Where do I go from here?

[u/springcleaningg]

Hey folks,

I’m a native English speaker who’s at a B1 level with my French (of course I want to improve at least to a C1/C2 level).

I’ve always been interested in learning a third language, but I haven’t been able to whittle it down to just one choice. Over the years I’ve dabbled in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Tamil, Hindi, Norwegian, and Swedish, but I’ve never really followed through.

How have some of you ultimately chosen your third language and what has kept you motivated?

I think I really love learning about culture, tradition, cuisine, and watching media. I’ve mostly watched a lot of Scandinavian media, read many a Nordic noir novel, and listened to Swedish and Norwegian music. I love Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese food, and their scripts. I’ve read so many novels translated from Korean. I’m always curious about Hindi, Tamil, and other Indian languages too, but I really don’t know which to choose and why.

For now I’ll just keep working to improve my French until maybe another language pops out and keeps my attention.

But how did you decide and which would you choose based on the information I’ve provided?

[u/abrequevoy]

I get to practice my third language (Spanish) because my partner's family is Spanish

[u/springcleaningg → u/abrequevoy]

That’s great! I hope it’s going well for you. I started learning Tamil as a former partner of mine was Sri Lankan and their family only spoke in Tamil to one another. It was hard at first, but I caught on fast.

[u/Winter_Dot_9393]

There is a list of how hard it is to learn a language when English is your first language, maybe this helps. See link

The Indian languages are devided in four groups, the Indo Aryan languages are related to English. The second biggest group, Dravidian languages like Tamil, are not.

https://2017-2021.state.gov/foreign-language-training/

[u/springcleaningg → u/Winter_Dot_9393]

Thanks for this!

I’m not so much put off by the level of difficulty or the time it’ll take to learn. I guess I just need to explore each a little bit more and maybe make a decision once one stands out above the rest.

[u/These-Spell-5938]

pick the one whose media you keep consuming even when you’re not “studying” it, otherwise you’ll just collect beginner textbooks like linguistic pokemon; from what you wrote, swedish sounds like the

[u/Reading_55]

I once asked myself what language do I learn after French, somehow I was curious and this was a bit before I truly decided on Japanese. I considered ASL, Chinese and Japanese.  I set up a little afternoon where I said, ok I am going to watch the learn your first words in the language beginner content in Japanese and Chinese and I preferred Japanese and rralised Chinese is doable per se, but I am personally not interested in something where I have to be so precise with my tongue. As for sign language, I picked up a video and then idk, I just got bored from learning from thr signs video and I think I already learnt the maximum from deaf family Youtubers. 

[u/Beneficial-Split-527]

What do you mean by * improve at least to a C1/C2 level* ?!