Language Learning

My last three days have involved midterms, illness, canceling plans with Love Bug due to illness, and being sent home early from work two days in a row due to illness. So basically, I've been having a craptastic time. Instead of focusing on that, I'm going to talk about language learning!

Meme of person yelling with a broom and text that says "Learn all the languages!"

It’s no secret that I wish I could speak more languages. While my pipe dream is to learn every language ever, I realize that is not going to happen. I needed a way to narrow myself down so I decided to look up the most common languages in MA and Quebec, since those are the two areas where I’m most likely to wind up living. Turns out the lists are almost identical. The only difference is the order of languages and the fact that MA has Portuguese on its top seven list while Quebec has Arabic instead. Here are the lists:

Top 7 languages in MA:
English
Spanish
Portuguese*
Chinese
French
Creole
Italian

Top 7 languages in Quebec:
French
English
Arabic*
Spanish
Italian
Chinese
Creole

It turns out I’m well on my way to mastering the top seven in both places. I already speak English, French, and some Italian and Creole (and ASL but sadly that doesn’t make the MA list – and I don’t know LSQ which is Quebec’s sign language). If I get good at all of the languages I currently sort-of know, I’ll just need Spanish, Chinese, and either Portuguese or Arabic depending on where I settle down. This actually feels like a doable (though slightly intense) goal. Neat, right?