What should I learn as my third language?

Question

I've been thinking about which language I would want to learn as my third language. I already speak English and French and would like to learn a third eventually. I am debating between several including German, Spanish and Russian, but I'm trying to balance the ones I enjoy most with the ones that would be more useful. I don't think I'd use German or Russian much unless I travel or spend time in Europe, but I think they are fabulous and interesting languages. Spanish I am less intrigued by, but I am Canadian and there are a lot of people that speak Spanish in the US, not to mention central and south America. What do you think?

Answer 1

You didn't mention what career plans you have. Knowing English and French, you have all you need linguistically as a Canadian. If you want to learn a third language for future yet unseen career opportunities, I would pick Spanish. If you don't plan to use the third language professionally, then learn any language you want!
No language is forbidden for a lover of languages. Pick one that is very different from what you're familiar with. Any non-Indoeuropean language should do provided you have access to good learning materials. Chinese, Finnish, Hungarian and Japanese are all examples of non-Indoeuropean languages with good resources for non-native speakers.

Answer 2

Firstly, Congratulations on learning all those languages and choosing more. As I'm sure you know, English is a pretty universal language, you can go practically anywhere, speak it, and be helped. French is a good one too. But if you had to pick a third, I'd suggest the Spanish. That's a well know language too, especially if you want to travel in Europe.

Answer 3

Most people learn another language out of necessity, and sometimes happentance. Others learn another tongue for economic reasons. Very few learn other languages because they like languages. These people usually have a knack for it, even a talent. And you seem to be in this category. So I say shop around and investigate all kinds of languages and pick one that stands out as especially interesting to you.

If you feel that you should invest the time in something that would give you economic advantages, take a look at what is going on in the economic world. The big thing there is China.

And of course, there is a dearth of Arabic speakers, so governments would hire you.

And just more in the way of academics, you could look into the dead languages, like Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian [Coptic is supposed to be still quite close to that]. There would be a shortage of people in the academic world who were competent in these languages.

Answer 4

Spanish
It is very widely used, and it is close enough to French to make it easier to learn then the other 2.
Russian, although a very precise language, is a difficult language with more than 30 cases & many declensions.
Surprisingly spoken Mandarin Chinese has an extremely simplified grammar, and only 4 tones to contend with. (e.g. Cantonese has 8 tones, Yech). More people speak Mandarin than than second most spoken language; English.
Granted the writing (Kanji), is difficult. But it is exactly, the same among all the Chinese dialects.

Answer 5

For a French speaker, Spanish will probably be too easy to be very interesting, because it is structurally very similar to French. It's worth learning, but you can come back to it later.

I'd lean toward German or Russian, which will introduce you to what are called "inflected" languages, where the endings of nouns and adjectives vary according to their function in the sentence (subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive, etc.). Russian is the tougher of the two, and it will be a real achievement to learn it.

Best wishes!

Answer 6

They say Japanese or Chinese(Mandarin) is actually more useful than any other language(aside from English) in the business world. If you aren't travelling to Europe( or even if you do), Spanish would be more useful than German or Russian.

Answer 7

Victoria:

My third was Mandarin Chinese. Very useful, but HARD! Spanish is the biggest world language after English in terms of being widespread (way more useful than French). Maybe try that.

Answer 8

SPANISH. English is foreign language for me, and the Spanish is going to be my second foreign language. I decided to learn it because,
first of all, it sounds like a beautiful song when someone speak in Spanish,
2) it is widely spoken, south america except brasil and some african countries.
and for you, as you speak french, there are some familiarities between french and spanish.
And when it comes to Russian, it is very hard to learn, it isnt like french,english or spanish, you have to learn alpahabet first.
Italian, I also considered that but it is not spoken widely as SPanishh

Answer 9

I think you should base your decision on what you want to do with the language. If you want it to be useful on the business side of things, a middle-eastern language seems to be a very useful one in Ottawa. (Not that you live there, I'm just using an example that I'm familiar with.) If you want to travel, choose a language from a region you'd like to visit. If you're looking for strict usefulness, I have to agree with the others and suggest Spanish, especial in the Western Hemisphere.

Answer 10

My first language is English, er, American (yes, I've heard there is a difference). My second language is German. I wish I'd taken Spanish- I think it would have been a LOT more useful.