<p>I am already fluent in Vietnamese. Because of this, many have suggested for me to learn Chinese because I am already familiar with the similar tones and accent. However, just three weeks into the class and I am already finding Chinese to be rather difficult. As we all know, in terms of law school admission, it does not necessarily matter what kind of classes we take but the grades we get. I do not want to risk lowering my GPA from my struggles in Chinese class.</p>
<p>I am thinking about switching to Spanish because of its social use, and also because I am thinking about becoming an immigration lawyer. My question is, what is the best language to learn that may be beneficial as a lawyer and in my case, do you think I should stick to Chinese or switch to another language--if so, what language would you recommend?</p>
<p>in terms of getting into law school: whichever one you’ll get the higher grade in.</p>
<p>in terms of practicing law: speaking another language is probably only valuable if you keep it up to the point of near-fluency (good enough to have a long and very detailed conversation on legal topics with someone). Spanish is probably a more useful language, but people fluent in Chinese are probably rarer. </p>
<p>all this to say: if you want to switch to Spanish, you shouldn’t worry about doing that.</p>
<p>I have never posted on this law forum but that’s an interesting question.</p>
<p>AND WHOA looks like you’re at Chapel Hill, just noticed that, weird, and awesome!</p>
<p>Our department is really, really good. I’m a Chinese major and yes, the courses themselves will be a bit more challenging than Spanish (albeit not as bad as Japanese, in my experience, and not as bad as Arabic sounds), but truly the language itself is not that gruesome - as an American, the hardest part is easily the tones, but hey, you’re already used to that! I’m white and had 0 experience with it before Chapel Hill except for taking some Japanese, and I’ve been just fine. Yes, I made some A minuses before I went abroad, but that doesn’t destroy me. Think about it this way - as you work your way up in Spanish, it’s all about verb conjugation, exceptions, etc, whereas in Chinese there WILL NEVER BE PAST TENSE and there are very few grammars that are truly hard to understand… and there are no exceptions. So beautiful.</p>
<p>I’m sure either would be useful for whatever you’d like to do, but it is worth noting that right now the languages that are “hot” are Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, and Chinese. From what I understand, Chinese is the easiest of all of these. Hahah, of course, I can say that, but if a non-major told me Chinese is easy I’d have to kill them.</p>