Language Learning

When I was first thrown into the classroom with no clue of French, I thought I was dumb. Compared to a few classmates in the immigration class, my progress was slow as snail. When the time came for me to be integrated into the normal world, my French ability was the equivalent to those of primary school, whilst my spanish counterparts were already joking around and mingling well with the rest of the population.

Did I mentioned that I felt dumb? Well, I felt dumber when my teacher publicly humiliated my speaking ability and wrote a letter to the dean that I shouldn’t be in the class.

Fast forward, 10 years later. I am sitting in a German conversation class and having a blast blabbing out incoherent Deutch anyway I can. The people are more mature and I can understand 80% of what my teacher is saying in just two classes. Granted she’s using simple words and speaking slowly, but the knowledge of English and French combined with the experience of getting picked on by “les Québecois français� has propelled my ability to learn. No wonder those spanish people was able to integrated with the normal population so easily. Spanish and French are pratically the same thing. In asia, it’d probably be classified as another dialect only. I’d say Cantonese and Mandarin has more differences than spanish/french.

Following the same train of thought. I was wondering if one can conquer all the languages in the world and how best to go about doing it. I was thinking that one can tackle the languages that has the biggest differences first and than expand from that to the subsets of the languages.

I’ve created a road map of a hierarchy of languages. Marked in red are languages that are so different that you’ll have to restart from scratch. The lines are supporting languages that will help speed up the learning of the next one significantly.