… want my imaginary kids to learn.
English
French/German
Hindi
Mandarin
Spanish
Arabic
German/French
Swahili
Punjabi
Tamil
In a globalising, automating world, a personal connect – the soft skills – will rise in value. There are few better ways to enhance your value, and the value of your experience than know the language of the people1.
There’s a reason for the presence, and order, of languages in that list. French/German figure before Mandarin/Hindi because of the vicinity of native speakers to us in the UK. Punjabi and Tamil feature simply because they are mine and R’s mother tongues. Hindi is above Mandarin because our affinity for India beats the pure numbers advantage of Mandarin.
My love for learning languages far exceeds my capabilities.
English is currently my first language, followed by Hindi. Punjabi is the distant third. I learnt Spanish to an intermediate level a few years ago. I’m about 51% through with the French course on Duolingo (started earlier in the summer).
I’d love to get to a comfortable conversation level of Spanish, and a make-do level of French.
If I were still living in India, I would’ve liked to learn Tamil, and maybe Mandarin or Arabic, but not French.
If I some day get ownership of a kid, I’ll do my best to make them a polyglot -English, Hindi, Spanish/French, JavaScript, and Python in the first 10 years 🙂
- Knowing the local language may also increase sensitivity towards the people we’re dealing with. Something people like the blundering Boris Johnson could definitely do with. ↩
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