Learning a language

Languages for professional purposes

Students who already know they want to work in a particular part of the world have an easier choice. Remember though, that the people there may be bi-lingual. Its worth finding out what second language they speak. In countries that have had strong trade or colonial ties with other parts of the world it is common to find that some of the population still learn a language to a high level of proficiency.

Another point to remember is that you could be working with people who do not speak the official language of the country at all, but one of the regional languages. These may differ from one another in their spoken form but not in writing (as in China) or they may be completely different from the official one (as in India).

One way to prepare to learn a language for professional purposes is to take a general language course first and then a more specific one which concentrates on the language for particular jobs: tourism, health services, computing and so on.

Make sure the course you sign on for offers the version spoken currently in your part of the country. Everyday needs will determine your choice, not whether it is widely spoken. You might prefer a course that concentrates only on the spoken version of the language, so that you can make friends immediately, leaving the written form until later.

One of the reasons for learning a different language is so that the learner can be part of another culture. Some people want to do more than just live in another country; they want to be a complete part of that culture, perhaps even throwing away aspects of their own culture which they have come to dislike.

It is often difficult to sound exactly as you want to sound when speaking a new language. A saying from Ancient China seems relevant here, “Two separate entities can combine in such a way that each maintains its original unique characteristics, whereas if either of them is made the same as the other, both degenerate.” As a beginning language learner don’t be afraid to keep your own characteristics, many of which can contribute to the lives of people you meet when you become part of another speech community.

Reading about subjects, which have not been translated, or even reading subjects in the original when they have been translated, is a common reason for language learning. Many students of the Classics select Latin, Greek or Hebrew because they enjoy that period of history. Then there are religious reasons for studying ancient languages: Arabic for reading the Koran, Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament of the Bible.

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Languages for enjoyment or a challenge

Some students may be fascinated by some aspect of a language such as the fact that the script is written from right to left as in Arabic or from top to bottom as in traditional Japanese. The whole appearance of a different script can be fascinating.

Look at examples of several languages with non-Roman scripts before making your choice. In Europe you could consider Russian and Greek or further afield there is Arabic, and the many scripts of India: Hindi (the national language), Urdu, Bengali and so on.

• The script.
• The pronunciation.
• Whether it is mainly phonetic.
• The textbook.
• The amount you are expected to cover in a year.

One way to measure relative difficulty is to find out the level you can expect to reach by the end of the course. You can do this by looking at the final examinations at the end of the previous year in several languages. Compare the difficulty of the passages to be translated from English.

A language different from your own will be more difficult in some respects but in other ways it will be easy. There is the novelty value and the fact you will probably put considerable effort into aspects that are new, such as pronunciation or seeing the relationship between characters and their meaning.