<p>I'm still a high schooler, but I'd like to either go into medicine (neurology) or go into IR (international relations). I know that turkish wouldn't be useful as a doctor, but as a diplomat/foreign service officer, is it a useful language? I mean, it's in the top 20 economies, and it is a regional influence...but i'm hesitant to learn it because they only speak it in Turkey, and it's limited to around 50mil people. Is turkish easier to learn than arabic? If it matters, this would be my third language. Also, do a lot of colleges offer turkish?</p>
<p>[List</a> of languages by number of native speakers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers]List”>List of languages by number of native speakers - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I would think arabic or chinese would be more marketable - but do you have a special reason for studying turkish?</p>
<p>According to this, Turkish is <em>somewhat</em> easier to learn than Arabic. This is for native English speakers though. You said Turkish would be your 3rd language, I’m assuming English is still your first.
[Wikibooks:Language</a> Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, open books for an open world](<a href=“http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers]Wikibooks:Language”>Wikibooks:Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, open books for an open world)</p>
<p>That being said, I personally think Arabic would be more useful/marketable. You bring up a good point at the end, not a lot of colleges offer Turkish. If you have your heart set on it, then go for it. If you’re simply looking for a unique third language, I’d choose something more useful, but that’s just me.</p>
<p>Turkish is a great language to learn!
And 50 million is quite a sizable population, that is more than two times the population of Australia!
There are lots of Turkish people living everywhere abroad all over the world too.</p>
<p>Practically every language, when you try to think about this like this will seem like what’s the point of learning if they only speak it in certain places. That’s not the way to think!
Enrich yourself and take a more global view, take interest in the cultures and language you take interest in, not just what everyone else is doing…it will come in handy for you, and especially if a diplomat/foreign service officer.</p>
<p>Many colleges offer it, mine does and it’s a state university. Make sure you look into it on the course search when you are considering colleges.
Just go for it and learn it if you are drawn to it! It will be rewarding and open up opportunities :)</p>
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<p>
Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese are the new hot languages. Only the traditional European languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian) continue to be more popular, and Japanese is steadily gaining on Italian. Compare enrollments in 2009:</p>
<p>Italian: 80,752
Japanese: 73,434
Chinese: 60,976
Arabic: 35,083</p>
<p>Turkish: 638</p>
<p>I think any of the following would work perfectly well for a prospective IR student, considering that they are “thirteen critical need foreign languages” as defined by the Department of State.
[ul][<em>]Arabic
[</em>]Azerbaijani
[<em>]Bangla/Bengali
[</em>]Chinese
[<em>]Hindi
[</em>]Indonesian
[<em>]Japanese
[</em>]Korean
[<em>]Persian
[</em>]Punjabi
[<em>]Russian
[</em>]Turkish
[li]Urdu[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>[A</a> list of colleges offering certain languages can be found here.](<a href=“http://www.carla.umn.edu/lctl/db/index.php]A”>The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA): Less Commonly Taught Languages)</p>
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<p>I think it’s useful enough as a language to be worth studying if you want to put it to pratical use. But I think you should learn a language that you’d enjoy studying. How much you enjoy learning something can really vary with the teacher, but if the language you chose really doesn’t fit well with you, I don’t think it’ll be that productive to learn it.</p>
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<p>If you want to study it, it’s certainly not a bad language to know, but no one’s going to tell you you’re going to get as many chances to use it as you would if you learned, say, Spanish or Chinese.</p>