Alright. So I’m planning on majoring in IR. Would a double minor in East Asian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies be possible? I’m really interested in learning Chinese and Arabic; however, I realize that taking both at the same time would be incredibly difficult. I took Chinese and French as a freshman in hs but sadly transferred to a school where they didn’t offer Chinese for my sophomore year. I’m in my junior year of high school and have been looking into community colleges in my city that offer Arabic (none of them offer Chinese). I plan on taking a few Arabic classes at a cc during the summer and during my senior year. If for some reason I end up disliking Arabic, I guess I’ll just minor in EAS. If I end up with just EAS, my plan is to take both Chinese and Japanese in college. I have a bit of knowledge with Japanese already so I know I’ll like it just as much as I like Chinese. Also, I’ll probably just double major in IR and EAS.
For some reason, I already have this feeling that I probably won’t like Arabic, but I still want to at least try it out before I end up eliminating it completely since I’m really interested in the Middle East, Islam, etc.
If you were my child, I’d encourage you to pick one area and develop mastery in that. As you’ve stated, Chinese and Arabic are both challenging languages.
Depending on your current age, look into the US State Dept’s programs for learning critical languages: http://clscholarship.org/
I also would encourage you to pick one area and develop expertise in that. Particularly in international relations, many companies/organizations want specialists. They want someone who speaks Arabic fluently and knows a lot about the Middle East; or they want someone who speaks Chinese fluently and knows a lot about China and East Asia. They would prefer one or the other to someone who knows a little about both.
Not that it wouldn’t be great to learn both languages if you could! But perhaps put most of your time and energy into one, and make the other a secondary language that you will learn if you have time/resources to do so.
As an interdisciplinary major, IR makes it relatively easy to complete minors in certain related fields (e.g., economics, politics, languages & area studies) since it already requires several courses drawn from those related fields. Most IR programs also require that majors choose a language and regional specialty anyway, so it should be relatively easy to do a minor in MES or EAS. Since the literature on each of those regions is voluminous and adequate proficiency in a Middle Eastern or East Asian language requires significant time and effort (including study abroad), I would not recommend attempting to do both MES and EAS.
Here’s another factor to consider when considering which language and regions to focus on: Lots of other students also will be focusing on Arabic/MES and Chinese/EAS. Those are not the only important languages to study, however. If you are interested in EAS, what about Korean? If you are interested in Islam and the Middle East, what about Persian or Turkish? What about Urdu (think Pakistan)? Instead of two geographically and culturally disparate languages, such as Arabic and Chinese, what about combinations that might make more sense, such as Arabic & French, Persian & Urdu, Turkish & German, Arabic & Spanish, Russian & Turkish, Arabic & certain African languages, etc.? (think migration, think conflict zones at the intersection of certain regions/cultures)?
Some additional recommendations:
If you’re going to study a difficult language that will require considerable time and effort to attain proficiency, do it because the language and culture strongly interest you, not solely because you have a vague idea it might improve employment prospects.
Be clear about how you see yourself using the language, e.g, as a language of scholarship to read the literature in a field, to access print and broadcast media in that language, to travel in a country where the language is spoken, to interact with and conduct business with political and economic leaders who speak that language, to conduct fieldwork with locals in that language, etc.
Check out the Language Flagship programs, which are designed to foster high-level proficiency in certain critical languages while you complete a major in another field. http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/