<p>No one has mentioned Swahili...</p>
<p>Thanks. It's true that it is good to have an interest in your language. I wasn't interested in spanish. I passed the class, but I dont really know much spanish... but I am interested in other languages, and it is much easyer to learn them when you are interested in them.</p>
<p>chinese, definitely</p>
<p>I take Italian and I love it, but it's not particularly practical. There are lots of emerging career oppurtunities for people fluent in Arabic, such as translators.</p>
<p>I like French. But, if you want to use it for business, Chinese might be a good idea. However, know that French is the second official language at the UN after English, and for good reason. Also a lot of French words have made their way into law, though it's mostly latin. If you want to go into the culinary arts (i.e. become a chef), TAKE FRENCH!!!! Hey, even the job title is French!</p>
<p>
[quote]
erase= effacer (efface)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You also have </p>
<p>"Chef" is a word in a lot of European languages, to be fair. It means "boss" in German.</p>
<p>Oh, and if you're going to be doing anything with art (say, art dealer) then take French.</p>
<p>people suggesting Arabic/Chinese ... you do realize that these languages are a couple of times more difficult than Romance/Germanic ones, and it would take MUCH more time to achieve fluency, if ever? </p>
<p>Anyway kids, stick to French. C'est la plus belle langue du monde !</p>
<p>I am so glad I am already fluent in Mandarin and Taiwanese.</p>
<p>@zamzam: chef means boss in french too... i think it migrated on over to germany lol</p>
<p>@quirky: debateable. : ) i personally find german prettier than french... much more solid i guess. french is still a gorgeous language.. and i love to speak it. i feel so fancy : DDD</p>
<p>@futurenyustudent: wait a minute... doesn't ecraser mean "to crush?" </p>
<p><em>goes to look up</em></p>
<p>::edit:: yeah, it does mean to crush.</p>
<p>But Russian is much more beautiful than both German and French!</p>
<p>Well, if we're talking about languages we actually <em>like</em>, rather than just which ones are the most "practical", these are my favorite languages:</p>
<p>Spoken - Vietnamese/German</p>
<p>Written - Russian</p>
<p>I absolutely love these languages. Vietnamese just <em>sounds</em> great; German is just <em>liberating</em> to speak; and the Russian written language just looks wicked.</p>
<p>If it were up to me, the world's major spoken languages would be Vietnamese and German (perhaps Vietnamese in the East and German in the West), and they'd both be written using the Russian alphabet. That way we could always communicate with each other verbally, and yet we'd at least retain our Eastern or Western linguistic roots.</p>
<p>And, these <em>are</em> fairly practical. Vietnam is the world's 13th most populous nation, and it's relatively "untapped" compared to, say, the Four Asian Tigers. Vietnam will likely become a key economic player in the future. Germany and Russia are both admittedly going to severely decline in population, but hell, the two countries currently have the world's fifth and sixth/seventh largest economies, respectively. And, of course, Russia is looking to once again become a major player.</p>
<p>Plus, these three languages are all much easier for a native English speaker to learn than Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Arabic. :)</p>
<p>I would suggest, since no language in particular matches with your major, to make a list of generally useful languages, many of which have been mentioned in this thread. Languages with millions of speakers will present opportunities for their use, clearly, but you shouldn't start with a language off the beaten path like Swedish or even Italian unless you have a thought-out reason to, and it appears that you don't. You might write out a list like:</p>
