British Council: Languages for the Future

General discussion about learning languages
William Camden
Green Belt
Posts: 384
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2015 2:47 am
Location: Greenwich Mean Time zone
Languages: English (N), German (fluent), Turkish (fluent), Russian (fluent), French (semi-fluent), Spanish (semi-fluent), am studying Polish, have some knowledge of it, also studying modern Greek, basic knowledge of Arabic (mostly MSA, some exposure to colloquial dialects), basic knowledge of Latin and Italian, beginner in Scottish Gaelic.
x 476

Re: British Council: Languages for the Future

Postby William Camden » Sat Nov 25, 2017 7:46 pm

I did German, French and Spanish at a school under the Scottish education system, which was language geekery indeed. I did not do Latin although my brother did. I believe some pupils took Scottish Gaelic and perhaps some took Italian. I was told one teacher at my school was qualified to teach Russian but it was not possible to fit this in with my existing timetable. I think I went to an above-average school by Scottish standards.
2 x
: 4321 / 4321Greek Memrise

User avatar
Seneca
Green Belt
Posts: 268
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:08 pm
Location: Eurasia
Languages: English (N); 日本語 (beginner)
x 350

Re: British Council: Languages for the Future

Postby Seneca » Sat Nov 25, 2017 8:32 pm

DaveBee wrote:Speech at the polyglot gathering: Which language is the most beneficial to learn?.

The suggestion @ 24m is: English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, Balkan, Portuguese.

Does the video go into detail justifying those choices? Or is it just something to do with polyglotting? I'd think access to both people and economics would put Portuguese ahead of Polish, for example.
0 x

DaveBee
Blue Belt
Posts: 952
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 8:49 pm
Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
x 1386

Re: British Council: Languages for the Future

Postby DaveBee » Sat Nov 25, 2017 8:52 pm

Seneca wrote:
DaveBee wrote:Speech at the polyglot gathering: Which language is the most beneficial to learn?.

The suggestion @ 24m is: English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, Balkan, Portuguese.

Does the video go into detail justifying those choices? Or is it just something to do with polyglotting? I'd think access to both people and economics would put Portuguese ahead of Polish, for example.
He did, and also pointed out that the importance of various languages would be different in different places. Portuguese would be more valuable in South America for example. This talk grew out of his undergraduate dissertation.
1 x

Online
DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: British Council: Languages for the Future

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Nov 13, 2018 12:02 am

sjintje wrote:This report seems to be from 2013. Languages ranked according to usefullness from British perspective.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/de ... report.pdf

Spanish
Arabic
French
Mandarin
German
Portuguese
Italian
Russian
Turkish
Japanese
There's a 2017 version now.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/de ... e_2017.pdf

As in 2013, the same five languages: Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic and German, make it to the top of the table. These five languages appear consistently as the most important, some way ahead of the remaining five.

In the second half of the table are Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. Both Russian and Portuguese have declined in importance since our earlier analysis, and Turkish has dropped out of the top ten to be replaced by Dutch. These movements are caused by changes in the economic and political circumstances in Russia, Turkey and Brazil and are not related to Brexit.

    1. Spanish
    2. Mandarin
    3. French
    4. Arabic
    5. German
    6. Italian
    7. Dutch
    8. Portuguese
    9. Japanese
    10. Russian
3 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests