, social distancing measures are put in place. Sometimes, we can treat disaster and triumph as two sides of the same coin. Instead of bemoaning this unwelcome change of getting “stuck at home”, we can spin a positive angle on this solitary affair by working peacefully on projects without distractions. One productive way of using this time is to pick up a new language.
These are the most important languages in the 21st century.
We are all fluent in English. My second language is Chinese. I’m hoping to be at least trilingual or quadrilingual in my lifetime. I feel like learning a new language opens up a exciting new world.
It takes approximately only 23 to 24 weeks to learn languages closet to English. I have decided to learn something more exotic like Norwegian even though it doesn’t fall into the top 10 languages as Norway has a population of only 5 million.
If you learn 1000 commonly used words, you can comprehend 90% of conversations. An additional 1000 to 2000 only marginally increases comprehension.
I do hope to learn Spanish and Korean after mastering Norwegian. Spanish because it is also an easier language to master and so I can converse with more of the world’s population. Korean because of the KPOP and K Drama craze where I would be able to understand my Korean idols and actors.
Now let’s hear from the class. What other language aside from English do you already know and would like to learn in this lifetime?
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