Foreign language

A foreign language is a language not commonly spoken in the country of the speaker. However, there must be a defined distinction between foreign language and second language. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e., a German speaker living in the Philippines can say that Filipino is a foreign language to them, or a Japanese speaker living in China can say that Chinese is a foreign language to them. These two characterisations do not exhaust the possible definitions, however, and the label is occasionally applied in ways that are variously misleading or factually inaccurate.