<p>Spanish
French
German
Arabic
Mandarin
Russian
possibly others if they strike you...</p>
<p>Find some recordings of native speakers speaking them, look at what the language has to offer culturally, and see what appeals to you. You also want to think about how much effort you want to put into a language; Spanish and other romance languages are relatively easy to pick up a basic level in, Russian decidedly less so, Mandarin or Arabic even less. You should consider if you're up to live for an extended period of time in the Middle East (or Russia or China or wherever, somewhere totally different from the West), which would be necessary to get to fluency. Before you start a language course, you'd probably want to start studying the language on your own to see if it really appeals to you and you'd want to stick with it to fluency. </p>
<p>And... there's really no "right" language to learn. You'll find something to do with really any of them if you want to.</p>
<p>Adding to what Trima said, I actually spent many, many hours researching and assessing the world's most popular languages, in the categories that were important to me (intellectual heritage, business prospects, global prominence, and local prominence).</p>
<p>Basically, I did this all in a Microsoft Word file, and each new step was moved to the top. So in the following text that I'm going to paste, the first part is the cumulative result of everything that follows. The stuff at the very end was what I started with.</p>
<p>If you want me to explain any of the numbers, I'll see if I can.</p>
<p>For the end results at the top, the numbers are rankings, so the lower, the better. Intellectual heritage was measured by quality and quantity of Wikipedia articles; business prospects was measured by I <em>think</em> GDP; global prominence was measured by number of speakers; and local prominence was measured by the number of mentions in Orange County's Craigslist's job ads section (and possibly LA's as well; don't remember).</p>
<p>Here it is:</p>
<pre><code>Intellect Business Prominence Local Average
</code></pre>
<p>German 1 3 3 5 3
Russian 3 5 4 7 4.75
Vietnamese 4 7 5 4 5
Mandarin 5 2 1 1 2.25
Hindi 7 4 2 6 4.75
Japanese 2 1 6 3 3
Korean 6 6 7 2 5.25</p>
<p>English: 16454
Chinese: 8192
Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi: 3104.5
Spanish: 2048.125
Nigeria: 1024
Tagalog: 544
French: 512.5
German: 272
Indonesia: 256
Portuguese: 256
Bengali: 72
Russian: 17
Vietnamese: 8
Japanese: 4.25
Italian: 2
Korean: 1</p>
<p>English: 131072 + 131072 + 1024 + 64 + 32 = 263,264
Chinese: 65536 + 65536 = 131,072
Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi: 16384 + 8 + 32768 + 512 = 49,672
Spanish: 32768 + 2 = 32,770
Nigeria: 16,384
Tagalog: 512 + 8192 = 8,704
French: 8192 + 8 = 8,200
German: 4096 + 256 = 4,352
Indonesia: 4,096
Portuguese: 2048 + 2048 = 4,096
Bengali: 1024 + 128 = 1,152
Russian: 256 + 16 = 272
Vietnamese: 128
Japanese: 64 + 4 = 68
Italian: 32
Korean: 16</p>
<p>131072 English US
65536 Chinese China
32768 Spanish India
16384 Hindi/Urdu Nigeria
8192 French Philippines
4096 German Indonesia
2048 Portuguese Brazil
1024 Bengali UK
512 Tagalog Pakistan
256 Russian Germany
128 Vietnamese Bangladesh
64 Japanese Canada
32 Italian Australia
16 Korean Russia
8 Punjabi France
4 Polish Japan
2 Arabic Mexico</p>
<p>1048576 US China English Mandarin
524288 India India Spanish Hindi
262144 Nigeria US Chinese English
131072 Philippines Indonesia French Spanish
65536 UK Brazil German Portuguese
32768 Germany Pakistan Tagalog Bengali
16384 Canada Bangladesh Vietnamese Russian
8192 Australia Nigeria Italian Japanese
4096 Pakistan Russia Korean German
2048 France Japan Russian Punjabi
1024 Italy Mexico Polish French
512 South Africa Philippines Arabic Wu
256 Netherlands Vietnam Portuguese Javanese
