Most useful language to study?

Applying to College
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<p>Of course this thread is going to be a little subjective, but let's have some objective posts! </p>

<p>A few details:
-I speak Korean relatively fluently (4th grade level) - I plan on pursuing it further in college to reach professional fluency
-I think I speak English well...
-I am conversational in Spanish and will be taking AP Spanish this fall (senior year)</p>

<p>If I were to pursue a fourth language, should it be...
-Mandarin Chinese? (Which is the 'Latin' of Asia, so it would be cool to learn but it's pretty difficult)
-Japanese? (Earthquake and nuclear crisis may not make Japanese as 'useful' to learn, but Japanese is very similar to Korean and would be easy to learn)
-Russian? (I live in a Russian-Jewish community and love the language. Plus, Russia's in BRIC)
-Hindi? (India's in BRIC)
-Arabic?? </p>

<p>I want to pursue pre-med, international business, diplomacy or (international) law. If I learn a fourth language, it should be worth my effort in learning it. I'm leaning toward the Asian languages. Help?</p>

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<p>If you want to pursue a career in international affairs, the US government is particularly interested in what they call critical languages. The Department of State strongly looks for people with language skills in the following:
-Arabic
-Persian
-Azerbaijani
-Bangla/Bengali
-Hindi
-Indonesian
-Korean
-Punjabi
-Turkish
-Urdu
-Chinese
-Japanese
-Russian</p>

<p>So technically, all the languages you mentioned are in high demand. It now comes to which language you like the most or have more ease in learning. If you think Japanese would be easier for you, then go for it! I want to remind you that while it is great to have conversational skills, it would be great if you knew how to write the language very well too. So if I were you, I would pick the one that would be easier for me to learn to read, speak, and write.</p>

<p>PS. If you want to go for something in international business and not government, Mandarin Chinese or Japanese will actually make a lot of sense.</p>

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<p>… the comment about the earthquake in Japan making it not ‘useful’ was just disappointing. I’m not Japanese or anything, but an earthquake doesn’t make the world’s 3rd largest economy into a third world nation. </p>

<p>That being said, each major has different languages that will be more beneficial than others, but there are some that are good for those well-rounded.</p>

<p>International Business will call for Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, and German. To a lesser extent, Korean, Russian, and French may be beneficial.</p>

<p>Diplomacy calls for different languages. Arabic, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, are major ones, while Pashto, Urdu, Farsi, Hebrew (Middle East) can help in specific areas.</p>

<p>Medicine calls for Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, German, and French.</p>

<p>In any case, choose a language that you feel most attached to. Don’t force yourself to learn Pashto just cause it ‘might’ help in the future. The more you are enthusiastic to learn a language- be it Latin, Mongolian, or Xhosa, it can suddenly be easier to you than Spanish or Italian.</p>

<p>Since you already are learning Korean, I strongly encourage to further it. A fluent language is much better than a third language where you speak as a toddler. You can’t exactly enter a board meeting speaking in broken phrases. South Korea is the 15th largest economy worldwide, and has lots of speakers in Japan, China, and the USA. Likewise, with North Korea, Korean is a useful language in International Relations too. It can also be expected that such an advanced nation is helpful in medicine.</p>

<p>Since you are also taking Spanish, you should commit to those two, or even more, to just one of them. Tossing in another language will only hamper your path to fluency.</p>

<p>You should also look here for more ideas, but only more obscure languages will pop up.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/world-languages/1171568-new-ap-languages.html?highlight=ap+language[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/world-languages/1171568-new-ap-languages.html?highlight=ap+language&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Why do most people think Arabic, Mandarin and Japanese are the most useful languages to learn? They’re not. They’re useful, but not that useful; nearly all international business (and quite a bit of internal business in China’s case), international education and science research is conducted in English. That’s not a reason not to learn them of course, all language learning is fascinating and worthwhile, but if your only motive is usefulness you should stick to established European languages.</p>

