From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Mon Sep 21 1998 - 12:26:16 MDT
My fellow Extropians,
In the interest of personal growth and trying to maintain a certain
brain plasticity, I have decided to take up learning another
language. Although this not my first attempt (three years of French
in high school, living in Japan for a year) it will be the first
serious attempt in a long time.
I had considered doing this when I was considerably younger, (I
turn 41 on Thursday) but was dissuaded after learning just how many
languages there are, and the fact that I do not seem to have a gift
for learning this material.
I thought I would share my reasoning in the hope of encouraging
others.
I have decided to start with Spanish, because of the large number
of Spanish speaking people living in the Chicago area, as well as
it's percentage of the worlds population.
I have realized that it is not necessary to try attain the fluency
I have in my native tongue, (which I am still learning) but that by
acquiring a few thousand of the most commonly used words and the
structure, I should be able to develop it to good conversational
levels.
I then intend to move on to a second, then a third, and so on. I
may choose French or Japanese next as I have some familiarity with
these.
I am currently training useing a module from the Random House
living language series which has a textbook and 8 accompanying CD
Roms. I also keep the TV or radio turned on to Spanish programming
as background when I am at home.
Any and all comments or suggestions are most welcome.
I thought I'd share some charts I came across while researching
this.
Languages spoken
(In Millions)
World U.S
Language Local Total Language Total
Mandarin 863 1,025 Spanish 17.33
Hindi 357 476 French 1.70
Spanish 352 409 German 1.54
English 335 497 Italian 1.30
Bengali 200 207 Chinese 1.24
Arabic 200 235 Tagalog
Portugese 173 187
Russian 168 279
Japanese 125 126
German 99 126
French 75 127
Malay 57 170
Hasta Luego!
Brian
Member,Extropy Institute
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:35 MST