Most useful language to learn next?

[Piobaire]

I would suggest learning Canadian. That way, under the upcoming Canadian World Domination, you will speak the language of your overlords.

 

[bluemagic]

To be honest, if you are talking about usefulness, it is FAR better to be competent at actually doing something (Economics, Law, etc) than to know a language. If you want to work in China as something besides a language teacher or some other kind of novelty act entertainer, it is much better to have great work experience here than to be fluent in Chinese but to have weaker work experience.

I think it'd be more productive to just learn something you like. What language of movies would you enjoy watching?

 

[Milpool]

Originally Posted by bluemagic

To be honest, if you are talking about usefulness, it is FAR better to be competent at actually doing something (Economics, Law, etc) than to know a language. If you want to work in China as something besides a language teacher or some other kind of novelty act entertainer, it is much better to have great work experience here than to be fluent in Chinese but to have weaker work experience.

I think it'd be more productive to just learn something you like. What language of movies would you enjoy watching?

That is good general advice, but again, I'm interested in picking up a third language, and I'd like this one to be useful.

 

[philosophe]

OP, what field are you in? What are you interested in doing? It's hard to answer your question without more information.

 

[Milpool]

Originally Posted by Piobaire

I would suggest learning Canadian. That way, under the upcoming Canadian World Domination, you will speak the language of your overlords.

Canadian = funny sounding French?

 

[Milpool]

Originally Posted by philosophe

OP, what field are you in? What are you interested in doing? It's hard to answer your question without more information.

1) Healthcare

2) honestly, I'd like to get away from the healthcare industry, into something else. Kind of hard though due to my work experience and education, plus the crap economy.

 

[globetrotter]

its hard to say what a "usefull" language is.

for me, I would say spanish, arabic and german - with english and those three, you can work out a way to communicate with a large chunk of the world.

hindi is about the least useful language to learn as a foreign language - the people you want to speak to in india speak english, and so many other languages and dialects are spoken that having hindi probrably wont' do you any good.

brazilian portugues is a good language. manderin. russian.

again, without understand what makes a language useful its ahrd to say what will be useful to you.

 

[bbaquiran]

Originally Posted by Mblova

step 1) learn urdu/Arabic
step 2) join cia
step 3) become the US version of James Bond

Jason Bourne?

 

[dtmt]

Unless you're really planning to live in China long term, there's really no point to learning Mandarin; many Chinese employees at major companies are fluent in English.

 

[sabvinnie]

Agreed the Chinese at a business level you would want to deal with speak English well enough and there is no expectation that Westerners speak Mandarin.

I think Arabic would be an extremely interesting language to learn and potentially useful...

 

[imageWIS]

Originally Posted by scarphe

without knowing the sectorin which you work, mandarinf would eb the overall better choice. but Arabic would eb better if you want to master both speaking and written forms.

Well, we know what language scarphe needs to learn

 

[imageWIS]

Originally Posted by Milpool

Canadian = funny sounding French?

That would be Quebecois.

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[Matt]

Originally Posted by Aaron

I just got back from traveling through China and picked up an extremely small amount of Mandarin while I was there. It's an extremely hard language to learn (coming from a Western, English speaking-perspective) but I believe it could open up a lot of doors for you. Plus, if you like challenges, Mandarin is a big one. I've been told it takes 9 years of full-time study to become fluent and I fully believe that.
Nah, spoken Mandarin is pretty easy once you get over yourself. Reading and writing is a different matter, but hanyu pin yin-ed out, Mandarin isn't hard once you accept that the sounds are kinda unnatural and then just roll with it. Cantonese was harder. Vietnamese harder than them both, despite its natively Romanised written form.

Originally Posted by Sherlock

Why would mandarin open a lot of doors? Unless you're planning on going to china, I can't see how knowing chinese will help you in anything here in the western hemisphere.
Because of this:

Originally Posted by Milpool

So much mfg is conducted in China now, plus it is a massive economy that most every US company wants to sell their crap to the Chinese.
I agree that Mandarin would be on my list with English and Spanish as the most important languages to learn. People have made the case that senior business folk in China 'all speak English anyhow' - the same case can be made for Japan, Korea, pretty much anywhere in Asia, and certainly for most Spanish speaking countries, where English is closer to their native tongue that learning it is not such a stretch... Plus they will always speak among themselves in Chinese, so you can eavesdrop and reveal yourself at will (or not at all, and then you will know how they plan to screw you in the end). I do it all the time. Anyhow, I would say, with the direction that the world is heading and the moment, and the ongoing dependence on China for manufacturing and as the world's largest market for basically everything, Mandarin sits high.

 

[GQgeek]

I'm gonna learn arabic next, myself. Watch out for those Canuckistanis!

 

[Nantucket Red]

It's not Japanese, so strike that off your list.