Obviously, I pick one to stick with for a year, and don’t (seriously) move on to something new until the next year. This forces me to stick to a language past basic fluency (doable in less than a year) so I gain more advanced understanding where many might be tempted to move on to something else that is newer and more exciting.

I have a short list from which I will pick next year’s language, but I can’t say what’s on that list. Meanwhile, I will continue to improve my skill in all of the languages I speak, and hopefully even bring some more of those non-fluent languages into the fluency column.

The key to my choice each time is always what I think I will get the most use out of. If I’m not interested in Japanese (I’m not) but I find myself planning travel to Japan, that will go higher on my list. No language I choose is just for the sake of knowing it.

Acck! I’ve been meaning to reply to this comment for a while now, sorry.

Right now I’m working on Spanish and Japanese. I’ve got the basics of Spanish covered, now it’s just an issue of taking the time to practice (which I haven’t been doing lately). I’ve taken more of an interest in checking out South East Asia lately in addition to Japan, hence the interest in tagalog. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s Oktoberfest time, and all the stuff about that and pictures of pretty German girls holding mugs of frothing beer is making me think, again, about how much I want to learn German, lol.

I keep thinking about which languages I want to learn and rearranging the order of them in my head depending on what catches my attention. I’m already committed to Spanish and Japanese, though frankly I feel like I really just need to kick my own ass and buckle down and get those learned and out of the way in the next 6-12 months so I can move on to another one, but it’s an issue of time as well as effort. Right now, I’d say the order goes Spanish, Japanese, French/German, Tagalog/Thai, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, and I don’t know what else, maybe Mandarin or Russian or Czech. I’m crazy…

How about you, which languages do you speak already and which ones are you going to work on next? Do you have a certain level that you force yourself to reach in a language before you allow yourself to move onto another one? I do that currently and am wondering if I should–right now I won’t ‘finish’ working on a language and move onto another one until I’m conversationally fluent in it.

Yup, I’ve already tried using a few Spanish words in the middle of a Japanese sentence :/

But I do relate to your desire to know “all of them”. 🙂 It’s not possible to ever know every language, but I think it’s reasonable to speak most of the useful ones — and use those to understand several others which you might not speak — within a lifetime.

What’s on your radar right now? Which languages are you hoping to get to in the next few years? I’ve seen you mention Tagalog twice this week… any change that’s going to coming soon?

Cheers,
Andrew