128 Spain Germany Japanese Korean
64 Poland Ethiopia French Creole Vietnamese
32 Turkey Egypt Greek Marathi
16 Cameroon Turkey Hindi Telugu
8 Malaysia Iran Persian Tamil
4 China France Urdu Italian
2 Russia Thailand Gujarati </p>
<p>English: 1048576 + 262144 = 1,310,720
Chinese: 262144 + 1048576 = 1,310,720
Spanish: 524288 + 131072 = 655,360
Hindi: 16 + 524288 = 524,304
French: 131072 + 1024 = 132,096
German: 65536 + 4096 = 69,632
Portuguese: 256 + 65536 = 65,792
Bengali: 32768 = 32,768
Tagalog: 32768 = 32,768
Russian: 2048 + 16384 = 18,432
Vietnamese: 16384 + 64 = 16,448
Japanese: 128 + 8192 = 8,320
Italian: 8192 + 4 = 8,196
Korean: 4096 + 128 = 4,224
Punjabi: 2048 = 2,048
Polish: 1024 = 1,024
Arabic: 512 = 512
Wu: 512 = 512
Javanese: 256 = 256
French Creole: 64 = 64
Greek: 32 = 32
Marathi: 32 = 32
Telugu: 16 = 16
Persian: 8 = 8
Tamil: 8 = 8
Urdu: 4 = 4
Gujarati: 2 = 2</p>
<p>US: 1048576 + 262144 = 1,310,720
China: 4 + 1048576 = 1,048,580
India: 524288 + 524288 = 1,048,576
Nigeria: 262144 + 8192 = 270,336
Philippines: 131072 + 512 = 131,584
Indonesia: 131072 = 131,072
Brazil: 65536 = 65,536
UK: 65536 = 65,536
Pakistan: 4096 + 32768 = 36,864
Germany: 32768 + 128 = 32,896
Bangladesh: 16384 = 16,384
Canada: 16384 = 16,384
Australia: 8192 = 8,192
Russia: 2 + 4096 = 4,098
France: 2048 + 4 = 2,052
Japan: 2048 = 2,048
Mexico: 1024 = 1,024
Italy: 1024 = 1,024
South Africa: 512 = 512
Netherlands: 256 = 256
Spain: 128 = 128
Poland: 64 = 64
Ethiopia: 64 = 64
Turkey: 32 + 16 = 48
Egypt: 32 = 32
Cameroon: 16 = 16
Malaysia: 8 = 8
Iran: 8 = 8
France: 4 = 4
Thailand: 2 = 2</p>
<p>People can debate endlessly about the practical value of various languages, but when it comes down to it, you'll only be motivated to learn and master a language that you enjoy. I just finished my first semester of Latin and German, and I took Spanish for three years in high school. Out of those, I didn't like the culture behind Spanish much (especially in the US, it's taught basically with Mexican culture, not that of Spain) so I didn't enjoy class. German wasn't bad, and while it sounds really cool, I just didn't connect with it grammatically (similar to English, but more strict). Lastly, I absolutely loved Latin: the language makes lots of sense, it's very logical and structured, it allows you to understand English and all of the romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian) to a decent degree, and the culture behind it is incredibly cool (you get to read about ancient Rome as part of class!). </p>
<p>Find out which culture interests you most and take whatever language is associated with it.</p>
<p>Latin is a crap language, because once you get into literature, you find out that all of the Latin writers completely ignored the grammatical rules.</p>
<p>The culture part associated with it however is awesome.</p>
<p>lol^</p>
<p>i'm not a fan of latin either... mostly cause it's a dead language... taking a romance language is more useful cause you get all the roots that latin has, and that helps you with everything... but you can speak a living language. :/</p>
<p>Latin is a fascinating and useful language to study. But, I wouldn't suggest studying Latin unless you have an interest in the classics/classical history or intend to go on to learn several romance languages. Clearly, as a dead language, its practicality is limited.</p>
<p>Really, pick the language you love the most/find its culture most interesting. I took four years of Spanish in high school, but hated it because I have little to no interest in Hispanic culture/history. Now I'm taking French and German, and enjoy them very much because I have a profound interest in European politics/history/culture--so basically, just do the one you think you have the most cultural interest in</p>
<p>My vote: Spanish, Japanese, some dialect of Chinese, French, Arabic, or German.</p>