Which languages should you learn and why? Where are you likely to travel on holiday or business in the next five years? If you have no concrete plans, which languages are closest to your language? Since you are reading this in English, I shall relate languages to English, but also look at groups of languages, so that if you have learned or plan to learn another, you can add an extra language more easily.
Spanish
I remember speaking to a friend, Peter, who was planning to buy a property in Spain and move there for part or all of the year. He had started learning Spanish at a local evening class. He met a girl at the Spanish evening class - and married her.
My parents also bought a property in Spain so they could spend winter there. I did not make any conscious effort to learn Spanish, which was a pity. But when driving around I noticed the words villa and casa and banco and decided to list the number of Spanish words I already knew and recognized. I thought there would be 5 to 10 words. I listed the words as we passed signs. To my amazement, in only a weekend I had a list of around thirty words.
Much later, when Duolingo came along, and I could learn for free, I started learning Spanish in a system which taught whole sentences and basic grammar as well as wider vocabulary.
French
I grew up in London, England where I went to a girls' grammar school, and I wanted to learn Spanish and German at school. Unfortunately, the timetable was arranged so that my class learned Latin and French. My parents were happy that I was learning French. France was a nearby country. Postwar, WW2, my parents thought it was better to travel to France than to Germany, so recently at war with us (not once but twice in their lifetimes). French was the language of menus in restaurants, more useful. They didn't know, or didn't say, but German was more challenging grammatically.
When I was doing O level, my parents sent me on the summer holiday to a Frnech course in France. (I met a Swedish boy.) Later I went on holiday touring Greece with a French group. I made lists of French words in a small vocabulary notebook. I liked mackerel and discovered that the French word was similar, maquereau. That was easy. I didn't learn all the names of the other fish.
On holiday, a boy sitting beside me asked if I like fish. I replied, in French, I like mackerel.
He gasped in astonishment at what he assumed was my extensive vocabulary, and told the others, 'I asked her if she liked fish and she replied she liked mackerel!'
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