| Spanish is easier to learn because you already know most of the alphabet, and it's easier to pronounce (you know how the word's spoken by seeing how it's written, unlike Chinese). However, if you want to go into the military academies/CIA stuff, learning Chinese is a huge plus. Both the kids from my school who got into West Point were taking Arabic/Chinese at the local university. I'm sure they were wonderful all-around students, but the 'national security languages' really strengthened their "I want to defend the United States" thing.
Chinese is only spoken in China/Taiwan and a few other Asian countries (Singapore, some of Malaysia)...Countries like Korea, India, Vietnam, Japan etc. all have their own languages that a Chinese speaker cannot understand (although they might have similar linguistic structures) |