If you live in the USA what language do you think it is most important to speak after English?

Question

Do you consider the percentages of people who speak various languages in the world or would you say Spanish because Mexico is our neighbors?

Chinese, Mandarin 13.69%, Hindi 2.82%, English 4.84%, Spanish 5.05%, Bengali 2.68%, Portuguese 2.77%, Russian 2.27%, Japanese 1.99%, German, Standard 1.49%, Chinese, Wu 1.21% (2004)

Answer 1

I'd have to go with everyone else and say Spanish (although, I'm hardly a business person, so I don't know how useful Mandarin would be). However, there is one language that no one else mentioned that I would really like to learn: Sign Language. Other useful languages could be French (If you live in the northeast or New Orleans area) and Italian. One of the nice things about Spanish, Italian, and French is that once you are competent with one of these languages, the other two are much easier to read because they are all Latin based.

Answer 2

My brain is telling me Spanish because where I live, that is the second most heard language. Personally, I think learning Mandarin or Japanese would be beneficial in terms of technology and business. It's a tough call...but for right now, based on current languages in my area, Spanish is my vote.

Answer 3

Absolutely Spanish!

Answer 4

There's no "one size fits all" answer to this. I would consider what I wanted to gain from the learning of a language.

If it's travel, then you have to ask, "where do I want to go". If the answer is Africa or Europe, French would be a good choice. If South America, then Spanish would be a good choice.

For me, I wanted to correspond over the internet. I chose Esperanto. Since learning it I've used it to correspond with people from just about every country, and every culture.

Answer 5

I think Spanish, not just because there are Sapnish communities in every American city, but also because it's the fourth language spoken in the world after Chinese Mandarin, English and Hindi

Answer 6

I do live in the US. I believe the most common languages spoken here besides english are spanish, german, chinese, japanese,

Answer 7

Firstly, I believe that English should be made or official national language.

That being said, I fully support making it mandatory for our school kids to be taught at least one second language (if not two).

Of course, living in Texas, Spanish is the obvious choice as a second language for this part of the country.

Answer 8

In my neck of the woods (Northeast Ohio) I would say Spanish. I don't see many Chinese people here and the Spanish population is growing. I actually looked it up on a website for my city and the cities surrounding

Answer 9

It depends on what part of the USA you live in. If you live in the upper Midwest, for example, you aren't going to encounter many Spanish speakers. If you live in San Francisco you might know a lot of Cantonese speakers. Depending on your job you might interact with people who are speakers of many different languages. So it just depends on what would be the most useful to you.

Answer 10

Spanish or Italian