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If you are going to stay in California, Spanish will be your most useful.

If you are going to move from California, then take whatever you want, I agree with Japanese, and suggest Latin.

Joey wrote:

Clthomps wrote:Chinese is the going to be the most useful in your lifetime.

No.
The Chinese are all scrambling to learn English, everyone is.

Well, it works both ways. And I'm sure being a 'Westerner' being able to speak Chinese would open a few career doors.

On the other hand, I have heard that Chinese is one of the most difficult Asian languages to learn.

hotsauceman1 wrote:SO, Soon i'm going to have to take a second language for my college credit. But i cant decide.
I would love to learn to speak Japanese or Arabic because those are languages few people bother to learn.
But my family insists are spanish because in live in Cali and they are convinced it will become our first language soon.
But my problem is that it gives me something everyone else has, While the two i mentioned are less taken.
What should i do dakka?

If you want to honestly pick up a second language, take Spanish. If you just want the credit, and don't care about actually learning another language, take whatever you want. At least with Spanish you will have the oppurtunity to have some fluency. Anything else, no chance. Oh, and you may want to work on your English a wee bit as well.

I have heard that classical Spanish as taught in high schools and community colleges is next to useless when trying to communicate with someone from South America.

Think faulty towers

Joey wrote:Ancient Greek is easier to learn than you might think. It also makes you look cool in conversation, and lets you know what words mean even if you've never seen them before.

And has the added advantage that because words' meaning changes over time, that misunderstandings can be such an amusing thing.

A mate studied it at Uni. On a holiday to Greece, he decided to try it out to see if modern Greeks could understand him. Mostly they could - even if his accent was strange.
One difference was that the Ancient Greek word for "shepherd" in the modern vernacular was akin to "sheep-shagger" - and that shepherds get offended when you call them this.


Although Spanish does have its merits also. Learn one "Romance" language, and you can learn the others easily (French, Italian, Portuguese).

I would say arabic, but thats just because its full of things that sound dirty but are totally innocent.

Fish with cake,
only discipline,
sugar cookie.

the arabic for all three of these sound extremely dirty.

as far as difficulty goes, languages are set into 5 categories (technically 4, but english and korean are so hard for non-natives to learn that they get their own category) CAT1: anybody can learn. CAT2, most people can learn CAT3 not easy to learn. CAT 4 VERY difficult

arabic and Japanese are both CAT 4, spanish and the other romance languages are CAT 2.

Just gonna point this out - German isn't a Slavic language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

Personally I would go with Tagalog.

Spanish is more practical where you live.

Couldn't even find a job as a dishwasher when I lived in Salinas because I couldn't speak Spanish.

I will say Chinese, is iffy, though it will be useful if you get into business overseas, English is taught over in China, to the point more people in China know English than there are Americans. Could be one of those "useful tools" tool to have that are not necessary but can put you over the top .

Latin would be useful if you go into the medical field or electrical engineering field (my dad found that it did).

I took Japanese, it is painfully difficult, though I generally suck at learning foreign languages. I switched to Spanish and sucked just as much.

Arabic is in demand right, particularly in the military. A family friend is paid well into the 6 figures to translate information for the military, though this is over in Afghanistan. I'm not sure how stable this would be into the future or if there is any opportunities beyond government translation work.

I did find American Sign Language rather easy to learn and picked up rather quickly, though I can understand it a lot better than I can sign. My hands are slow and clumsy.

Bromsy wrote:Just gonna point this out - German isn't a Slavic language.

It's a Germanic language. Who said it was Slavic?

Big Mek Dattrukk wrote:I would say arabic, but thats just because its full of things that sound dirty but are totally innocent.

Fish with cake,
only discipline,
sugar cookie.

the arabic for all three of these sound extremely dirty.

as far as difficulty goes, languages are set into 5 categories (technically 4, but english and korean are so hard for non-natives to learn that they get their own category) CAT1: anybody can learn. CAT2, most people can learn CAT3 not easy to learn. CAT 4 VERY difficult

arabic and Japanese are both CAT 4, spanish and the other romance languages are CAT 2.

unfortunately anyone trying to learn english has the problem that english is a dumb language. the same problem goes vice versa, if you learned english first, learning any other language is going to be exremely difficult. They say english is a phonetic language, but "ough" has 3 pronounciations: Through, Trough and Though... absolutely NO rules there...

You should learn Basque, I hear its super easy.

Hordini wrote:

Bromsy wrote:Just gonna point this out - German isn't a Slavic language.

It's a Germanic language. Who said it was Slavic?

I seem to have misread one of poda's posts. But I er, stand by my point!

Asl has multiple opportunities for use and is one of the most underrepresented languages for intepreters. Schools that cater specifically to the deaf are always looking for "hearing" teachers that are skilled in ASL. I also know that most states and municpalities pay well for court intepreters.

poda_t wrote:

Big Mek Dattrukk wrote:I would say arabic, but thats just because its full of things that sound dirty but are totally innocent.

Fish with cake,
only discipline,
sugar cookie.

the arabic for all three of these sound extremely dirty.

as far as difficulty goes, languages are set into 5 categories (technically 4, but english and korean are so hard for non-natives to learn that they get their own category) CAT1: anybody can learn. CAT2, most people can learn CAT3 not easy to learn. CAT 4 VERY difficult

arabic and Japanese are both CAT 4, spanish and the other romance languages are CAT 2.

unfortunately anyone trying to learn english has the problem that english is a dumb language. the same problem goes vice versa, if you learned english first, learning any other language is going to be exremely difficult. They say english is a phonetic language, but "ough" has 3 pronounciations: Through, Trough and Though... absolutely NO rules there...

English actually has a pronunciation method similar to sandhi in Sanskrit. The problem is that it is in no way systematized. anyway, so far as difficulty and ambiguity are concerned... Chinese (Mandarin) has no tense system. So no past, present, or future tenses. Confusing?