Motivations

The ads for self study language courses stress the business, travel, cultural, and literary advantages of acquiring another language. But what about meeting girls? Or women? Or boys? Or men? Why let an old fashioned propriety quash that thoroughly proper, in fact praiseworthy, reason to learn another language, namely to enlarge your range of social opportunities, to meet people?

Learning another language to enlarge your opportunity for making new connections is fun and rewarding. Financial and professional success have helped people live their dreams. So has learning another language!

There are blonde languages, by the way, and brunette languages. Why be bashful? Those partial to blondes are advised to learn Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, and Hungarian. A good brunette list would include Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, and Arabic.

This advice is not offered flippantly. I find the social motive to learn other languages as valid as the commercial, the cultural, or any other. If your motives for learning another language are social, I would steer you to the language of a people you find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face as I'd advise those interested in importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers to learn Italian. I would steer you to the language of a people you find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face as I'd advise those interested in importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers to learn Italian.

You are not guaranteed love forevermore, but you are guaranteed novelty status. You'll attract attention in your target community as "the one who went to the trouble of learning our language." You'll be invited, introduced around, and questioned thoroughly as to your reasons for studying their particular language. The less popular the language, the greater a celebrity you'll be among its speakers. French is very popular, so you won't have Paris at your feet, we've already agreed, even after your best rendered "Comment allez-vous? ", but Norwegians will want to burn arctic moss at your altar when after a meal you say "Takk for maten. " That means "Thanks for the food," which non-Norwegians not only generally don't know how to say, but also don't realise it's traditionally said as you leave the table of your host in Norway.

Native English speakers have more to gain from studying other languages than anybody else. Honour, love, cooperation, respect, advantage – they all shower down upon people in inverse proportion to their need to learn a language.

English is the most prominent language in the world. The Dutch, as one example, all seem to know four or five languages well upon graduation from high school, but (I am not trying to diminish their achievement) they have to learn other languages, beginning with English, to make their way in the commercial world. You can't play that game with Dutch alone. Languages find their fair rate of exchange as currencies do. We who speak English get a lot more credit from the Dutch if we learn Dutch than they get from us just because they learned English. And so on around the world.

Learn that other language now, while there's still time to enjoy the honours due those who don't have to learn the other guy's language but choose to do so anyhow. That time is rapidly running out. For the very first time in our history Americans are learning other languages not out of courtesy but out of necessity. That fact of life is so new that it's not yet apparent to America or the world, so we still have a little more time to bask in the admiration of those who had to learn our language and who still believe we simply chose to learn theirs.

Something ennobling happens when you learn to communicate in more than one language. And it's fun to watch the magic flash as you touch your word wand to the ears of those who'd never suspect you speak their language. It's one more way of making friends. In big cities you'll have many chances to find people who speak foreign languages.

But you can't sally in and ambush strangers in their language even if their accent and appearance make it a sure bet. They're probably proud of their accent free (or nearly accent free) English. The best way to avoid insulting them – so they can concentrate on loving you when you speak their language – is to say, before you venture one word of their language, "Your accent is beautiful. Are you from England?"

They will then proudly say, "No, I'm from Poland" (or wherever), and they will thereupon welcome your overtures.

Get to Know the Family

Languages have their own happy surprises. For example, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian overlap. Learn either one, and at no extra cost you get seventy percent of the other. You may want to select a language to learn according to how much bounce it has beyond its borders. Languages come in families, and it pays to know which relations might work for you.

Let's pursue the Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian connection. They're related in diminishing degrees to all the Slavic languages, which include Russian, Byelorussian, Polish, Ukranian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Ruthenian. They're not all seventy percent overlapping, but so what? What if they're only forty, thirty, twenty percent overlapping? That's still like having the shopkeeper hand you extra cloth on a second bolt when you thought you'd only bought one bolt of cloth.

You learn so much Italian when you learn Spanish that it's a shame not to switch over and pursue Italian once your Spanish is adequate. Portugese isn't far behind, and even French, the Romance language least like any of the others, has enough similar grammatical features and vocabulary to help you conquer all of the other Romance languages.

Hindi and Urdu, the principal languages of India and Pakistan, are virtually the same spoken language. Dutch is far more than the language of a tiny nation between Germany and the English Channel. It's almost identical to Flemish, which along with French is one of the two principal languages of Belgium. Dutch is the foundation of Afrikaans, which along with English is a major language of South Africa. And you'll have no trouble finding Dutch speakers all over Indonesia, the old "Spice Islands" ruled by Holland for four hundred years.

Get to know the family of the language you're learning — where it fits in, what other languages it will make easier for you to learn later. What doors in what industries will it open (for example, Flemish and Yiddish for diamonds, Arabic for oil, Swedish for crystal, Italian for fashion)? Over how wide an area is your target language spoken (more Chinese speak Chinese outside China than Frenchmen speak French in France)? Knowing where your language fits into the world mosaic will offer you countless advantages and rewards, and almost certainly the motivation to learn more.


