Many times, we have no choice as to which language we will take up.  We may be emigrating to another country and want to assimilate more readily. We may be marrying a man or woman from another country and want to be able to communicate with his or her family, or we have met someone from another country we want to get to know better. Perhaps we are planning a trip to a country and want to learn useful phrases in the language of that country, or you have a hobby or interest that is based in a certain country or culture and you want to understand it better.

Frequently, however, we may choose to study another language for less practical reasons, and the choice of language is irrelevant. We may have read that language study contributes to mental acuity.  Or, our school offers a number of languages to choose from; how do we pick the right one?  

There are a number of criteria we can examine to choose which language to learn.  

-How readily available is it?  If we are learning a language for fun or mental exercise, we will want to choose a language we can easily access. Are there classes in our neighborhood in that language? Can we reinforce our learning of the language with cultural exchanges such as concerts, T.V. and radio shows, etc.?  In Montreal or Florida, French or Spanish would be readily available and continued exposure to the language would be easy.

-What is its relevance?  Learning the language of our ancestors would be a fun and interesting exercise, and we may already be somewhat predisposed to learning it. If we live in a neighborhood with a large ethnic population, choosing the language of that population would make sense since it is both readily available and would prove useful in communicating with our neighbors.

-Will it be useful in the long term?  This will especially apply in choosing the language to study in school. Which languages are most in demand by employers, especially in the field(s) you are in or are planning to study?

-Which languages are easiest? This may seem like the lazy way out, but if we have decided to study a language, we may not want to put too many obstacles in the way of studying it. If it is a language that requires a completely different alphabet, such as Russian or Greek, or even a completely different writing system such as the ideograms of oriental languages, we may make it so difficult for ourselves that we will not pursue it. After all, we are doing this voluntarily.  Of course, if the challenge seems like an interesting an exciting one, even if difficult, we should go for it.

Deciding which language to study should be an easy decision once we have made the big decision to study a language at all.