Academic

My son has studied German for five years, more or less. I speak that language choppily, but I listen to Schlaflos in München and various German news podcasts, along with an occasional German audio book. My oldest daughter lives in the German House at BYU. But my son wants to increase his exposure to languages other than English and German.

In addition to German, the high school offers Spanish, French, and Japanese. Hmm. Not really what he was thinking.

Perhaps a language class at BYU? BYU has lots of options. The top options on his list, in the order we searched for them: Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), and Arabic. We are still sorting this out, but he is thinking that Arabic would be fun.

Going through this exercise almost makes me want to sign up for a course in the Center for Language Studies next summer. But which language?  After serving a Church mission in Austria, I enrolled in a Russian class at BYU, but I was forced to drop it when it came into conflict with a course for my major. I have always thought Russian would be fun to learn, if I could get to the point of reading Dostoevsky.

I took a course in French during my clerkship in Louisiana, but I didn't retain much. Being in love with cheese and the Tour de France, French would be a logical language for me to study. Then again, Spanish seems more useful in this part of the world. My mother spoke a few Norwegian phrases to me as I was growing up, and it would be fun to learn the "mother tongue" (haha), though my wife speaks Swedish, so we already have a Scandinavian in the family.

All things considered, I think my choice would be Mandarin or Arabic. If you had the time to study a new language, which would you choose?