Dear friends,
Today I shall share my opinion about foreign language and its importance. According to Wikipedia the list of languages by number of native speakers i.e. number of speakers in their mother tongue is as follows---
Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Punjabi, German, Javanese, etc.
But the list of languages by the total number of non-native speakers is different. This figure is more important as in any language more the number of non-native speakers more is the global importance of the language. Here the list looks like this--
English, Hindi, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese (Standard Chinese), Indonesian, Russian, Swahili, Spanish, German, Thai, Bengali, Hausa, Portuguese, etc.
Learning a foreign language is definitely very advantageous but which language to learn is quite confusing.
For English speakers, some language is easy to learn like Spanish again some language is very important or necessary to learn like Chinese as the importance of China as a growing superpower and the influence of the Nation on the contemporary world is quite massive. But here also the region or field of language application is another important matter. A person or a company engaging in business relations with some Latin American Countries will neither need English nor needs Chinese language skills. Here relevant and required foreign language skills will be of Spanish or Portuguese.
So according to the region of application if we discuss continent wise importance of language then we shall find that in North America English, Spanish (US, Mexico and other countries besides Canada) and French (Canada) is very much important. In the case of South America, the language of Spanish and Portuguese prevail. In Africa, the language English, French, and Arabic will be the language of communication and international business. In Europe English, German, French and some other languages like Spanish, Russian are very much significant language of communication. In Asia Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, and Japanese are very important and Australia only English.
Spanish, Portuguese and Italian these three languages are very much similar. So learners of one language can easily learn the other two languages and expand their horizons.
Now continent Asia and Africa are developing very fast and the new opportunities and new prospects in business, trade, politics and other fields are emerging in these continents. So top most languages to learn for a global perspective except English will be French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hindi.
Thanking you and expecting your comments.