<p>French, German and Russian, though not quite as exotic are certainly much more important and useful. Spanish’s usefulness is overrated; it’s spoken by more people but most of these people are concentrated in one geographic area. French, German and Russian speakers are found all over Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.</p>

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<p>^those languages are more useful if you want to work in European affairs, but if you want to work in diplomacy, languages like China and Arabic are going to be at least equally useful, if not more, since the people you’re going to be working with could very likely speak these languages. yes, a lot of people speak English, but if you speak their language as well it makes things a lot easier. Arabic might only be spoken in the Middle East and Chinese may only be spoken in East Asia, but these are areas that are becoming more and more relevant in the world, so being more able to converse with the people who live in those parts of the world is becoming more and more useful.</p>

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<p>Nin10dude317 - my bad about japan’s earthquake. you’re right. </p>

<p>allow me to elaborate: i am DEFINITELY going to continue learning Korean until I am fluent on a professional level. I am also probably going to continue learning Spanish because I am at that stage in a language when I can think in Spanish, so I’d say that’s conversational. </p>

<p>So, when I go to college, I plan on studying abroad in Korea and Spain during the summers to increase my fluency. </p>

<p>I was wondering if I decide to pursue a 4th language, what languages should I pursue? I’m thinking Japanese or Chinese. But my point is, which language is “worth” the effort? With Chinese, I would have to spend a handful of years learning 2000 characters in order to understand a Chinese newspaper, for goodness sake. With Japanese, the alphabet is much smaller and speaking would be easier since I am Korean (pronunciations are similar, and some words sound very similar). However, I feel that with my future interests, Chinese may be more useful?</p>

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<p>As someone that took Japanese, (and tried Chinese), I can assure you that either are not easy tasks, even for someone who has experience in Korean or Chinese. In the time it takes to perfect one, you could easily get Spanish and some French down.</p>

<p>However, if you learned Hanja from Korean, that will help greatly in learning Japanese Kanji. Mandarin Chinese, on the other hand, doesn’t use Hanja/Kanji as much since the writing system is Simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is used more in Cantonese and Taiwanese Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan).</p>

<p>If you’re going for a 4th language, choose one that you’ll be able to ‘complete’ the most in the shortest amount of time. While you further your English, Korean, and Spanish, starting out in Chinese or Japanese will be quite a few years away till viable usage. Taking a Romance language, will not take nearly as long to get to that ‘usable’ stage.</p>

<p>However, it varies by person to person. If you truly love learning the language you pick, it can be faster than you think.</p>

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<p>No, you’re wrong. You’re confusing language importance with specific countries’ importance; they’re not the same thing. China and the Middle East are indeed becoming more important - but their languages are not. The European languages I mentioned are useful because they aren’t confided to Europe, whereas Chinese and Arabic speakers are concentrated in single geographic areas (China and the Middle East). If the OP is only interested in usefulness then I agree with Nin10dude317, no point starting a 4th language until you’re fluent in Spanish and Korean.</p>

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<p>I think you’re way off on a few things about Japanese/Chinese/Korean here. You’ll need to know more than 2,000 kanji to really read a Chinese newspaper. But you’ll also need to know more than 2,000 to really read a Japanese newspaper.</p>

<p>I don’t know what you mean about Japanese having a smaller alphabet? Japanese doesn’t have an alphabet. Maybe you mean kana, but they are syllabaries not alphabets. Yes they are small but no ‘adult’ reading material is written in them. </p>

<p>Speaking Korean might help your Japanese pronunciation a bit, but that’s a really minor advantage - Japanese pronunciation is not particularly difficult for most English speakers. Japanese and Korean share some words, but are not related in any serious way.</p>

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<p>^ Japanese and Chinese both use Kanji. However, much of Mandarin Chinese does not use the Kanji found in Japanese (traditional Chinese).</p>

<p>Likewise, Hanja that is taught in Korean (but scarcely used) is the same as the Japanese Kanji.</p>

