Feature Photo: gopal1035 Bengali books, Photo: romana klee
“Critical language” is a term used in the US to designate languages for which there is large demand for language professionals but little supply.
The list of which languages are considered critical changes over time as economic and political situations change and develop, but often these languages are radically different from English in grammatical structures, sound systems and writing systems.
While learning these languages can take considerable more time and effort than learning languages more closely related to English like French, Spanish or German, studying them can make you eligible for funding options like the Critical Language Scholarship or the National Security Education Program (NSEP) and open up travel and career opportunities you may have never considered.
Having studied three of the following languages myself (Arabic, Hindi and Urdu) in addition to advanced French and elementary Spanish, I can tell you that it does take determination and discipline to get started with a critical language. Not only do you need to learn a new way of moving your pen, a new way of reading and how to produce foreign sounds from places in your mouth you never knew existed, but you often need to learn to wrap your mind around a different way of thinking, a different worldview.
I was both boggled and fascinated by recognizing how the English system of family terms (mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin) is so sparse compared to the Urdu’s dozens of terms differentiating each family member and giving them each a different status: mother’s sister, father’s sister, mother’s sister’s husband, older sister, younger sister, father’s older brother’s wife. I still can’t get them all straight.
As of 2010, the following 13 languages are listed as critical languages. If you’re thinking about studying a new language but haven’t decided which one, factors to consider include where the language is spoken, how many native speakers and second language speakers it has, and what types of jobs are available for professionals with knowledge of the language.
Arabic, Photo: Radar Communication
1. Arabic
While the term “Arabic” refers more to a language group with 30-odd distinct varieties within it, students who want to learn any dialect of Arabic start by mastering Modern Standard Arabic and then move on to specialize in a particular spoken dialect like Egyptian, Lebanese or Gulf Arabic. More than 221 million people speak some form of Arabic, and there is a demand for Arabic linguists in intelligence services, consular services, international NGOs, the airline industry, the military and business.
2. Azerbaijani
Spoken in Azerbaijan and in pockets of other Central Asian countries, Azerbaijani has 6 to 7 million mother-tongue speakers and about 8 million second-language speakers. It’s an Altaic language related to Turkish, so studying it would pair well with studying Turkish language and culture. It is written in both Cyrillic and Latin script, meaning that if you’re already literate in Russian it won’t be hard to get started with Azerbaijani. On the job front, opportunities are more limited than with more widely spoken languages like Arabic, but if you plan to live, work with an NGO or do business in Central Asia it would be a good language to study.
3. Bengali
Also known as Bangla, Bengali has more than 110 million native speakers and a further 140 million second-language speakers. It’s spoken not just in Bangladesh, India and Nepal but wherever Bengalis have migrated, so you can use Bengali language skills in the US, UK, Canada, Singapore and the UAE among other countries. As an Indo-European language, its structure is closer to English than many of the other critical languages, although to be literate you need to learn Bengali script. Bengali language skills would be particularly useful if you plan to work with NGOs or business in South Asia.
Japanese & Chinese, Photo: chinnian
4. Chinese (Mandarin)
As the official language of Chinese schools, in the year 2000 there were an estimated 840 million first-language speakers plus 178 million second-language speakers. While some varieties of the language are not mutually intelligible (meaning speakers can’t necessarily understand each other), more and more Chinese young people are now only being taught the standard variety rather than regional dialects. Considering roughly 1 out 6 people in the world speak Chinese and China is a huge market for economic growth, career opportunities for Chinese linguists can be found in almost any field.
5. Hindi
Hindi is spoken as a native language throughout northern India and is used as a trade language in much of the rest of the country. It is mutually intelligible with Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, although while Urdu uses the Arabic-style script Hindi uses Devanagari script. There are over 180 million mother-tongue speakers in South Asia and many more in countries with large Indian immigrant populations like Canada, Uganda, Fiji, the US and the UK.
6. Indonesian
Known as Bahasa, this Indonesian language has about 23 million speakers in the country and among Indonesian immigrant communities in the Netherlands, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the US. It’s written in both Arabic and Latin script and its vocabulary is highly similar (an 80% cognate rate) with standard Malay. If you can already read and write in Arabic script or speak Malay, you’ll have an advantage picking up Bahasa Indonesian.
