<p>I would think Arabic, Chinese and Hindi would be good if you want a government job. I would advise against Spanish because there are already millions of people in the U.S. who speak it and more importantly many people in Mexico already know basic English.</p>
<p>I think I am going to try to learn Hindi later on or something like French/Italian.</p>
<p>given the current status of the global economy, asian languages are the most practical to be learning (chinese, japanese, hindi, etc).</p>
<p>i'm a freshman taking 200 level japanese because i am deeply interested in the culture of japan, and i feel that in terms of practicality, the japanese economy is still one of the most powerful in the world, despite emerging powers such as china and india. </p>
<p>what it really comes down to when choosing a language is:</p>
<p>1.) interest-are you enthralled by the culture of the language? can you see yourself living or studying abroad there?</p>
<p>2.) practicality-are you concerned about your language being "practical" in the post college business and career world? if so, what are some languages that you have cultural interests in but are also still "marketable?"</p>
<p>i always appreciated japanese culture and art before i chose to study it, but i now can also study it knowing i'm learning a useful language. i also studied spanish for around 7 years before studying japanese. </p>
<p>for those of you wondering about the difficulty of japanese or chinese, know that both are very difficult and will take 4-5 years to even come close to fluency. the grammar and written structures of these languages are difficult, and take steady studies and sometimes rote memorization. it is cool though to be able to write and read intricate characters :) japanese has 40 hiragana and katakana symbols, which comprise the base written characters. however, there are over 15,000 kanji in the japanese language. one needs to know approximately 5000 to be able to read a japanese newspaper and function literally and verbally in a japanese lifestyle.</p>
<p>I would take French or German!</p>
<p>Definitely Spanish/Portuguese. How else are you going to talk to the finest women in the world?</p>
<p>I'm doing Chinese, French, and English literature. My major is English, too. If you want to focus on comparative literature, which is kind of hard for anyone that doesn't have an international background, then I highly recommend you to study at least one East Asian languages: Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.(Other East Asian languages are just not significant enough, if ya know what I mean) For those languages now are not only practically "critical," they are also in large demand in academia as well.<br>
Arabic would be a good choice too, but it depends on where you lie your concentration.
But do remember that you need a foreign language to go to graduate school in english.</p>
<p>Haven't read all of the thread, but I'd say take something that interests you. I took Spanish in high school and liked it, but it doesn't compare with my love for Japanese. It wasn't available at my h.s. so once I got to college, I decided to take it. A lot of people were shocked and telling me that there's not really a lot I can do with Japanese (which may be true), but I'm very interested in the language and culture that I can look past that.</p>