Ahhh English. Simple, without accents, and widely spoken. Easy to learn at a basic level, a bit more difficult when it comes to slanging with your new mates. Why learn English you ask? Well, it’s everywhere! Almost every educated person the world over has at least taken an English class at one time in their life, and it’s for good reason. English is the new lengua franca and the most widely used language internationally when it comes to both business and leisure.
I was lucky enough to be born in the good ole’ US of A (maybe not so lucky), but regardless, the official language of my home country is of course, English. Growing up, I traveled mostly within the country, but when I made it to university and had the opportunity to hop overseas, I was pretty shocked to see how pervasive my native tongue really was on menus, street signs, websites, etc. (maybe a bit lucky)
Don’t believe me? Head to a hostel, and tell me what the people from Germany are speaking to the people from Japan. I’ve even seen people from non-native English speaking countries get mad at shop owners and servers in restaurants when they don’t speak any English!
There is a need for a de facto “common” language, and that language these days is most definitely English, I’m just lucky enough that it happens to be my mother tongue (phew). So, if you’re considering learning another language that will not only be rather easy to do so, make your traveling experiences more …communicative, and help open doors for you in the professional world, then consider English rather than Swahili for your next linguistic endeavor (Swahili would still be cool to learn though!).
This was a guest post from Jeremy of TopSpotTravel.com