become fluent in another language

Incidentally, my early dabblings towards this goal involved using the Rosetta Stone software for learning Hindi (www.rosettastone.com). Rosetta Stone is generally pretty expensive, but I have to say, it really worked. I definitely recommend it to others pursuing this goal. It’s been a few years, and I still remember how to say “the little boy is under the airplane” (don’t worry, they teach more practical stuff too).

Step one of this goal is to research which language to focus on to begin with…

I took Spanish for four years in high school and it sunk in pretty well, so I have a head start there… it’s also probably the language with the most practical value… but I haven’t been able to motivate myself to get back into it. Maybe I need an immersion experience.

I’m also really interested in learning a language with an entirely different alphabet. I was thinking of Hindi, and even started taking some tutorials on that for awhile, because I’d like to travel more in India… but it also seems like more and more people are speaking English there, so it may not be the best use of my time. Sanskrit would be fun, and I could start reading some yoga texts in their original script… but beyond that, it has virtually no practical utility.

Japanese and Chinese would be obvious choices in the whole ‘new alphabet’ category, but they don’t interest me as much for some reason. Maybe if I got more into Zen scriptures, or traveled to Japan or something, I could get into it…

I also find sign language to be very interesting, and I know there’s a real need for people who do my kind of work who also know sign language. But… is it a dying language? More and more people are getting those cochlear implants…

I guess I’m torn between languages to learn for practical utility vs. the-hell-of-it. Isn’t there one that could be both?!