The most popular languages to learn and why you should consider them

It is a fact: learning a second language has many benefits, for both personal and business development. It forces people to think in different ways, offering new horizons and perspectives on the world, and the possibility of take advantage of infinite life-changing opportunities.

Foreign languages provide a list of key brain-boosting opportunities. Besides the fact of allowing us to communicate with other cultures, they can increase tolerance levels and even memory and problem-solving skills.

In fact, learning new languages is one of the most successful strategies to boost intelligence and protecting your mind from aging. Simply put, those who speak more than one language have much more cognitive capability and even make better choices than those who speak only a single language.

For those attracted to languages and foreign cultures, choosing the right language to learn is the key. Although the decision is completely individual and depends on the specific reasons for wanting to become fluent in a second language, in this article we’d made a list with the top-rated languages to learn, to help you with the process.

Keep in mind that no matter what language you choose, the learning process will require a huge personal effort and will definitely become difficult at some point, even if you choose a language with a similar structure to your native language. So do not do it for the sake of just doing it, because you will not succeed. With this in mind, let’s get started! Check out which are the most popular languages to learn in 2023 and why you should consider them.

Spanish

With more than 470 million speakers spread in 20 different countries, Spanish is today the second most spoken language in the whole world, with huge importance in many job markets.

After all, who could argue with statistics and numbers? The more people who speak it, the more useful it is. In fact, no surprise a Spanish course is ranked as one of the most wanted for enhancing career prospects and communicating with other cultures.

There are plenty of successful methods to learn the beautiful language of Cervantes. However, studying abroad has been always considered the easiest and fastest way of doing it. Immersive experiences are ideal and allow people to discover a different culture in a way that may not become apparent.

Therefore, if you are planning on boosting your personal and professional career, a Spanish school Argentina can make it happen. The locals are friendly, the food is amazing, and you do not need a huge budget for accommodation.

French

There are several reasons to learn French. It is, along with English, the only language spoken on every continent (all five of them!). Just to name a few places, Belgium, Switzerland, Guayama, some African countries, and many areas of Canada are part of the francophone world.

As French is considered the international language of cooking, architecture, fashion, films, and songs, being fluent at it offers access to entire artistic opportunities and an incomparable cultural universe. Something with which learning in translation can never compare!

French is also a base for learning other Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. In fact, even English, since nearly half of the current English vocabulary is derived from French.

Last but not least, as France is currently the world’s fifth-biggest economy, the French language is considered the second most useful language in the world for business, so speaking it now is a real asset.

Portuguese

Although Spanish has more speakers, Portuguese is a language spoken by over 240 million people around the world, more than French and German combined together, and is relatively easy for English speakers to learn.

Besides Brazil and Portugal, the most famous and known places, the Portuguese language is spoken in many popular tourist destinations, a lot more places than people think. For that reason, a Portuguese course is ideal for those who want to start a career in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries, in order to learn specific vocabulary and used expressions and be able to communicate with customers and suppliers.

In today’s world, speaking other languages such as Portuguese, French, or Romanian makes a huge contribution to preserving linguistic diversity and avoiding the domination of a single language, like English.

Chinese Mandarin

With deep roots and over 3000 years of history, Chinese Mandarin is spoken by one-fifth of the global population, (approximately 1.2 billion people!). That makes it the most widely spoken language in the world.

Mandarin is today’s one of the most popular languages to learn. Besides the number of speakers, there is a strongly spread idea that China will dominate the world in the future since is one of the fastest-growing economies in the last 2 decades.

Each year, thousands of students are taking classes of Chinese Mandarin to boost their CVs and impress their friends. If you want to join this trend, just be aware that there are many challenges to learning Chinese Mandarin, besides the obvious.

Chinese Mandarin is one of the hardest languages to learn, as there is no similar structure you can transfer to or from other common languages, such as English or Spanish. The tones and characters in Mandarin require many parts of the brain to function, as it is composed of pictograms and ideograms, very different from Romance languages.

However, do not let that fact intimidate you. There are also things that you do not have to learn – compared with other languages – such as tenses, genders, and grammar rules, which is great. And there is also a huge community of Chinese Mandarin students willing to help others.

Final Considerations

As we have seen, learning a second language has been found to have multiple benefits, including helping your brain work better, boosting your professional career, and providing new perspectives on the world.

With this in mind, if you are willing to set yourself apart from the crowd, it is never an intrinsically bad idea to start learning a new language. Always keep in mind that you should choose the language you want to learn based on how it adds to your life, personally and professionally. Therefore, the decision depends entirely on you.

(Disclaimer: Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)