French, Japanese, Spanish, or German?

Question

Which should I learn?
The only thing I have against learning Spanish is.... I don't enjoy it. Haha... If I don't enjoy it; how can I remember it? Lol. Thanks for all the help... If I'm not clear on something feel free to ask a question.

Why is the language of your choice beneficial?

These are my only options in high school... that's why other languages aren't included.

Answer 1

Depends on what you want to use it for and what your long-term goals are.

- French is great for travelling Europe and for understanding restaurant menus in high-end establishments.

- Japanese is the language of business, second only to English.

- Spanish is practical for working in the US or the Americas; it is a VERY employable trait.

- German is a great language if you plan to study a liberal art, like Philosophy or History, because a lot of older texts that you will want to read as an original are in German.

Of course, these are generalizations, but hopefully they will help you pick a direction.

Answer 2

Rohan, where did you get that 20 billion people speak French? The world altogether has 6.6 billion people. It will take many years to reach the 20 billion you mentioned but not everyone will speak French.

French is currently spoken by about 120 million to 500 million people, tops, and this figure includes bilinguals, trilingual, etc.

To answer the question, do you want to learn a language? Are you forced to learn a language? Is it something you or someonelse want you to do? If you want to Learn a language on your own and you don't enjoy Spanish, maybe you can tray French, which is a Latin language as Spanish is. Then if you want to challenge yourself, Japanese is totally different from English in Alphabet, writing, grammatical structure, etc.
If you are planning on your future, why don't you try Chinese (Mandarin)? China already a power and more and more influence will be felt at all levels. Many Chinese corporations are already establishing branches in the US and around the world and of course the American businesses also have been penetrating Chinese market for a while. So Chinese is a good option when it comes to languages to learn.

Answer 3

There is of course the option of learning more than one language. To start out either French or Spanish would be the easier ones to learn. German has some.. difficult sounds to reproduce, and Japanese has the added difficulty of having a different set of letters to learn as well as the sounds.

The main thing is why you want to learn another language. Are you going to be traveling and if so where will you be doing that? If for instance you plan to visit the Orient before Europe, then Japanese would be the obvious choice as you will have more opportunity to use it.

I notice you did not include Italian, which is another romance language. It has similarities to both French and Spanish. There is also Dutch which is more akin to German and the Germanic languages.

If you live in a a place that borders on Mexico, you are more likely to have more opportunities to use what you learn if you study Spanish. There are many dialects of Spanish, the one most taught in schools is Castellian... the same word can have different meanings in different dialects. I am not certain of the spelling but as an example, pareta (pare-ah-tey) means stop in the castellian, but should you use it in certain Mexican states, it means stand up.

Still, any of the languages you mention are easier than the English language.

Answer 4

I learned Spanish, it comes in handy at work when there are people there that only speak Spanish, but if you don't enjoy it, yikes! Don't take a language you don't enjoy unless you are planning to use it the rest of your life. I took 5 years of Spanish. I wouldn't suggest that to you! If you're only taking 2 or 3 years, take a language you enjoy because chances are you will forget much of what you learned by the time you are out of college for a couple years.

I've heard different people say different things about German. Some say it's easy, some say it's hard. Eek!

Japanese would be hard because there's few similarities to English for you to go off of when you don't know something.

Therefore, I'd say French.

Answer 5

I have spend decades trying to learn a language other than English, two years of French, waste of time, a year of American Sign Language and I don't know the sign for "sign language", a year of Japanese, I did well, but the minute you stop learning for a week it all starts to fade. I tried Hebrew, German, Polish, and have had a year of Latin and Greek. But lately I have been giving German another go around, using a system called Drive & Learn German, by Berlitz. I have made great progress and I an confident that I will finally learn a language, it only took me 50 years!!! German has the most cognates (similar words) to English. English IS a Germanic language after all.

Answer 6

I guess I'll just tell you some of the advantages of German since it is the language I am taking in school (my school offers it and Spanish) and I know more about it then the others and maybe it will help you decide.

1. There are a lot of Germanic languages (Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Yiddish etc) so if you ever travel to any country where a Germanic language is spoken then you can probably figure out the gist of what they are saying if you speak German (for example German vocabulary is 60% simiular to Norwegian vocabulary) another example of this, Hello my name is in German is: Hallo Ich heiße, in Icelandic: Halló Ég heiti.

2. Since English is a Germanic language, though not as close to German as the others, a lot of the words are simular(Hause = House, Polizei = Police) thought the grammer is kind of difficult.

3. And also it's really fun, and though I just started learning I feel Iike I've already learned a lot.

Hope that helps narrow down your choices.

Answer 7

If you don't really enjoy Spanish, then go for another language. Part of learning another language is the pleasure of learning it. if it is not enjoyable to you at all, then you will find the experience frustrating and quit, like my sister did. She took a course in conversational Spanish and quickly became frustrated with getting the words to sound right. She never took another Spanish class after that. However, she did major in German in college and speaks that language fluently.

Answer 8

French

Answer 9

I'm sick of hearing Spanish everywhere I go these days but I know it isn't going to change any time soon so I prefer to go with what is in my blood and that is German. I have been wanting to learn German so bad for the past year and the past few months i have been studying it and learning it pretty fast in my opinion but that's because i enjoy it and it's ME.
The Spanish-speaking issue in america these days is out of hand and I think Spanish is annoying because I hear it everywhere and they talk so fast. If it gets worse from here, if i learn enough German to get by elsewhere, I'm moving to Germany hands-down.
My dad's side of the family is mainly French, otherwise mixed with too many things to count from Indian to Scandinavian, but my mom is full-blood german and that is something i am proud of 100%

Answer 10

"Spanish" would still be the most practical choice as a 2nd language if you're living in this hemisphere of the globe (The American Continents). If not though, then "French" would be the next best choice as there are French-speaking citizens in Quebec, Canada.