<p>I don't mean culturally or philosophically valuable, but just in terms of job prospectives.</p>
<p>I started learning Mandarin a few months ago, but now some people are telling that it will be useless since all Chinese people can speak English very well or are in the process of studying it, thus creating no special demand of foreign speakers of Mandarin.
(especially in the business/economics world)</p>
<p>They say that Japanese might be more useful since many Japanese people rarely speak English, and therefore the demand might be higher.</p>
<p>its not true that 'all chinese people' are learning english and/or speak it. barely anyone in china gets an education past high school. (considering the whole population)</p>
<p>I think that you'd need to speak all of the following: English; French and Chinese.
But honstly; i don't think you'll nedd the last two. Everyone speaks English Anyway.</p>
<p>I think the world is in need of GOOD Japanese/English translators. When I went to Japan, the group I was with met with the mayor and went to city hall and stuff and we couldn't really understand what the translator was saying. I'm sure she could write English well and speak perfect Japanese!</p>
<p>My dad was listening to something on NPR and they were saying how in 10 years Bejing was going to be the new NYC because China is so big and China is apparantly graduating 10x the engineers America is.
If this is true, then Chinese (I don't know if they speak Mandarin or Cantonese in Bejing) is going to be the language of choice</p>
<p>I dont know what's with all of the Japanese stuff, but most of them speak perfect english. My dad gets around Japan no problem and makes deals no problem. He doesnt speak a word of japanese.</p>
<p>Mandarin, Japanese, and Hindi
Probably not Hindi so much as Mandarin, since most Indians that one would meet in a business atmosphere would speak English.</p>
<p>Pashto
If you want to work for the govt -- They are seriously lacking English/Pashto translators. They pay very well. An old friend of mine decided to do this, and he's making about 110/yr. It's a HARD language to learn, though. Similar to Arabic</p>
<p>
[quote]
I started learning Mandarin a few months ago, but now some people are telling that it will be useless since all Chinese people can speak English very well or are in the process of studying it, thus creating no special demand of foreign speakers of Mandarin.
(especially in the business/economics world)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Using that logic, no language other than English would be worth learning because many people in the world know some degree of English. And I cannot see how the Japanese would be worse off English-wise than the Chinese, since Japan's been the world's 2nd richest country for a long time and China's just recently emerged from communist isolation.</p>
<p>About Arabic; I don't think it would be usefull. I mean, it's only spoken in 22 countries, all of which have common borders with one another. It's not really spoken worldwide.</p>