<p>I am worried which language I should choose: Spanish, French, Mandarin, or Japanese
I don't want to take Spanish.
I would like to take French, but the teacher is bad.
I like to take Chinese.
I like to take Japanese.</p>
<p>Well, why don’t you just take the language you want to take then? Clearly you like Chinese and Japanese, so see if one or both work into your schedule. If the teacher is bad, and you’ve heard this from multiple sources, don’t waste your time. If you don’t like the teacher, the class won’t be any fun. </p>
<p>At my school, Spanish is a requirement and the only language it offers aside from Latin, but I absolutely love the language. I think it’s awesome how versatile the language is and you could speak it in so many different countries.</p>
<p>chinese 10char</p>
<p>学西班牙语，最好。
10char?</p>
<p>But people say that Mandarin is really hard. So is Japanese.</p>
<p>French is really easy even with a bad teacher</p>
<p>Either Spanish or Japanese. If you dedicate to studies in Japanese, you’ll have excellent job opportunities, that I can tell you. I don’t think Chinese is worth the trouble.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you dedicate to Spanish, You’ll basically have no trouble learning the other Latin-based languages like Italian and French. But based on your situation, Japanese would be the best option.</p>
<p>Not to mention knowledge of Japanese comes with free understanding of Japanese Anime~</p>
<p>Japanese is only hard if you cannot get the intuitive sense of the language and its grammatics or cannot pronounce it correctly. The writing may be a little bit of trouble. You don’t necessarily have to learn Kanji unless you’ll be taking AP.</p>
<p>Written Japanese is difficult, but in a way that’s fun. Well, I find it fun, anyway. I study on my own, though, because apparently Japanese classes suck. </p>
<p>Look up French, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin books, movies, music, etc. in genres you like. If the offerings aren’t great, then it probably isn’t a language you will have fun with.</p>
<p>I think all the chinese languages are really hard.</p>
<p>And I’m doing French, because I already know enough Spanish to get me by in life.
But, most poeple take Spanish, and French is reallly boring, so I’m not gonna do another year of it, after this one French 2, just cause it’s not the best atmosphere.</p>
<p>Spanish = mas ut</p>
<p>I think I would do Chinese. It looks like it might help me with job during the next few years.</p>
<p>dont do chinese or japanese if you are asian</p>
<p>^なんで？</p>
<p>日本語のクラスをとったほうがいいだろう。</p>
<p>I know you said you don’t want to, but learning Spanish can be really, really helpful with getting hired, even more so 10 years from now when you’re looking for a job. Starting early will help you become more fluent.</p>
<p>Chinese or French… </p>
<p>because I took those :)</p>
<p>Spanish: I live in SoCal, so maybe I should’ve taken that. (I probably got rejected from this internship because it somewhat necessitated Spanish knowledge.) Ergo, depends on your region…</p>
<p>French: I cannot describe how cool it feels to talk in an awesome (relatively correct) French accent. The language correlates with English 50% of the time, so it helps with studying vocab. I went all the way to AP French - fun times!
If you have a bad teacher, you can pretty much self-study, but hopefully his/her accent is relatively proper. That’s one of the hardest things to learn in French - the inflections.</p>
<p>Mandarin: Born and raised and fluent 
None of the kids who take Chinese at my school have a relatively correct accent. It’s extremely hard, admittedly, for non-oriental Asians to attain. Good luck.</p>
<p>Japanese: Don’t have enough experience…</p>
<p>Use in Business (world):
Mandarin 4 points. Spanish 3. Japanese 3. French 2.
Use in American job market:
Spanish 4. Japanese 2. French 2. Mandarin 1.
Usefulness Overseas(overall):
Mandarin/Japanese 4. French 3. Spanish 2.
Usefulness in American life:
Spanish 4. All the rest, 1.
Easiness of learning for Anglophones:
French 4. Spanish 3. Japanese/Mandarin 1.
Potential for growth:
Mandarin 4. Japanese 3. French/Spanish 0.</p>
<p>AND…</p>
<p>Subjective ‘coolness’ of language(what people around me think):
Japanese 4. Chinese 3. French 1. Spanish 0. </p>
<p>Tally WITH ‘coolness’:
Spanish 16
Mandarin 15
Japanese 14
French 13</p>
<p>Tally without ‘coolness’:
Spanish 16
Mandarin 12
French 12
Japanese 10</p>
<p>Personally, I’d go with Japanese. But thats because I’m already fluent/competent in French and Chinese. If I was ONLY fluent in English(tsk Americans)…then I’d go with Chinese. Once you know Chinese, you know 95% of Japanese Kanji, so there is <em>some</em> mutual intelligibility + China is 2nd largest economy and might be (gasps) the LARGEST in the future…=D</p>
<p>I’m a foreigner…so I was just assuming Spanish is sort of a big deal in America. I assume you have a lot of Mexican immigrants? Also, Latin America is quite a bit of the world…and Spanish gets you mutual intelligibility with Portuguese(portuguese friend says he can understand basically 80% of spoken spanish, idk if its the same way around). Spanish is definitely for Americans.</p>
<p>French is eh, just make sure your teacher has a fluent Parisian accent/is a native of Paris - imo best accent. Shoot him in the face if he’s from Quebec(horrid accent to the rest of the francophone world). That said, the only use for French is going into International Relations/Politics where its a lingua franca, and if you wanna move to France/half of Belgium/one-third of Switzerland as well as a few obscure African and caribbean countries like Comoros or Haiti. Not very widely spoken. Very widely learnt as a 2nd language around the world…so there’s nothing really special about it on a resume. </p>
<p>I’ve never actually heard Spanish being spoken…and thats why I rated it “0” on coolness. If its anything like Portuguese, then I’d give it a “1”.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d put that a bit higher for someone living in the US, certainly higher than French. At least I’d be much more likely to visit Mexico than France, not to mention all the other Spanish-speaking countries in our hemisphere.</p>
<p>thanks everybody for their input</p>