<p>Alright, as some of you already know I'm interested in an international career, and more importantly I've got an affinity to languages and want to be able to utilize them in my future. As it is now I know spanish pretty fluently and tested into the third semester at my school (highest allowed without taking the pen and paper test), but I want to pick up French and Chinese. I have French scheduled this semester, but I can't add Chinese until next semester. I'm starting to think I should reverse it and add Chinese this first semester and pick up french in semester 2 since I know a bit of spanish and a good amount of the grammatical rules that come with french, but Chinese seems like it would require more practice over time (after learning a bit of japanese if it is similar I would definitely want to be able to spend more time with it). </p>
<p>Any insights? I also plan to take Italian/Port after self studying and hoping to test into semester three junior year, so I figure being in French III at the same time could be beneficial.</p>
<p>Chinese will almost certainly take more time to pick up than French, especially as you already know Spanish. I don't believe there are any grammatical similarities between Japanese and Chinese, but I believe most of the kanji script used in Japan have similar if not identical meanings in Chinese. (I'm only familiar with the simple ones - tree, sun, man, woman, gate, the numbers - and they are all the same.)</p>
<p>I have, and it really came down to just which language I think I would definitely stick with and which one is easier to pick up. I know I want to keep French, and seeing as how I already speak Spanish, I'm thinking French could wait a semester.</p>
<p>Thanks cottonwood, I was also considering the alternate idea of taking ita/port first but I figured CHIN or FREN would definitely be more necessary to start early.</p>