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What 2 or 3 languages should my children learn to reach the largest populations in the year 2030? Right now my vote is English (default), Spanish, and Chinese,
by j_s 11y ago
What 2 or 3 languages should my children learn to reach the largest populations in the year 2030?
Right now my vote is English (default), Spanish, and Chinese, but I don't have much of an understanding of how various languages can be easier to learn together.
- clueless123 11y agoIf you know Spanish, you will understand written Portuguese and Italian quite well, so you get those as a free bonus. On the other hand, Chinese with Mandarin and it's many dialects (Cantonese, Shanghainese etc..) is a whole new game.. with a bonus that they all use the same written language.
- jcranmer 11y agoIt depends on what you mean. A language like Japanese is spoken by over 100 million, but it's spoken basically nowhere outside of a single large, populous country. English, Spanish, French, and Arabic collectively constitute an official or major spoken language of effectively most of the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and the Middle East (these are 4 of the 6 official languages of the UN for a reason). East Asia is by far the most populous corner of the world, but if you pick East Asian languages, you tend to lock yourself into one-language-one-culture groups.