what's the most useful language....?

Question

to learn in today's society? (apart from english)

why?

Answer 1

It depends why you want to learn another language.

If you want to live and work in America, Spanish is the most useful for you. And it's also useful if you want to travel in South America.

French is spoken in a lot of countries (I'm French, but didn't realize it until I started going on Yahoo!Answers!), and is still used in diplomatic spheres. But I think that English is dominant in the EU. And if you work close to the French Canadian border, it can also be useful.

Chinese is good for business, but the problem is that they have different languages. I think Mandarin is the most widely spoken (or maybe Cantonese).

Indian is also useful, although they pretty much all speak English.

Arabic is also useful if you want to do business in the Middle East and in North Africa because it is widely spoken there, although they do have different types of Arabic, and I don't know how different they are from each other.

Anyway. It really depends on why you want to learn another language. But for you (if you're American, that is), the most useful is probably Spanish.

Answer 2

If you are remaining in an English-speaking country then although it is no longer spoken Latin is terribly useful. You can't know how useful until you have it.

It really depends on what kind of a life you have. If you are into fashion or art then Italian - if philosophy I would go for German, because so much philosophy has been written in that language and the translations are not as easy to read as translations from French etc.

Answer 3

Definitely Mandarin (Chinese). Sure, many languages are useful, but if you choose just one, consider most French, German and Spanish speakers already know English, whereas Mandarin gives you the possibility to communicate with far over 1 billion people, most of whom can't speak a single word of English (almost everyone in China know mandarin, even if they might have another first language)!

Someone propsed "Indian" - I suppose s/he means Hindi, but then, again, remember that English is far more common in India than in China (and Hindi is not commonly understood in Southern India!). So, my second choice would be Arabic, which is a lingua franca in a great part of the world, many of whom also don't speak English.

Answer 4

I found the best benefit from learning other languages is that I understand and appreciate English much better! Also, a very different language can help you see things in a slightly different way, in ways you would never expect. Chinese is a very poetic language, for instance.


So I say, learn the the language furthest from English - like Chinese, or Russian or Japanese or Swahili!

Answer 5

BINARY, 1's And 0's. Have You Any Idea How Much Those Computer Freaks Make A Year, Well I Don't, But It's Got To Be Quite A Wad.

Answer 6

In the here and now, I think Spanish the most useful with the added plus that it is an easy language to learn.
If you are more adventuresome, I'd say Arabic or Chinese. Arabic speakers are in high demand in government circles as we scurry around trying to catch up with events. Chinese speakers should have a competitive edge in the business world in the decades to come.

Answer 7

French and Italian, Spanish or German. They are four useful language after English.

Answer 8

Summarian

No, just be good at English. Everyone else is learning it, French is useless and will probably be banned the next time they lose a war. Spanish is great if you want to encourage the illegals but I think they should learn english to come into the States. German is great to exhort a crowd to genocide (kidding, don't come after me) Chinese is so ridiculously hard, and finally arabic. I found they understood english very well when i pointed an M-16 at them.

Answer 9

Spanish

Answer 10

I would go with Spanish, French and Arabic because these languages are spoken by the large majority of people in the world.
Spanish in Spain, South and Central America as well as many Caribbean islands. French in France, the Caribbean and many African (eg. Rwanda, Congo Ivory Coast etc.), and Asian (Vietnam) nations. Arabic because tons of countries in the Middle East use it.
To some extent I would also say Chinese because China has over a billion people.