Jonathan1

haha i know. it's ruining my lifeee.

Courtney8

ps . this thread has 46 posts.

MAJOR BUMPP. haha.

golakes

Spanish is easier. I am a senior at a high school and I had the option of taking Chinese or Spanish. I took Chinese. I think it is the only reason I got into NYU,Claremont,Grinnell,U of Rochester,Fordham Trinity(Conn). I had terrible SAT's and a 3.2 GPA . Not very good. How did I get in? I think it was the Chinese and that I want to incorporate it into the business world.

ChaiMex

Spanish is easier with your english background, Chinese will be easy if you Japanese (both how to read and write), and easier to a lesser degree then Japanese if you know Vietnamese, Korean, or even Filipino..Viet and Korean help you more then Filipino though...
Spanish is easy if you know French, Portuguese, Filipino, Latin, and Italian...Italian big time...
I know both, cause...I'm Mexican and Chinese...hehe...
The characters in Chinese are hard, the translation may not be accurate, but it can be simple...like if you want to make a sentence past you add a seperate word at the end...
Spanish can also be complicated...like in Spanish...they're 2 word for fish...one means fish that is dead, the other fish that is alive...IF you just know english Spanish will be wayyy easier...
I would take Spanish, but Chinese is not a bad choice...you have the tones which will absolutely annoy the crap out of you.
take spanish or french if you don't speak Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, or any other chinese dialect....assuming you mean mandarin...some places offer Cantonese...

zarathustra

Call me crazy, but wouldn't the gratification from Spanish be far more immediate and (from a literary perspective) more rewarding? Compare how many years of Spanish it would take to be able to read Cervantes or Gabriel García Márquez versus how many years of Chinese it would take to read great Chinese texts. And ftr I'm Japanese and have tried to learn both Japanese and French and can say with complete confidence that French was, even for someone who grew up listening to Japanese, infinitely easier. Just something to consider.

collegeprep11

in the us- spanish...in the world- chinese

Coño

pquote]...one means fish that is dead, the other fish that is alive...IF you just know english Spanish will be wayyy easier...[/quote]

o.O De que estas hablando guey?

aisgzdavinci

Chinese all the way

qihqi

nuestro amigo chino mejicano se refiere diferencia entre pez y pescado... q ambos son fish....

I am chinese so I know it and tried to teach chinese to latinos... It is hard even for teaching!!
If you are not asian then you tongue ain't physiologically designed to pronounse the 4 different scents.
so learn spanish... if you learn spanish in one year then u might be able to have already a easy conversation with ramdon cute latino girl for example...
note that chineses from different provinces speak differently...VERY DIFFERENTLY. So if you learnt from a beijing you won't understand to a Shandong guy for example.
So go with Spanish

hippofippo97

Wow, thanks for the MANY posts. I think I'm going with spanish but I'm not 100% quite yet.

Jakor

Unless your teacher's Chinese, they probably won't teach it well. Even if they are Chinese, they might not teach it well (thus why Asian parents send their kids to Chinese language schools). So, I'd say Spanish is definitely better for HS learning.

_daniel

English is NOT the official language of the US.
In fact, it's the de facto language.


I'd say take Spanish.
Its easier.
Its faster.
Its spoken more in the US.

shelley14

It really depends on your language proficiency and how much time you want to spend on a language vs. something else. Chinese is very difficult to learn - tone, characters, etc. You have to dedicate a lot of time to learning this type of language. And, while I agree that China as a world power and a presence in the world, would make you think that learning Chinese would take you far ... there are thousands, if not more, of Chinese Americans who are able to fill the language void without struggling.
If learning foreign languages is the be all and end all for you, then go for it. But, if you also want to be a star in something else ... learning Chinese may detract from other things you want to do,

jamesford

Actually, chinese is spoken throughout Asia, which is a continent, not a simple "region." Note that I'm not trying to say that chinese is a better language to learn than spanish, I'm just trying to make some points for chinese since the vast majority of ppl on this thread are in favor of spanish. The OP should make a decision after weighing the pros and cons of BOTH sides.

Agneisse

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)