I'm mulling over what my language project should be, based on how the sort of experiences they will open up to me and the quality of life of the regions in which they are spoken. Which of these would you choose?
So, over the last few years I've been casually learning several major European languages. I speak fairly good French and Portuguese, decent but rusty Spanish, and beginner conversational level of German and Italian. I'll spend the next year knuckling down and immersing myself in environments where I can perfect these languages (workaway, farmstays, immersion courses, working at a ski resort in Austria, etc), so I'm fairly confident that by this time next year I'll be at B2 level in about 5 different languages. They are all European, most are quite widely spoken, and all are relatively easy for a native English speaker. I feel like they were amongst the best languages I could have picked, as there is a very high "return on investment" for them all - for just a couple of months of learning Spanish, for example you open up a large body of TV, films, music, tourist destinations, job opportunities etc.
I feel like I have sort of exhausted the easy-but-useful languages. The only other languages I'm aware of which have the same cultural reach are Arabic, Russian and maybe Mandarin. These are all problematic to me, mostly because I don't wish to live in an authoritarian country or one with harsh religious laws, which significantly limits my options in these regions. They are also notoriously difficult languages, with some online sources suggesting that to learn Mandarin would take as much time to learn as the 5 languages I'm learning put together. I'm sure Taiwan and Singapore are amazing places, but 2 or 3 years is a long time to spend in such small countries.
Another option is to learn a regional "trade language", something like Swahili or Indonesian. My understanding is that these are widely spoken across their regions and relatively easy, but that they are mostly spoken as a second language, so it would be a bit like learning English to move to Sweden or Russian to move to Latvia I guess, and also because these regions are economically weak, I assume there are fewer job opportunities, less high-quality media (TV, films etc).
The third option I'm considering is Japanese. It is also famously difficult, but the country is famously beautiful, stable, prosperous, has varied topography, and a very rich media. In short, it's a place where I think I would enjoy a higher quality of life, but I worry that I would get bored of living there for an extended period, given the cultural homogeneity in comparison with Western Europe.
Lastly, I'm thinking of Hindi. It has lots of speakers, and India seems like a place with extraordinarily varied culture and topography, but there is a lot of information I don't know - for instance, I know India will not be as socially liberal as California or Sweden, but is casual dating acceptable in bigger cities? Does the government ever ban social media to silence criticism? And I've also heard that Hindi is not spoken by most Indians. Is it similar enough to other South Asian languages (like Punjabi, Marathi, Nepali etc) that I could learn them in a month or two, like a Swede learning Danish or a Dutch learning German?
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