Most useful languages to learn

[RoyBatty]

English is fairly ubiquitous nowadays so for better or worse it has become a fairly common communication medium.

What other languages would, in your opinion, be the most practical or useful to know?

For European Languages my choices would be:

- German
- Spanish

Far East:

- Probably Cantonese

[Svanhild]

Languages which are in use in more than one country or are comprehensible in more than one country are greatly useful. With German you can communicate not only in Germany but in Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg and parts of the Netherlands and Belgium as well.

That is why learning one of the Scandinavian languages could be useful. If you speak Swedish, Danish or Norwegian you can understand the other Scandinavian languages at least in parts. Russian could make sense for the East European area.

[Groenewolf]

Considering modern languages. English is probably #1 because it is the most used language today for business. But other languages would depend on the context. For the Netherlands German would also be important since a lot of our export goes to Germany, where the Southern Netherlands (2nd) is good for much less. And it always good to the know the language of your most important trading partner.

[Piparskeggr]

Here, unfortunately, the Mestizo dialect of Spanish...

[RoyBatty]

Languages which are in use in more than one country or are comprehensible in more than one country are greatly useful. With German you can communicate not only in Germany but in Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg and parts of the Netherlands and Belgium as well.

That is why learning one of the Scandinavian languages could be useful. If you speak Swedish, Danish or Norwegian you can understand the other Scandinavian languages at least in parts. Russian could make sense for the East European area.

German is also useful in Eastern Europe, even in Russia I encountered a number of Russians who could speak it.

[nisse]

Practically speaking (i.e. for business):

1. English
2. Spanish
3. Mandarin - canto is not as commonly spoken as mando, even HK is switching over to mando now that they are closer with the mainland.
4. German/French.


In most countries where German is spoken English is not uncommon, in Scandinavia everyoen speaks English, and of course in N.America, India and Austarlia/N.Zealand English is a safe bet.

Spanish is very widely spread all oevr the world, and mostly in low income countries where English is not spoken. It's also spoken in Europe, and will prob. let you understand Italian.

[Eldritch]

Practically speaking (i.e. for business):

1. English
2. Spanish
3. Mandarin - canto is not as commonly spoken as mando, even HK is switching over to mando now that they are closer with the mainland.
4. German/French.


In most countries where German is spoken English is not uncommon, in Scandinavia everyoen speaks English, and of course in N.America, India and Austarlia/N.Zealand English is a safe bet.

Spanish is very widely spread all oevr the world ... It's also spoken in Europe, and will prob. let you understand Italian.

Not in my case at least. I read Spanish fluently, but cannot really understand Italian text. I can maybe get the gist of it, but no more. As for understanding spoken Italian, forget it.

[Psychonaut]

Far East:

- Probably Cantonese

Mandarin will serve you far better for a few reasons:

• In this day and age any educated Chinese person, regardless of their native dialect, will speak Mandarin additionally. In the past it was certainly true that most Cantonese speakers spoke poor, if any, Mandarin. However, since the 1997 transfer of sovereignty, the linguistic situation has changed dramatically in Hong Kong.
• East Asian economic centers are shifting. We all know that the PRC is poised to eclipse the US as the dominant economic power, and as this has been happening, China's economic center has steadily shifted from Hong Kong to Beijing: the home of "proper" Mandarin.
• Chinese businessmen in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia use Mandarin. While not as important on a global scale as Beijing, all three are serious economic nodes in East Asia.
• Cantonese is a fucking ugly language and is much harder to learn than Mandarin.

[blan]

depends on who you are and where you are,

for me its English, Haitian kreyol, French, Jamaican creole, spanish,

I only bother with english haitian kreyol and french on occasions i wish i spoke spanish better and i hope to learn german for those rare times i meet people from germany.
but its true that asian languages will be much more popular in the future

[Loddfafner]

For what makes a language useful, the key questions are:

1) Do the natives speak enough English? This rules out Scandinavian languages, but raises French, Russian, and to a surprising extent, German.

2) Is it related to enough other languages to help you figure things out in other countries? This rules out Basque. Svanhild (upthread) is very right on this point. With some knowledge of Spanish, I could get by in Portugal, Italy, and Romania in addition to Spain and Latin America. I have been warned that small differences can matter greatly and lead to unfortunate misunderstandings as when a normal term in Czech means something grossly obscene in Polish.

3) Aside from practical matters in traveling, is the literature in that language worth reading? Although Arabic is useful in a quite a few countries in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and increasingly, Europe, it comes up short on this principle.