Is Chinese the new second language for children to learn right now?

Question

I've heard on the news and read in the news paper, next to English, it should be the second language that parents/children should consider learning is that true? Or Spanish is more beneficial still?

Answer 1

I have a different view to this. Since Chinese is a difficult language to learn, then it is best to start learning it while at a young age. Spanish is not that hard to learn because it mostly shares the same common root as English (alphabet, word-likeness, etc..) In other words, it is not always too late to learn Spanish in some future time.

Chinese is a lot harder to learn because aside from the verbal, there is also the written aspect of this language. Westerners can usually spell their words immediately after a word has been uttered, but the Chinese is very different. The written words are an entirely different learning/knowledge to themselves. Even the common Chinese sometimes have trouble reading their words. It's true, ask your Chinese friend this and he/she will agree with me. Younger minds are better adapted to learn such a complex language because they learn quick.

Answer 2

Mandarin (fyi there is no such language as "chinese"; it's either Mandarin or Cantonese--sorry for being pompous :-) is the most widely-spoken language worldwide right now. Becasue China is becoming such a strong world player/competitor in the economy (and Chinese children are strongly encouraged to learn English!), it makes sense for American/Canadian/British etc. children to attempt to understand a language of China (most likely Mandarin?) as well. I agree with other respondents, that Spanish is most likely the most beneficialy for the short-term, but learning chinese is a wise investment.

Answer 3

For the future , Chinese will be beneficial for a career in many fields including economics.
For now Spanish would yield more benefit.

Answer 4

it depends how you look at it. in america, spanish is the most beneficial second language because of the ammount of spanish immigrants coming in. on a global sclae, chinese is the best second language to learn because of china's enormous and growing population. the logic is that in the future the chinese will domiante businesss becuase of their nubmers, so it would help to learn chinese. realistically, chinese is probably not the world language of the future because of it's complexity and difficulty to learn.

Answer 5

I think Spanish is still beneficial because there r so many ppl that speek spanish in America now. unless u go to China alot or something

Answer 6

when you are trying to get a job, you need to be able to speak the language of your competitors and your enemies...in this case the competitors are the Asians and the enemies are the people of Iraq. right now kids should learn spanish because you don't know who our enemies will be by the time they apply for a job

Answer 7

Being in California I would still stick to spanish I think it would be more helpful career wise in this state for anyone to know

Answer 8

Its Spanish first ..I see lots of non-hispanic families talning to their children in english and spanish...

Then after that I think you need to learn Japanese...especially if you want to be a successful international businessman

Answer 9

Spanish is more benificial, but I would WAY rather learn Chinese.

Answer 10

chinese might be good for ur kids to know biut i would say spanish and italian are far more beneficial