7. Japanese
Spoken by 122 million people, Japanese is written with a syllabary, a system of symbols that represent syllables rather than individual sounds. Although it’s not related to Chinese, it is heavily influenced by it, and in order to be proficient in Japanese you will also need to learn a large number of Chinese characters that are used as loan words in Japanese. If you want to use your Japanese outside of Japan, consider academic jobs, translation, international business, language tutoring for students of Japanese or serving as a guide for Japanese tourists.
8. Korean
Classed as a language isolate, the Korean language does not share a lineage with any other known language. It is spoken by 66 million people and written in Hangul script, a system of syllabic blocks. Within the US government, there is a high demand for Arabic, Chinese and Korean speakers.
Russian, Photo: A Journey Round My Skull
9. Persian / Farsi
An Indo-European language, Farsi is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Qatar and some areas of Uzbekistan. Written in Arabic script, it has about 23 million speakers throughout the region. Due to the tense political relationship between the US and Iran, Americans who study Farsi can look for jobs in the government sector, intelligence services, journalism, political analysis (“think tanks”), and the military.
10. Punjabi
Punjabi is a good choice if you enjoy learning different alphabets, as Western Punjabi is written in Arabic script (like Urdu) while Eastern Punjabi is written in both Devanagari (like Hindi) script and Gurumkhi script. In India, many of the 28 million Eastern Punjabi speakers are Sikhs, while in Pakistan the majority of the 62 million Western Punjabi speakers are Muslim. Punjabi learners will need to master different greetings and terms of respect for interacting with different religious communities.
11. Russian
Although the Cold War days are long behind us, Russian is still deemed a critical language. There are over 143 million Russian speakers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Russian is a useful trade language in these regions. It is a Slavic language and written in Cyrillic script.
12. Turkish
Good news for Turkish language learners is that since the late 1920s the language has been written in Latin script. Turkish is spoken by more than 50 million people in Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Azerbaijan and Iran. The majority of Turkish speakers Muslim and there are some Arabic loan words used in Turkish.
13. Urdu
While only about 10% of Pakistan’s population speaks Urdu as a native-language, it is used as one of the official languages in education is spoken as a trade language throughout the country. Urdu has over 104 million speakers in Pakistan, India and in Pakistani immigrant communities throughout the world. Studying Urdu pairs well with studying Hindi, as on a conversational level there are only minor differences. Urdu is written in Arabic Nastaliq script.
Community Connection
Which of these critical languages would you be most interested in studying? Let us know which one(s) and why in the comment section.
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19 Comments... join the discussion!
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It is difficult to be deeply fluent ( talking, reading and writing like a native) so I think it is important to put the time into a language or languages that will be most useful to one’s life.
We are monolinguals raising a very fluent triligual/triliterate from birth and we picked Mandarin Chinese and Spanish to add to her dominant mother tongue English. She also speaks some of many languages.
I think it is important to expose children to other languages and we started that in the womb even before we started traveling the world as a family. The brain is just more geared to learning languages then, although one can add them at any age.
My thinking is once she has 3 dominant ( and quite different) languages down well it will be easier to add other languages later if she wants. I think it is useful to look at demographic trends when picking a language and how useful it will be in the future.
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What you’re doing as a family is SO exciting. My husband and I have already talked about doing something similar with our future children. His first language is Portuguese so our goal is to try the one-person/one-language strategy with me speaking English and him speaking Portuguese, and then choose a third language to expose them to as early as possible based on where we’re living, although it will probably be Arabic or Hindi-Urdu. Thanks for the inspiration!
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Hey. I’m from Indonesia and of course I speak Indonesian as my mother tongue. A critic: Indonesian isn’t written in Arabic script. Yes, we have several words from Arabic. For example we also say Assalamualaikum when we greet someone. But it is never written in Arabic. It is always written in Latin script. And the dialects in Indonesia such as Javanese or Balinese are also never written in Arabic. The scripts are closer to Sanskirt or Hindi.
Indonesian also has many words orginated from Dutch because Indonesia was colonialized by the Netherlands for about 350 years. So, I guess it would be easier to learn this language if you could speak Dutch.
