After English, which language would be most helpful to me when traveling the world (not just China) and why?

Question

I currently only speak English and plan to do some very extensive travel around the world. I'm wondering which second language would be of the most help in the most different countries.

Answer 1

French will get you thru a lot of places in Africa, as possibly some parts of the Mideast, SE Asia, Caribbean and Pacific island territories. If you know it well enough, you can also follow the Spanish and Portuguese spoken in Latin America.

If you plan to spend a lot of time in the former USSR area, or former Communist countries, Russian will go pretty far, especially with the older generation (note: it's not always a popular language so be careful how you start to speak it). I've found people in Africa and India who spoke Russian better than they spoke English (they had studied in Moscow).

Arabic will help throughout Mideast and northern Africa. It is also closely related to Dari, Farsi, etc. so you can probably make yourself understood in places like Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc. It's also likely that you'll find people who have studied Arabic in muslim countries like Indonesia.

Knowing both the Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets at least will help you read a lot more signs than if you only know Latin-based alphabets.

There isn't really one language that has spread throughout all continents or that is related to other key languages spoken on different continents.

Answer 2

It does partially depend on what areas you plan to go to. I would recommend Spanish then French. You aren't looking for the languages spoken by the most people and live all in concentrated areas, you want languages spoken throughout the world. These languages were spread around the world by exploration, trade and colonization. The big colonial powers were England, Spain and France. Spain had a huge influence in Central and South America while France had an influence in Africa.

Answer 3

Probably Spanish as that allows you to speak to natives in Mexico, Central and most of South America. Add to that Spain and it even works somewhat in Italy. Remember that Spain ruled much of the world prior to the rise of England as a world power.

French is a dead language (regardless of what the French want you to believe), Japanese, German and Russian are very regional, and Chinese is very fragmented. You can lean on dialect and not be able to speak to natives in another part of China. On top of that, not that many places speak Chinese out of China.

Answer 4

I think the data speaks for itself (no pun intended...).

Top 5 Languages of the World - TIME Almanac

1. Mandarin Chinese: 885 million
2. Spanish: 332 million
3. English: 322 million
4. Bengali: 189 million
5. Hindi: 182 million

Personally, I find Spanish universally helpful. It's most helpful even in the US due to all of the immigrants. Fastest growing populations are the Chinese and Indian.

Answer 5

I picked Spanish as many people speak it, the countries are widely spread, and if you get a good knowledge of it you can manage in the other Romance languages (French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian).

Answer 6

for business: chinese (if your going to do business, its gonna most likely be in china)
for socializing: french