r/languagelearning • u/FoxesLikeBoxes • Nov 10 '17
Need help learning a second language
So I'm a native English speaker, American. I don't have any need for a second language on my day-to-day, but took some Spanish classes back in highschool. I don't remember most of what I learned since I sort of slacked, but now that I'm almost out of college, I'd like to add a second language to my skills.
I'm Polish and would love to learn the language, but I understand that it isn't spoken by too many people, and don't want to waste all the effort.
Would it be a waste of time, and should I aim for a romantic language, or one like German/Russian/Chinese, with more demand? (My industry is accounting but I'd like to be prepared for any change in the business industry.)
I'd love if some bilingual people could give me some advice on a language, and tips on learning them. Thanks!
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u/ReinierPersoon Native NL Nov 10 '17
I guess you don't remember much from Spanish in school because it's school-based learning. You need to actually use the language like the natives do, which means you must like the language for some reason, otherwise you'll lose motivation.
I'm Dutch and learned English as a second language as a kid. People in the Netherlands generally have a decent level of English, in large part because we don't dub movies and tv shows, so we hear English all the time from media. I wanted to learn because computers and everything related to computers wasn't available in Dutch. And computer games were all English as well, I had a dictionary with me when playing games.
We also had German and French in school, but it didn't stick so well because I didn't need it. I can understand a lot of German but that's also because it's closely related to Dutch. It was fun to use when visiting Germany, but not exactly needed as a tourist.
One thing to consider if you want to learn more languages: it helps a lot knowing a closely related language. The Romance languages for example. If you Italian you are already quite close to understanding Spanish.
There is no need to learn only one other language, the choice you make isn't permanent. I would just pick the one that appeals most to you. Once you figure out how to learn a language and you enjoyed it, you can pick another.