My approach has been always like this.

1. Shortlist a couple languages 2. Read a brief summary and some articles espousing the virtues of the langues 3. Get a sense of which feels most enticing and then pick one 4. Setup a small project with a alignment to the strengths of the language (possibly port one from a previous language) 5. Build and document the code base as you learn and leave notes in comments to various tutorials as they apply. 6. Package it up and strip out the barebones and make a simple empty shell that can be used to bootstrap future projects