<p>I'll be attending The University of Chicago starting this fall. I'm not entirely sure what kind of classes I want to take or what I want my major to be at this point, but I'm leaning towards South Asian Languages and Civilizations, just because that's been my primary area of interest for the last few years. I'm not dead set on majoring in that; like I said, I'm not really sure what I want to do, I just figured that's a good place to start as far as course selection is concerned.</p>
<p>One of my concerns at the moment is languages. I love languages; there are very few that I don't want to study at some point. Right now, because of my current interests, I'm looking at studying Tibetan and Hindi while at Chicago. My only concern is the marketability of Hindi (I'm not too concerned about Tibetan; I know it's not really marketable). I know that people say I should follow my interests and do what makes me happy and I'd like to do that, but within reason. I'd rather not graduate from Chicago and have to go work at Wendy's because no one wants someone who speaks Hindi and Tibetan. >.<</p>
<p>I'm also really interested in study abroad opportunities that focus on the language. I'm on near full FA at Chicago, so I have very little money to spend on any kind of program and I'm hoping to get into one that is sponsored by some organization or has good FA. I highly doubt that is available for Tibetan and I'm not sure about Hindi, but it's a consideration.</p>
<p>Apart from Hindi and Tibetan, languages I'm interested in are: Sanskrit, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian.</p>
<p>I'm looking for people out in the workplace who know about the marketability of these languages and the opportunity for study-abroad.</p>
<p>Oh, I'm also likely going to pursue a graduate degree after I get my BA. I don't know if that makes a difference.</p>
<p>In mainstream industries in the United States very few (if any) languages are “marketable”. Occasionally a bi-lingual candidate may have an advantage for companies that have a US office but are based abroad (e.g. French, German, Japan, China etc.), or American companies with major offices (such as engineering, IT, etc.) abroad.</p>
<p>That said, if your job is in the military (e.g. “intelligence”), national security (e.g. “NSA”), State Department, United Nations, etc. then there’s an occasional need for some of the languages that interest you.</p>
<p>And there are always academic positions, although I expect that in languages and linguistics there are very few openings.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard and read, the Middle East and Russia/Former East-bloc are going to be the next big countries of expansion. There’s tons of people who speak Chinese/English, Japanese/English, Spanish/English, or Hindi/English, fewer speak Russian/English, Arabic/English, or Farsi/English. So of your list I’d say Russian or Arabic. </p>
<p>By the way, it probably depends on what you want to study, but I don’t know exactly what language is better for what fields of study.</p>
<p>People don’t speak Sanskrit, it’s studied like Latin or Classical Greek. It’s not marketable at all.</p>
<p>Do you have any familiarity with Mandarin? Or other character based language? Are you comfortable learning a different alphabet? Are you able to discern tones in tonal languages? (It helps if you play an instrument like violin.)</p>
<p>One can learn Cyrillic or Arabic letters and make words and read words. You will not learn many characters in a 4 year college course of study - unless it’s by far your main concentration and even then. My daughters speak Mandarin. Well, one does, the other kind of. Reading and writing characters is hard. The grammar is totally different because characters are words and concepts not letters that make words. You may learn to speak reasonably well, if you can hear the tones, but you will not be able to read and write.</p>
<p>Some Asian languages have as many as 14 tones. If that is a strength, then go for it. If not, then avoid them.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department currently lists the following as “critical languages”:
Arabic
Azerbaijani
Bangla/Bengali
Chinese
Hindi
Indonesian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Punjabi
Russian
Turkish
Urdu</p>
<p>The State Department sponsors fully-paid summer intensive institutes abroad in all its designated “critical languages” through a competitive application process. See: </p>
<p>It’s a great way to pick up a language or accelerate your education in a language you’ve already started. Successful completion of one of these institutes is no guarantee of a job, but the reason they offer this program is because various arms of the U.S. government, including the State Department itself, DoD, and various intelligence agencies, have a critical need for people with these languages. </p>
<p>Whether that translates into an advantage in private sector employment is more doubtful. English is now generally accepted as the language of international business, and most U.S.-based firms are content to conduct essentially all their overseas business in English. Where it might be helpful is if you land an overseas assignment; but having the language will be something that makes your life in the host country a little easier, and not necessarily something that gives you an inside track on the job or the assignment.</p>
<p>Also, little known fact, there are very few people fluent in Hebrew that work in government or the private sector. Almost none in government, and many fewer than they have native speakers/fluent speakers in Arabic. There’s definitely a need for that, even if they only speak Hebrew in Israel, Israel has global and growing businesses and is of course mixed up in one of the top government foreign policy priorities. if you’re interested in that area of the world, it would be a highly specialized skill that not everyone is doing.</p>
<p>NSA has great summer internships as well. I think it had Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and Farsi among others. Also keep in mind that if you have a real talent for languages, once you land a job, some years down the road, your employer may send you off to learn whatever language it is that the employer needs.</p>
<p>I think you’d find Chinese to be pretty well-rounded. It’s interesting to learn, yet also challenging, and at the same time, very important for the future and as stated, considered critical to the United States gov’t. Why not? (:</p>
<p>Please re-read post 10. Mandarin and other hieroglyphic languages, especially those with multiple tones can be VERY challenging. </p>
<p>My S has always cruised through school but found Mandarin harder than ALL his other APs put together–he got 5s in most of the 13 AP tests he took (he’s graduating this spring as an EE). He’s a gifted trumpet player and speaks Mandarin well with good pronunciation, but he found it very tough to get all the different parts you need to be good at a language. When he was in Taiwan for a month, he could understand but not speak as well as he would like, after 3 years of HS Mandarin and many summers of grade schoo Mandarin.</p>
<p>I know many folks who have switched from Mandarin to Spanish & my D to German & found the “romance” languages SO much easier & more intuitive than Mandarin. </p>
<p>Other folks, on the other hand seem to have a great aptitude for these languages. If you are one of the latter, more power to you & I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to capitalize on this skill. My cousin was very talented with languages and married an Egyptian. They have raised their kids to be bilingual, so I’m sure they will have a considerable advantage when they learn additional languages. She is now teaching tax prep at H&R Block, but enjoyed worldwide travel before they started their family. Another friend was very fluent in multiple languages & worked his way through college & law school interpreting things for the HI ballots, so needed info & measures could be written in multiple languages.</p>
<p>I think it depends what you want to do post UG. Personally, the last thing I would want to do would be working for the government - low pay and bureaucratic. For business, most people in Europe all speak English. On the other hand, many people in Latin America and Mexico still do not speak English, so Spanish would be useful down there. Mandarin is also useful, but it’s difficult to be fluent and it’s not required to do business in China. Our firm has a very prestigious international program, which requires fluency in one foreign language.</p>
<p>Most abroad program has a language requirement. My daughter refused to take any more Spanish after the first year, so she was limited to only English speaking countries for her study abroad. It is something you may want to consider.</p>
<p>Another viewpoint: if you want to specialize in Film Studies, then knowing German helps out. Since you wanted a lot of viewpoints, I thought I’d like to add mine. Also, if you are into Classics, then Latin, Greek, German etc. are useful.</p>
<p>According to my son (don’t take his word for it, though, ask around) German cinema (especially early twentieth century cinema, pre-WWII) was pioneering and innovative. And German cinema today is on the rise as evidenced by the Best Foreign Film nominations recently. If you want to be in Film/Critical Theory aspect of things, learning German certainly helps. It also helps in getting scholarships like Fulbright (to study in Germany) which my son is interested in.</p>