4

I am a native speaker of the English language with 6 years of Spanish schooling. After re-establishing a fluent Spanish speaking status what should be the next language to learn?

Latin seemed like it would be the most useful, since the goal is to learn as many languages as possible. As Latin is the base of many languages I plan to learn, it might be helpful to know the language that they are created from.

I'm looking for scientific studies that offer any insight as to what languages would be most efficient or objectively advantageous to learn given the two languages I already know.

Tsundoku
  • 19,740
  • 4
  • 43
  • 120
People Call Me Adam
  • 41
  • 3
  • 1
    Welcome to Language Learning! We don't encourage opinion-based questions like yours on our site because it can be difficult to select one objectively correct answer to the question. For that reason, I have voted to close your question as primarily opinion-based. – fi12 Oct 17 '17 at 02:03
  • @fi12 can you help reword the question ? there has to be a scientifically backed answer for the most productive order of language learning, that is what I am asking for. i will delete if you cant't determine the correct ay to ask such a question. – People Call Me Adam Oct 17 '17 at 02:13
  • If you're looking specifically for scientifically backed answers, I should be able to reword the question. – fi12 Oct 17 '17 at 02:18
  • @fi12 That would be great, as a new user it can be hard finding the correct way to word a question to fit the rules of the site, thank you very much. – People Call Me Adam Oct 17 '17 at 02:23
  • 1
    @fi12 Thank you for the edit, well worded and is a much more concise representation of my question! Hopefully it receives a few useful responses! – People Call Me Adam Oct 17 '17 at 02:32
  • No problem! Hopefully you do receive some helpful answers. – fi12 Oct 17 '17 at 02:42
  • 2
    I'm afraid there is no scientific answer to your question; and indeed there cannot be. You're asking "languages would be most efficient or objectively advantageous to learn" -- these are entirely different criteria, and quite possibly exactly contrary to one another. For example, it may be most "efficient" to learn Portuguese or Italian, with your Spanish experience. But precisely because it's efficient, it's also the least beneficial, since you'll already be able to understand 50-75% of either of those languages. – Flimzy Oct 18 '17 at 11:03
  • Further, there's no such thing as "objectively advantageous"--what is advantageous depends on your goals. If you intend to live in Belarus, Belarusian would clearly be highly advantageous. If you intend to travel around Asia for a year, Mandarin might be most advantageous. If you plan to stay at home, and just "collect languages," then an entirely different set of criteria applies. – Flimzy Oct 18 '17 at 11:05
  • Perhaps you can narrow the focus of your question to something with a more objective answer. Perhaps "Which language would be the most similar to those I already speak?" or "How much will learning Latin help me with other Romance languages?" etc. – Flimzy Oct 18 '17 at 11:06
  • It will be the easiest to learn another language from the same branch of the indo-european languages, or a close branch: http://www.linguatics.com/images/indoeuro02c.jpg It will be easy to learn Dutch, because you speak English. It will be easy to learn Portuguese or Italian, because you learned Spanish. Difficulty to learn a language correlates with how long ago did the language branch split from the one you know. However, some people like to learn languages that are unlike the ones they know, e.g, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc. It's more difficult, but also enjoyable. – Vitaly Oct 19 '17 at 14:26
  • It would be very easy for you to learn Ladino or Scots But would it be useful to you? One balances the effort to learn a language with its usefulness or enjoyment one gets out of it. – Vitaly Oct 19 '17 at 14:44
  • 1
    I would suggest that you narrow down the question to, e.g., which question would be easiest to learn next, i.e. for which language would previous knowledge English and Spanish bring the greatest benefits. Answers can then use arguments such as linguistic distance and skills transfer. – Tsundoku Oct 19 '17 at 15:58
  • The question may be edited. I am looking for a scientifically backed answer as to the most efficient order to learn languages, Regardless of the usability, the goal is to learn the most languages in the shortest amount of time. – People Call Me Adam Oct 21 '17 at 04:40

0 Answers0