	Motivations The ads for self study language courses stress the business, travel, cultural, and literary advantages of acquiring another language. But what about meeting girls? Or women? Or boys? Or men? Why let an old fashioned propriety quash that thoroughly proper, in fact praiseworthy, reason to learn another language, namely to enlarge your range of social opportunities, to meet people? Learning another language to enlarge your opportunity for making new connections is fun and rewarding. Financial and professional success have helped people live their dreams. So has learning another language! There are blonde languages, by the way, and brunette languages. Why be bashful? Those partial to blondes are advised to learn Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Dutch, and Hungarian. A good brunette list would include Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, and Arabic. This advice is not offered flippantly. I find the social motive to learn other languages as valid as the commercial, the cultural, or any other. If your motives for learning another language are social, I would steer you to the language of a people you find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face as I'd advise those interested in importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers to learn Italian. I would steer you to the language of a people you find maximally attractive with every bit as straight a face as I'd advise those interested in importing from Asia to learn Japanese and opera lovers to learn Italian. You are not guaranteed love forevermore, but you are guaranteed novelty status. You'll attract attention in your target community as "the one who went to the trouble of learning our language." You'll be invited, introduced around, and questioned thoroughly as to your reasons for studying their particular language. The less popular the language, the greater a celebrity you'll be among its speakers. French is very popular, so you won't have Paris at your feet, we've already agreed, even after your best rendered "Comment allez-vous? ", but Norwegians will want to burn arctic moss at your altar when after a meal you say "Takk for maten. " That means "Thanks for the food," which non-Norwegians not only generally don't know how to say, but also don't realise it's traditionally said as you leave the table of your host in Norway. Native English speakers have more to gain from studying other languages than anybody else. Honour, love, cooperation, respect, advantage – they all shower down upon people in inverse proportion to their need to learn a language. English is the most prominent language in the world. The Dutch, as one example, all seem to know four or five languages well upon graduation from high school, but (I am not trying to diminish their achievement) they have to learn other languages, beginning with English, to make their way in the commercial world. You can't play that game with Dutch alone. Languages find their fair rate of exchange as currencies do. We who speak English get a lot more credit from the Dutch if we learn Dutch than they get from us just because they learned English. And so on around the world. Learn that other language now, while there's still time to enjoy the honours due those who don't have to learn the other guy's language but choose to do so anyhow. That time is rapidly running out. For the very first time in our history Americans are learning other languages not out of courtesy but out of necessity. That fact of life is so new that it's not yet apparent to America or the world, so we still have a little more time to bask in the admiration of those who had to learn our language and who still believe we simply chose to learn theirs. Something ennobling happens when you learn to communicate in more than one language. And it's fun to watch the magic flash as you touch your word wand to the ears of those who'd never suspect you speak their language. It's one more way of making friends. In big cities you'll have many chances to find people who speak foreign languages. But you can't sally in and ambush strangers in their language even if their accent and appearance make it a sure bet. They're probably proud of their accent free (or nearly accent free) English. The best way to avoid insulting them – so they can concentrate on loving you when you speak their language – is to say, before you venture one word of their language, "Your accent is beautiful. Are you from England?" They will then proudly say, "No, I'm from Poland" (or wherever), and they will thereupon welcome your overtures. Get to Know the Family Languages have their own happy surprises. For example, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian overlap. Learn either one, and at no extra cost you get seventy percent of the other. You may want to select a language to learn according to how much bounce it has beyond its borders. Languages come in families, and it pays to know which relations might work for you. Let's pursue the Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian connection. They're related in diminishing degrees to all the Slavic languages, which include Russian, Byelorussian, Polish, Ukranian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Ruthenian. They're not all seventy percent overlapping, but so what? What if they're only forty, thirty, twenty percent overlapping? That's still like having the shopkeeper hand you extra cloth on a second bolt when you thought you'd only bought one bolt of cloth. You learn so much Italian when you learn Spanish that it's a shame not to switch over and pursue Italian once your Spanish is adequate. Portugese isn't far behind, and even French, the Romance language least like any of the others, has enough similar grammatical features and vocabulary to help you conquer all of the other Romance languages. Hindi and Urdu, the principal languages of India and Pakistan, are virtually the same spoken language. Dutch is far more than the language of a tiny nation between Germany and the English Channel. It's almost identical to Flemish, which along with French is one of the two principal languages of Belgium. Dutch is the foundation of Afrikaans, which along with English is a major language of South Africa. And you'll have no trouble finding Dutch speakers all over Indonesia, the old "Spice Islands" ruled by Holland for four hundred years. Get to know the family of the language you're learning — where it fits in, what other languages it will make easier for you to learn later. What doors in what industries will it open (for example, Flemish and Yiddish for diamonds, Arabic for oil, Swedish for crystal, Italian for fashion)? Over how wide an area is your target language spoken (more Chinese speak Chinese outside China than Frenchmen speak French in France)? Knowing where your language fits into the world mosaic will offer you countless advantages and rewards, and almost certainly the motivation to learn more.