Originally Posted by
turkuaz
English is not only language speeking allover the World.We learn english why you do not learn other language_?......
That is very true and a good question.
Speaking ONLY for myself, I am ashamed to say that english is my only language. I can recognise a few bits of other languages but couldnt respond to people in their native tongue.
The difficulty with learing a second language is which one do you chose ?
For a non english speaker the choice is obvious, you chose English because that tends to be the "international" language.
At school over 30 years ago, the only language available to learn was French and that was taught by someone who didnt sound particularly convincing.
I'm not convinced that learning French would have helped me much either becasue despite France being the closest country to the UK my time spent in other countries is as follows
France - 4 days - Eurodisney
Cyprus - 2 weeks
Spain - 8 weeks - Benidorm
USA - 5 Weeks - California, Arizona, Nevda, Florida
Malta - 2 Weeks
The town where I live has for a long time had quite a large Greek Cypriot community (about 3000) but over the last 2 or 3 years there has been an influx of migrant workers from other EU countries notably Portugal, Poland and Latvia. Again I dont think that being able to speak French would have been of much benefit.
When I first got a Satellite TV system I could pick up loads of German TV stations for free so enrolled on a German Language course at the local college but a week before it was due to start they phoned me to say it was canceled and did I want to learn Dutch instead. I declined because all the Dutch channels were in English with Dutch subtitles so I could understand the programs anyway !!!
I really would like to be able to speak another language but as explained above it is so hard to decide which one. I suppose the way to decide is to look at what languages are the most spoken or where you are going to communicate with people.
Code:
Pos Language Speakers (Millions) Where Spoken (Major)
1 Mandarin 1051 China, Malaysia, Taiwan
2 English 510 USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
3 Hindi 490 North and Central India
4 Spanish 425 The Americas, Spain
5 Arabic 255 Middle East, Arabia, North Africa
6 Russian 254 Russia, Central Asia
7 Portuguese 218 Brazil, Portugal, Southern Africa
8 Bengali 215 Bangladesh, Eastern India
9 Malay, 175 Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore
10 French 130 France, Canada, West Africa, Central Africa
11 Japanese 127 Japan
12 German 123 Germany, Austria, Central Europe
13 Farsi (Persian) 110 Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia
14 Urdu 104 Pakistan, India
15 Punjabi 103 Pakistan, India
16 Vietnamese 86 Vietnam, China
17 Tamil 78 Southern India, Sri Lanka, Malyasia
18 Wu 77 China
19 Javanese 76 Indonesia
20 Turkish 75 Turkey, Central Asia
21 Telugu 74 Southern India
22 Korean 72 Korean Peninsula
23 Marathi 71 Western India
24 Italian 61 Italy, Central Europe
25 Thai 60 Thailand, Laos
26 Cantonese 55 Southern China
27 Gujarati 47 Western India, Kenya
28 Polish 46 Poland, Central Europe
29 Kannada 44 Southern India
30 Burmese 42 Myanmar
As you can see from that list, for most people the obvious choise as a second language is English (Mandarin is only higher in the list due to the vast number of people in China) but for an English speaker I suppose we should learn Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic as a second language.
English speakers also have less incentive to learn a second language due to the fact that whoever we communicate with tends to have learnt English as their second language 
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