<p>I wonder what ever happened to Japan....</p>
<p>In all honesty, you can make millions and millions of dollars without ever learning a language other than English. I'd suggest you spend all this time becoming a better engineer (internships, studying, practicing) rather than learning a language of which you will never reach native fluency.</p>
<p>Since you offered the "upsides", I'll counter them with some things to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Swedish - There are very few Nordic speakers in the world. Learn it only if you plan to live in Scandinavia.</p></li>
<li><p>German - Most Germans speak English quite well. Learn it only if you plan to live in Germanic Europe.</p></li>
<li><p>Spanish - Latin America isn't known to have a particularly promising future, and Spanish is not really <em>that</em> mutually intelligible with Spanish. They're two different languages for a reason. Portugal isn't of much relevance, and Spain economic importance is less than those of France, Germany, and the UK.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>4.Hindi - India will soon become the largest English-speaking country in the world. Why not take advantage of that?</p>
<p>5.Chinese - Prepare to spend many, many years learning Chinese, particularly learning the thousands of pictorial symbols (26 letters? Heh...), and studying words that are spelled identically but pronounced four different ways to make four different words. Oh, and don't plan using your Mandarin in Southeast China - particularly Hong Kong.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>French - If you're going to learn French, you might as well learn German instead. China's influence in Africa will soon far outweigh France's.</p></li>
<li><p>Russian - Russia's population is in decline (Russia also has the lowest life expectancy of any major country in the world, so you wouldn't want to live there), and Central Asia hardly looks very promising from an economic standpoint.</p></li>
<li><p>Arabic - Unfortunately, most Arabic speakers happen to live in a little place called the "Middle East". You're probably not going to want to live there, especially if you end up getting a wife (assuming you two believe in women's rights). As for Africa, again - China.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hopefully that didn't sound too pessimistic, but I thought I may as well bring up important points to consider. If you didn't get the gist, my point is that learning a language only helps if you'll live in the region, and even then probably only if you learned it from a young age so as to be reasonably good at it without spending an excessively long amount of time learning it. If you're approaching this from a money-making perspective, just stick with English, and you'll be able to work with the USA, India, Nigeria, the UK, the Philippines, Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Scandinavia, and select populations from almost all the other countries in the world.</p>
<p>Does C++ count?</p>
<p>What about Japanese?</p>
<p>FORTRAN.</p>
<p>But seriously, about Japan... Japan is still here, chugging along as the largest agent of growth in Asia and the second largest in the world. Japan still has a large and vibrant tech sector.</p>
<p>Yet nobody talks about Japan like they did in the 80s. I mean, Japan, Inc. is nowhere to be found, right? Japan's ship has sailed, right? Well... maybe, maybe not. On the one hand, Japan is not going to be the "big deal" it was in the 80s ever again. But then again, people are "rediscovering" Japan as a developed country with strong institutions, a well-developed education system, and a source of technological development. They're still not the "homerun hitters" like the US, but many solid and important technologies have come out of Nihonland. </p>
<p>So why not learn Japanese? Simple: it's really hard and really time consuming. Think C++ is a pain? Try memorizing over 2000 kanji if you want to be "engineering-level." </p>
<p>Besides, a lot of the better-educated engineers will have at least passable English, anyway.</p>
<p>So yeah, back to FORTRAN.</p>
<p>Yes but Japanese technology is very advanced, isn't it? A lot of consumer electronics comes from Japan. And essentially, the Japanese language isn't very hard. It's the Kanji which are the Chinese characters that are hard. So, if one's taking Japanese, it's like you're also doing a little bit of Chinese too.</p>
<p>What do you mean by Fortran? btw XD</p>
<p>KidNovelist,</p>
<p>Alas, if it were that easy. Japanese is also difficult due to its grammar, the various levels of deference and politeness, and rather wacky rules for a number of other features. Even outside of the kanji challenge, it is not an easy language.</p>
<p>Oh, and FORTRAN is just a programming language that is used by some engineers. It was an attempt at a joke.</p>
<p>All right then:</p>
<ol>
<li>If you're not Japanese, don't expect to get a good job in Japan. And certainly don't expect to "fit in". Japan's population is rapidly aging, and some politicians have suggested easing immigration barriers, but quite a few are against the idea of Japan becoming polluted with multiculturalism. As far as difficulty is concerned, Japanese is widely considered to be among the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn.</li>
</ol>
<p>English is the language that gonna make you money. Thats why there are so many people that speak it around the world. Chances are if you conduct business with a company that serves western clients, someone in the company is going to be able to speak english. Employees in other countries are often very eager to learn english.</p>
<p>English is to the modern world what Latin was to Medieval Europe.</p>