<p>Personally, I took Spanish this year ( freshman ) becasue i have taken it for four years already, and i live in florida, so it will deffinently be helpful. Not to mention, its also rather easy.</p>
<p>Now latin i was interested in, but did not choose becasue of my Spanish expierience. latin will help you on your SAT's with vocabulary as well as medicine is thats something your interested in. laso as mentioned, looks good on transscript. </p>
<p>those are the only two i have any knwoledge on so good luck choosing</p>
<p>Well, I guess it's too late for my advice, but here it is:</p>
<p>Germans told me it'd be a waste of time to learn German. They all (er... well, most all) speak English.</p>
<p>Latin... well, I guess it's cool, for a dead (er... mostly dead) language. ;) :p It'd help a lot with future Romance language studies (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Catalan...).</p>
<p>French is nice, but are you interested in France and/or francophone Africa? (Um... or Quebec?) That's about the only reason I can think of for learning it, unless you love languages, and it doesn't really sound like that's your passion. :p (It is mine.)</p>
<p>I, personally, recommend Spanish above all. A lot of the world speaks it--it's what, the 4th most widely spoken language? (Mandarin Chinese and English are numbers 1 and 2, followed by Hindi; French is #10, German's not even worth putting on the list, lol)--and... well... that's the only solid support I can give it. South America has been coming out with some really great movies, and there's some awesome Spanish-language music. (This doesn't count, but did you know ABBA made a Spanish-language album? I know the lyrics to "Dancing Queen" only in Spanish. :D )</p>
<p>I like foreign languages. Why not take as many of the four as you can (to OP)?
I took Latin I frosh year, switched (out of practicality) to French for two years, and now I'm taking German as a senior.</p>
<p>^^to quantum leap: our guidance counselors told us that colleges look for consistency in your foreign language</p>
<p>as for me... we chose languages in middle school (french, spanish, or italian) and then were offered to switch/ add languages in high school (french, spanish, italian, asl, latin)... i chose french in sixth grade because i was failing elementary school spanish, and only the italian kids were taking italian... and because my dad told me to take french.
personally i'm glad i took french, because now it's my best subject and because most of my friends take french. because of the smaller numbers of students, there's only 2 french 3 classes run this year, and so a lot of my friends are in my french class. and generally these people follow all the way up until junior or senior year, and often a group of friends will choose a language together. although i'm not saying just do what your friends do, i'm saying to take that into account when you decide which course would be the most "fun"
i talked to my aprents about taking spanish because it's the most usefull as well.. and after my trip to europe this summer (just got back less than 2 wks ago) i realized that learning french would also help you to understand spanish and italian if it were written or spoken slowly, because they are all romance languages. in general, any romance language would be very helpful in the others. </p>
<p>in my opinion, french is for the high class society, spanish is for the people who are wanting to make it in life or are just in the masses, italian is (well onkly in my school) for the italians, and latin people generally take french or spanish as well, and are taking latin to do well on the SATs. ASL people are generally people into community service... i don't know if that helped you at all, but although i'm biased on this point, i do feel that this is the advice i can give.</p>
<p>Ugh I recommend against French. I am a brazilian student and I am fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese and now French and I have to say aside from the sensation of personal intellectual gain, it offers nearly no real-life application (unless you plan to live there). The role of French in the political world is, slowly, declining. Now, if you plan to study foreign relations knowing french can be useful at the UN.</p>
<p>What I am currently (and plan to continue) studying is Mandarin Chinese. I plan to study it as a minor because of its several applications. I wish I could've started earlier. The 2 languages I suggest that can help your career is Chinese and Arabic</p>
<p>I take both German and Latin, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with German. If you have any interest in business at all, it is a terribly useful language to learn. </p>
<p>The secret to Latin is that it is a dead language (sounds obvious, right?), so the only thing that is really crucial to learn is the grammar. The vocabulary can be picked up through the reading of Latin texts and in the context of grammar. And you'll never need to speak it. Of course, a competent high school Latin curriculum could teach basically all but the most complicated grammar in no more than two years. In order to disguise that fact and to pad their budgets, Latin teachers make their classes absurdly slow, revealing grammar at a snail's pace. To fill up the rest of the time, they do things like 'culture lessons' about Rome or vocabulary reviews or absurd projects. If you can, self-studying Latin could be worth your time. If you teach it to yourself well enough, you could get some college credits by passing an equivalency test later.</p>
<p>Excellent. If that is true, I shall spend some time learning the basics of Latin. I believe next year, if I get into a BS, certain languages shall follow. For now, I shall stick with self-studying French, and perhaps I'll take a peek at Latin. Chinese and Arabic are certainly very appealing; as are German and Spanish. If only school lasted for 16 hours. :)</p>