With native speakers spanning the globe, the French language opens up worlds of opportunity. From romantic and exotic travel destinations and impeccable food to international business networking and rational people who enjoy long meals, French takes you there and makes sure you're well fed.
German is one of the most useful languages to know in Europe. The German economy is very strong and, as Germany's influence in the European Union continues to grow, more and more people are learning German. Varieties of German are also the majority in Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, with minorities in Belgium, southern Italy, eastern France and southern Denmark.
Afrikaans is spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia. It is spoken natively by about 6 million people in South Africa, which makes up nearly 14% of the country's population. This makes Afrikaans the third most widely spoken language in the country.
Afrikaans is very close to Dutch but borrows around 5-10% of its vocabulary from native African languages such as Malay and Portuguese as well as Bantu and Khoisan tongues.
With native speakers covering a significant portion of the globe, the Spanish language opens up worlds of opportunity. From exotic and historical travel destinations and myriad varieties of music to international business relationships and lively people who love to dance, Spanish will take you there and perhaps keep you up all night!
With China booming and interest in Mandarin Chinese at a very high level, Cantonese (Yue Chinese) has also increased in popularity as it is spoken widely in southern China where some of China's major manufacturing centers are located.
Primarily spoken in Hong Kong, Macau and the Guangdong province, which includes the major cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Cantonese is a lingua franca in the area. Even a few words come in very handy for travel and business and can open up otherwise seemingly impenetrable doors.
If you're learning Yoruba you may very well want to get an overview of the language, some of its unique features, geographical information about native speakers as well as loads of information on grammar, linguistics, history, diaspora and general language structure.
All of this and more is available in Wikipedia's Yoruba entry. There are also some interesting links at the bottom which take you to further resources to explore and learn about this language of Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
MyLanguages.org Yoruba has a set of resources available for total beginner learners of Yoruba.
These resources include information about the Yoruba alphabet, adjectives, adverbs, articles, gender, nouns, numbers, phrases, singular and plural, pronouns, verbs, vocabulary, translation, dictionary, video, audio, reading and transliteration.
Also included is a simple Yoruba phrasebook.
With nearly a billion native speakers spanning Asia and the globe, plus a booming economy in China with loads of opportunity on many levels, Chinese is a hot language to learn right now. From exotic and historical travel destinations and a phenomenal array of cuisines to international business networking and an ancient culture that has reclaimed its global status, Chinese will enchant you and open up many doors.
Omniglot.com has an informative page about Yoruba which gives an overview of the language, the alphabet and writing system.
You can even read the page in Yoruba!
This resource also covers numbers, translation and other aspects of the Yoruba language. It includes a good selection of links for Yoruba, from general info to resources for learning.