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Thanks for sharing Ricky! I’ve never studied Indonesian myself so I was relying on the Ethnologue report which just lists “Arabic script. Latin script” without any explanation, so it’s great to hear from a native speaker who can set the situation straight.
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I was so happy to see Turkish on this list! It’s my first ‘non-traditional’ language and your article made me feel like there might be some hope in getting financial support to continue studying.
I’ve also been quite surprised by the way some of these languages denote specifics when referring to family members, and how that extends to outside the family in the entire culture. In Hindi-speaking India everyone seems to be an ‘auntie’ or an ‘uncle’ and most young people refer to slightly-older friends as ‘older brother’ or ‘older sister’ in Turkish.
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They all sound interesting! I wonder which of these languages would be the easiest for a monoliguinal English speaker to obtain 80-90% spoken fluency in. Would be great if some fellow Matador writers with expertise in languages could explain the different tests or other ways of measuring a persons level of fluency in a given non native language.
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@ Jed: Indonesian/Malaysian is probably the easiest – both at beginner stage and towards fluency. It’s written in a phonetic manner – no issues with spelling – , the grammar is very simple and it has many loan words from European languages. Indonesian tends to have more loan words and a phonetic spelling borrowed from Dutch while Malaysian borrows more from English, but the 2 languages are fairly similar (about as similar, I would say, as metropolitan French and Québecois).
I have to say I am much more familiar with languages from Eastern Asia and South East Asia than those from the Near East, Middle East and Indian subcontinent so someone else might want to chime in!
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Studying an Indo-European language and one that uses a Latin script would make things faster, although I think it’s possible to obtain fluency in any of these languages with the right training and exposure. You need both language input (chance to listen to the language from native speakers / read the language) and language output (chance to speak while being corrected / chance to write), so I think the success would be based on finding the language classes, programs and tutors that can help you do both. For example, if you choose Azerbaijani, it will be a lot harder to find materials, organized classes and tutors than it would be for Arabic or Chinese.
I’m a kinesthetic learner, and I like to have formal group language classes for the beginner level of a new language and then move into an immersion experience where I’m living in the culture and I’m forced to use the language to communicate. Before figuring out what language to study, it would be good to think about your learning style (primarily visual, audio or kinesthetic) and then consider the study options available in the different languages you’re interested in.
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I would study Urdu – I find it a fascinating language, and have experienced a few families in my school district whose first language is Urdu, but (I think) we only have Spanish translators…
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I’m so glad I decided to pick one of these up in college. Also, not to be “that guy” but the photo that’s with the Chinese section is in Japanese. It’s about learning Chinese though.
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Woops! I can’t read either Chinese or Japanese so I was relying on the Flickr captions. Thanks for pointing that out – will fix the caption.
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I just wanted to correct a wrong information you mentioned in your article that would be offensive to some people.
you said Farsi is a spoken language in a number of countries and among them you said Qatar. I am positive that people in Qatar speak arabic and only arabic since the majority of the Qatar population belong to the Bedwin arabic tripes and they take so much pride in their language.
I speak two languages now and i’m working on the third whenever i get the chance
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Hey Ibrahim,
According to a 1993 survey there were about 73,000 Farsi speakers in Qatar, and since at that time the entire population of Qatar was about 504,000, Farsi speakers are a pretty significant community in the country. Qatar’s national language is Arabic, but there is a large Iranian immigrant/worker population there, so it’s also a country where Farsi would came in handy.
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Thanks for the response/replies Heather & aelle!
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Great topic, Heather! As you mentioned in your article, the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program offers intensive, overseas summer language institutes in thirteen critical need foreign languages. We currently have 575 students study abroad in 15 countries (including Morocco).
The CLS Program is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the selection process is administered by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). The CLS Program is administered by CAORC and the American Councils for International Education.
To learn more, please visit http://www.clscholarship.org.
Malaika Marable Serrano
Outreach and Alumni Officer
Council of American Overseas Research Centers↵ -
Very good article. What about portuguese ?
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Portuguese is certainly a ‘useful’ language in terms of travel. Aside from Portugal you can use it in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, parts of Hong Kong, Goa and former Portuguese colonial outposts all over the world. It’s not considered a critical language simply because the demand for specialists does not outweigh the supply.
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