<p>I'm trying to decide what foreign language I want to take. I took 4 years of Latin so I've got a good background there. I've narrowed it down to Italian, Greek(not sure if modern or ancient is offered) or Japanese.</p>
<p>I'm interested in ancient Greece/Rome, so having a background in the classics would be useful (but if I'm doing archaeology in Rome wouldn't it be more practical to know Italian, not Latin?). My background in Latin will help a bit.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I did a summer class on Japanese and I know that I enjoy speaking it. Maybe it would help with a computer science major since Japan is so technology oriented?</p>
<p>If you want to pursue classical archaeology beyond the undergraduate level, you will need additional Latin (your 4 years of hs Latin is possibly equivalent to the Intermediate level of college Latin) + ancient Greek. In graduate studies, you usually would also need German and French (possibly Italian or Modern Greek could substitute for one of these depending on your area of primary interest). If you don’t plan on graduate study in classical archaeology, many classics depts. offer a track in classical civilization that does not require ancient languages (essentially, the ancient texts are read in translation), though some knowledge of classical languages is encouraged. Some coursework in classical art and archaeology typically would be included in such a major. You also could do a major in Latin without learning ancient Greek, though at least some coursework in Greek usually is encouraged.</p>
<p>You may not need a language for computer science, but you may have a language requirement for your degree if it is in a college of arts & sciences. So, Japanese is as good as any and might have some potential usefulness in the field, but the usual two year requirement will not result in proficiency. </p>
<p>If you’re just looking for a language that might e useful to learn and in which you could develop some level of proficiency while completing a language requirement, try Spanish. it would be useful as well if you had any interest in New World archaeology.</p>
<p>Wow, I thought that I was the only Archaeology/Computer Science major. It depends on what you’re interested in. If you’re planning on doing graduate level research in Archaeology, then it would be in the region that you want to focus in. In general, that would narrow it down to Arabic, Chinese, Malay or Thai.</p>
<p>You really won’t have any use for Italian or any romance language with the exception of French. The majority of Archaeological literature on North and West Africa are in French, and you would need to know Arabic to effectively navigate these areas for research here.</p>
<p>The largest market growth for Archaeologists at the moment are in China, where nationalism has previously prevented accurate archaeological inquiry. Therefore, Chinese would be a good language. In regards to Asian languages, Hindi would be a decent choice as India is an important archaeological region, however there are many anglophoners in India. Therefore, Malay would be a better choice over Hindi due to the large mystery of the movement of people into Australia via Indonesia.</p>
<p>Computer science and Japanese would go well, I think.</p>
<p>Also, Japanese is a very logical language with very few grammatical irregularities, so I think logical, computer programming people like you would enjoy it.</p>