November 13, 2020 1 of 8
I still haven’t decided on what language I’m going to focus on for my eventual degree. And I have lots of time to choose; I’m not going to start the degree until about 11 years from now, at the earliest.
But the thought occurs that I would like to do lots of travel (and, ideally, I’d need to study there for a semester for the degree) in a country that speaks my target language.
As we all know, Spanish is my path of least resistance. I have two years of college-level Spanish already and I speak it nearly daily in my job.
And, as a woman who would likely be traveling alone, I probably want to avoid countries where I’d be shaken down for bribes. So I’m looking at the Transparency International map for 2019 and the yellowest (the ones with the lowest corruption indices) countries on the map are Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Luxembourg.
I already speak German, so there’s that.
So I guess I need to add Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Dutch to my language rotation somehow.
If I’m willing to go as orange as the United States, that opens up a bunch more, including France, Spain, and Portugal. Also, Ireland, Japan, Estonia, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Uruguay.
So I could stick with Spanish and plan for Uruguay. Also, Irish, Japanese, Cantonese, or Estonian.
I think I’d be biting off more than I can chew with Japanese or Cantonese, frankly.
So I guess I’m trying the languages of Scandinavia next. I have a friend who is learning Swedish, so at least I could maybe have a language partner there.
I have also decided that it’s too much work keeping up on my newest books read for my Gratuitous Amazon Links this month. So I’m going for my oldest read dates on my Goodreads account. And my current oldest read date is . . . . July 13, 2016? Don’t ask me. I guess that must’ve been when I started my Goodreads account. So I bring you: The Trials of Apollo, Book One: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan.