What language should I study???

Question

I am going into a career in international relations (specifically, a diplomat) and plan to travel internationally throughout my life. I am already studying Spanish and French (English is my native tongue)but would like to learn at least one more language, preferably one a little more "exotic" than a standard European one. (Though I think I'll learn Italian some day...)

Anywhom, I was thinking either something Middle Eastern, like Farsi/Persian or Arabic. Otherwise, someone suggested Korean...

Any input on the various difficulties of some of the languages listed above? What about how applicable each is in relation to the others? I want something that'll prove useful. As I said, I plan on traveling all over the world, not centralizing in one certain area that might otherwise help me make this decision.

Thanks for any suggestions! I really appreciate it!

Answer 1

All over the world?

Well, if you're already studying Spanish, studying Italian will help you very little, because these languages are quite similar.

If I were to pick languages to speak, I'd take in consideration where I'd want to go.

With English, Spanish and French you're pretty much done for the whole Americas (Portuguese is not that different from Spanish either).

Add German and Russian and you're done with all of Europe and North Asia.

Standard Arabic will help you through all of North Africa and the Middle East. Colloquial Arabic shows a great degree of variation between the west and east, but most Arabic-speakers will code-switch to Standard Arabic if they can't understand each other's local dialects (for example, a moroccan or algerian talking with a syrian or lebanese).

Hindustani is the language of media and press in most of India, so it (and English) will help you throught all of India and other nearby countries, though we all know India is a pandemonium of languages, not all of them are related at all with Hindustani. Oh, and Farsi/Persian doesn't have a big scope; only Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan...

As for the rest of Asia, well, Standard Mandarin (duh), Japanese, and Indonesian/Malay. Korean is a beautiful language, but only if you actually want to go to either Korea.

The Eastern Polynesian languages (Maori, Hawaiian, Rapa Nui, Samoan, Marquesan, Tahitian...) are all related in some way or other, and most of them retain some level of intelligibility. Only if you're interested in visiting any of those remote islands.

Oh, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Like India, it's a pandemonium of languages; particularly the Bantu group if plenty of languages with < 1 million speakers and barely related between them...

Yay, there are four languages that fit the toll: Fula (spoken from Senegal to Cameroon and Sudan), the languages Swahili and Zulu (spoken all the way through southern Africa), and Amharic (a semitic language, very distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew, which is spoken in Ethiopia).

Yowza, that's a lot of languages. Picking a few to study depends on what's your final travel plan and how much you're willing to spend learning languages.

Answer 2

Esperanto

"Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding." (Wikipedia)

"Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning " (Wikipedia)

Answer 3

Most European languages have the same root. If you really want to stretch yourself, learn a language that is derived from a completely different background. I would recomend either Mandrin Chinese or Japanese. The Slavic languages are somewhat different, so Russian might be a good choice too.

In order to be utilized, I would stick to a language that either has a large existing population of speakers (Chinese, Russian) or one that is spoken by an economicaly powerful country that you might actually use someday in your job (Japanese, Arabic)

Answer 4

The most useful language for international relations in the Middle Eastern complex would be Arabic.

Answer 5

Here some languages with the background to study it:

Mandarin (Chinese): growing market origin from China with moire and more people speak this language (they are everywhere)

Arabic: with vast growing of the Arab world (business and culture, mostly due to development of Islam)

Japanese and Korea: More and more electronic product and innovation come from these countries. Sometimes, they keep it for themselves, you have to understand their languages to know how their stuffs work.

Answer 6

If you learn latin, spanish, portuguese and italian wuold be a little easier for you. But i would look around on the internet to see what languages are most spoken.

Answer 7

1) English
2) French
3) Spanish
3) Mandarin (Chinese)

most popular...and that's really all you need in the buisness world.


*my dad knows how to speak korean chinese and spanish because he works with electronics. Been in the buissness for 40 years. And I speak 4 languages it runs in the familly=]

Answer 8

i would imagine that Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese would be the top 3 for business. if you want to be able to write you own check for probably the next 10 years, learn Arabic and Farsi.

Answer 9

If you truly are looking to the future, learn to speak Chinese. The opportunities in business for Chinese-speaking college graduates will be huge.

Answer 10

Locoluis answered pretty neatly to this question.
Mar Tea, may I suggest you to take a look at Esperanto?