Better to improve English or learn a new language?

Better to improve English or learn a new language?

After buying a noodle dish from the most popular street food vendor in Georgetown, Malaysia, we had difficulties to find a place to sit on the street to eat. We decided to join a table with some local people.

And there an old lady started to talk with us in a perfectly pure accentless English.

Our surprise was huge. In Estonia, it’s very unusual for such old people to speak any other foreign language except Russian. We were amazed and tried to imagine what if our grandparents would speak like that.

And then our thought shifted to us. Will we be the cool grandparents one day, speaking perfect English with tourists like the old lady?

Picture of me, Grete and an old lady who spoke perfect English.
With an old lady who spoke perfect English

I use the language absolutely every day when reading books, watching movies, or listening to podcasts. And I feel quite confident speaking English.

I even write my blog in English. Which, by the way, came quite naturally for me, as it’s the language I get the most information on, so there is no need for translating. And my target audience is young, definitely learned English at school, and quite international.

But to be honest, there have been times when I haven’t understood what other people are telling me. It’s has been either their strong South African or Korean accent or just too fast speech with difficult vocabulary from native speakers.

Of course, sometimes other’s don’t understand mine robust English neither.

And my simplistic 7th-grade sentences in this blog couldn’t be compared to articles published in the New York Times.

Or when I read Jules Verne’s book “Around the world in 80 days”,  I didn’t know 30% words he used there to describe landscapes, situations, and characters.

So, actually, there is A LOT to improve if I want to be the cool English-speaking grandpa one day.

But what are the benefits of improving the English language?

Statistically, there are around 330-360 million native English speakers in the world, who are actually out-numbered by around 1 billion non-native speakers. The language is spoken in every continent and it’s called as global lingua franca. And it’s also by far most studied language in the world right now.

The fact that it’s spoken and studied around the world, gives many opportunities for native and fluent speakers to earn money wherever they go.

Probably the most common jobs for backpackers in South-East Asia is teaching English in schools. Plus there are many sites, where it’s possible to teach it online. Sometimes earning 20-25$ per hour.

Also, native speakers could have jobs as editors, content writers, copywriters and proofreaders, which all need very good English skills.

Indeed English is basically the language of media, computers, diplomacy, and tourism, where in most cases high proficiency is needed.

Clearly, fluent speakers enjoy a huge advantage over average speakers like me.

But maybe, instead of improving English from average to fluent, it could be more useful to learn the totally new language instead?

I have often thought about learning local languages here in South-East Asia. Unfortunately, I have been too lazy so far to know more than a couple of words.

Great use of Google translate - enlightened seaweed.
Enlightened seaweed.

But maybe I should do more?

Languages in countries we have visited are spoken by:
Vietnamese language – 75 million people
Tagalog language in the Philippines – 70 million
Indonesian language – 200 million
Malay language – 290 million
(Estonian – 1 million)

These are all very big languages. Although, the thing is that they are mostly spoken only locally. Not much of use if I want to be location independent and don’t want to stay much longer in Asia.

But then there are languages like Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese. And why not to finally learn to speak Russian (no joke)? Or German? Or Italian?

And one study found that French will be the most spoken language in the world by 2050.

To get a better understanding of how many languages there are, look at the video below.

And here is a good article about choosing a language to learn I found in Washington Post.

As it states, there is no single language everyone should definitely learn for the future. It’s totally individualisitic. It depends on many factors, like which language would be most beneficial for someone’s career, which culture look appealing, and where would one want to live.

But one thing for sure, knowing an additional language to supplement English would be super beneficial. It would be great for a better salary, for a possibility to work in some foreign country, or just networking with more people. Or keeping the language as a secret code that no one else can interpret, as Estonian is for us in South-East Asia.

And super bonus! According to one resource, bilingual people have a smaller risk to get Alzheimer. 

For those reasons, I think that: new language > perfect English. 

So, please keep expecting grammar mistakes in my blog. And pray to higher forces to not hear my robust English accent.

And what I want to study?

So far, I have tried to learn Russian for years without almost any success. I am not going to state all the reason why it’s so hard and difficult… It has just been a lack of determination.

Also some years ago I  decided to learn Chinese because of my purchaser career. Unfortunately, there is no progress with it so far neither. I have only learned new horror stories about its difficulty from local Chinese speakers here in Malaysia.

If I could speak English, Russian and Chinese, then I would be able to talk with around 1/3 of the human population. Compare it to an only Estonian-speaking person who could communicate with 0,00013% of people worldwide. 

So that’s the way I am writing this article – to help me understand which languages are important to study, and more importantly, to motivate me to study them.

Then I could be a cool grandpa one day, talking accentless Chinese with Chinese tourists.

I would like to end with a joke I found online. In one Russian university, there was a saying: “Optimists are learning English; pessimists are learning Chinese while realists are learning AK47”.

Which language are you planning to study?

2 Comments
  1. Hello Mart,
    I lived in Indonesia for 2 years, and Morocco for 5 years, and married into a Chinese-speaking Indonesian family. Regrettably, I don’t speak Arabic, Chinese, or Indonesian at more than a basic “hello, please, thank you” level.
    I do speak my native English, learned French, and even speak Norwegian even though it’s been 15 years since I studied it. (I even had Estonians in my program!)
    If I were to do it over, I would make a much greater effort to learn basic phrases and to expand upon them. I wish you luck on your linguistic journey, regardless of the additional language you set out to learn.

    1. Hello Steeve!
      Thank you for sharing your story!
      I understand how easy it is to speak universal languages like English and French wherever we go, as there are hardly any places left where local language skills are needed. But I believe both you and I have enough time left to take the challenge and start learning now.
      Good luck!

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.