<p>Im a college freshman and right now I have a decent knowledge of Spanish. I like Spanish and living in CA its obviously been useful. However, its not like my knowledge of Spanish is very unique. I really want to do study abroad, but the thing is I want to do study abroad in China (for about 3 months). I plan on taking some Chinese language courses, but since I will be starting fresh, by the time I graduate grad/law school Ill only have a limited knowledge of Chinese. Would me knowing Chinese (even if its not that much), be any worth to employers? Would sticking with Spanish be a better idea, even though I have no desire to live in a Spanish speaking country?</p>
<p>P.S. I hope to go into law, business, consulting, politics, related fields.</p>
<p>If you work hard at it, you probably can have a working knowledge of Chinese by the time you graduate. That means putting in extra work on the language outside of the classroom and even working on it through the semester break. </p>
<p>For starters you can try picking it up on your own, there are many excellent online resources such as:
[FSI</a> Language Courses - Chinese](<a href=“FSI Language Courses - Free Online Language Courses”>FSI Standard Chinese: A modular Approach)
[Learn</a> Chinese » ChinesePod](<a href=“http://www.chinesepod.com%5DLearn”>http://www.chinesepod.com)</p>
<p>If you find the online courses interesting, you’ll probably should give the Chinese language courses a shot.</p>
<p>If you want to be a politician in CA, being fluent in Spanish would really help.</p>
<p>Chinese is much, much harder and I doubt you’d get far in a few months so I vote for mastering Spanish which is not hard. If you work in consulting you’ll see lots of opportunities will be in Latin America along with China.</p>
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<p>No. Chinese is not, and never will be a world language. China may be booming, but unlike English or Spanish it is only spoken in one country. I read an article recently about a man who had studied Chinese for over a decade, but upon moving to China for work he found that everybody in his office spoke English during working hours, even though he was the only foreigner there.</p>
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<p>Only if you enjoy Spanish. If you don’t then there’s little point continuing with it. If you do then yes there is every benefit to learning Spanish.</p>
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<p>That is rather optimistic.</p>