* Apparently, I can’t count. There are six languages left. Just pretend I said six.
A few weeks ago I announced the next phase of this blog and my intention to start a new language project. My original intention was to narrow it down to the Top 3 and then slowly write about each one of them before I announced the ‘winner’ in December. Since I am smart and listen to the advice of my lovely wife, I am now going to remove a language per month and then, on January 1st, I will start the new year by announcing my new language.
To make that work I had to remove two languages this month so as to keep on that schedule. This will let me narrow it down to two and the beginning of December. I am also announcing this a few days early, due to my very busy schedule next week.
The two that didn’t make it
The two languages have a couple of things in common. They are both from Europe and they are both taught in almost every high school in the U.S. Other than that, I don’t think there are much else they have in common. They are even on opposite sides of the continent from each other. The Two languages are French and German.
French was on my list for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a romance language and I eventually want to learn all 4 of the romance languages. Secondly it made it to my top 5 most useful languages to know for the Amazing Race. I would really love to go on the Amazing Race some day and it would just be an extremely useful language to know.
German also has a couple of reasons. My English teacher in Junior High school was also the German teacher. Her class room was full of German things and it has always stuck with me as a interesting language to know. It also made the top 5 languages of the Amazing Race. Between Spanish, French and German, I would know 3 of the top 5 languages.
Why they didn’t make it
Ultimately, those reasons weren’t strong enough to entice me. Just being useful for a TV show I will probably never be on is not enough to make me choose it over all the other languages. Their other features, which are strong enough to make my ultimate list of languages I want to know, are much less strong than the other languages and so they didn’t make my Top 5 languages I want to know.
This means that the list is down to the following languages:
- Mandarin
- Italian
- ASL
- Samoan
- Japanese
- Portuguese
This last month, We had a fun discussion about which languages I would ultimately choose and I even put a poll up on my side bar to let people vote on which language they thought I would choose. Tomorrow, I will put up another poll. However, this time the poll will be which language do you NOT want me to learn.
I would also love to keep a discussion open here on this post, on my twitter, and on my Facebook page about which language you don’t want me to learn. You are all more than welcome to tell me which of the remaining languages you want me to learn as well. So scroll down and put a comment and tell me what you think. Which Language should I not choose?
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