<p>Japanese does have two alphabets- Hiragana and Katakana. Though the vast majority of Japanese writing is in Kanji, kana does not have differentiating tones like in either Chinese, and Furigana is sometimes employed to help read Kanji.</p>

<p>In conclusion, those Chinese characters found in Japanese are also found in advanced Korean. And with easier pronounciation, Japanese would prove easier than Chinese.</p>

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<p>You’re wrong about a few things, here.</p>

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<p>Sure, but the difference between modern and traditional hanzi is hardly a deal-breaker. It’s not a huge effort to switch, especially when it comes to reading now writing.</p>

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<p>Hiragana and Katakana are not alphabets. They are syllabaries.</p>

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<p>It’s not clear that Japanese has easier pronunciation. In Japanese it’s easier to make yourself understood, but harder to pass for a native. People say the opposite about Chinese. Sure the tones in Chinese are intimidating, but they’re not hard to do.</p>

<p>Also, each character in Chinese probably only has one or two readings. In Japanese, each character has several readings - you have to learn these by rote. So this makes Japanese reading very tough.</p>

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I wasn’t saying that the languages are more important in general, just that they can be more important depending on what you’re interested in. And when regions gain importance, their languages do gain more relevance, as diplomacy with countries in those regions gains more importance. The European languages aren’t limited to Europe, but that doesn’t mean that they’re spoken by more people just because they’re more spread out. English and Spanish are the only European languages that are more widely spoken than Arabic (which has native speakers from Morocco to Iraq so I’d hardly call the region in which its spoken limited). I’m not saying that Chinese or Arabic are unquestionably the best languages to take or that they’re always more relevant than European languages, but to simply say ‘No, you’re wrong’ drastically oversimplifies the world.</p>

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<p>Amongst the languages you mentioned, Spanish and French are by far the most useful languages to learn for being both of them very widely spoken and international. Spanish is currently the Second most widely spoken language in the world by native speakers after Mandarin and French is a very international language just like Spanish</p>

<p>In fact, the six (6) official languages of the UNO (United Nations) are English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic and Mandarin
These are the most international, widely spoken, spread and studied languages in the world (and you already know 2 of them)</p>

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<p>From Dreamer89 post#2:
“The Department of State strongly looks for people with language skills in the following:
-Arabic
-Persian
-Azerbaijani
-Bangla/Bengali
-Hindi
-Indonesian
-Korean
-Punjabi
-Turkish
-Urdu
-Chinese
-Japanese
-Russian”</p>

<p>Actually, I think the State Department cares <em>less</em> about how well you can SPEAK these languages and cares <em>more</em> about how well you can UNDERSTAND them.</p>

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<p>Whilst that is true it’s a little misleading. Those 6 languages may all have official status but they’re not all used equally. English and French are the only two working languages of the UN.</p>

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<p>Spanish is an extremely useful language. I have a friend who speaks Spanish on a regular basis with Chinese, Korean, Slovakian, and some Russian colleagues. English is super important for the world’s business community…but so is Spanish, because there are so many Spanish speaking countries…and they are all markets for Chinese businesses, Korean businesses, etc. So a lot of people in those countries learn Spanish to get jobs with companies that do business in those countries. Not every foreign business person focuses on English. Funny to be speaking Spanish to all those people instead of English. But I have seen him do it often.</p>

<p>If you learn Chinese or Japanese or Arabic…a big plus. But only a big plus if you invest a lot of time and effort…like a year of intensive study. 2 months in China…or Joran…or Japan… not so likely you’ll get what future employers will need from you if you put on your resume that you “speak” one of those languages. But if you Really learn one of those languages fluently…big kudos</p>

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<p>I think it’s important what your goals are for learning the language. If you plan on spending time working, studying, or just visiting Japan in the future, I would learn Japanese. If you want to do business or trading with manufacturers in China, learn Chinese. I think any language will have its uses, it’s up to you to know what you plan on using it for.</p>