somead896

Someone told me you could learn four romance language by the time you learn Chinese. I would go with Spanish but it is not biased cause I live in SD and that is like a melting pot of races.

BedHead

As someone who is white and has learned Spanish and Chinese, I can tell you vehemently and unequivocally that the only good reason to learn Chinese in your position (as one person said) might be because it helps on the margin with a college admission. That is the ONLY reason.

I think it is incredibly weak reason -- life is far more than about getting into what you perceive to be the right college.

You said yourself you are not so great at languages. I am above average, not stellar; I speak 5 languages. Chinese is incredibly time-consuming to learn. You won't master the language unless you spend several years in China. Are you willing to make this commitment? If not, why start?

Spanish is much easier to learn. This is true for children learning the languages the first time as well as for adults. There was a study comparing I think it was 4th graders in Spain to 4th graders in China. The Spanish 4th graders could speak a lot more of the words in their language.

The Chinese writing system is incredibly inefficient -- and it is time-consuming to learn.

Google the Foreign Language Institute and check out the difficulty of languages. Chinese is in the highest echelon. Spanish the lowest.

In terms of usefulness, that debate has been held here. But if you never get to the point where you can speak the language reasonably well, it's a moot point. And chances are about 99% you won't even if you think you will with Chinese. I have exactly one white friend among hundreds I know who speaks Chinese really well; he lived there for 10 years and he is legend even among those who lived there that long for being such a good speaker of the language.

Coño

A "continent" can be a "region" as well But no, most of the speakers are located in China, the region I was talking about.

According to wikipedia:

(majorities): East Asia
(minorities): Southeast Asia, and other regions with Chinese communities

Oh yeah, that encompasses the entire continent of Asia... :-/

Jonathan1

Where Is Courtney8?

fa-la-la-lena

lol, as a fellow chinese and spanish speaker, i definitely agree that spanish is the way to go, unless you want to go way in-depth into Chinese (i.e. visit China/Taiwan, work with Chinese immigrants etc.) I'm sorry, but if you just want to learn a little Chinese it will most likely not help you in life. Plus, you sound horrible to chinese-speakers if you don't know how to pronounce things correctly (90% of americans), because the tones/accents/whatever-you-call-ums are pretty darn weird.

BedHead

Here's one view:

"After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of the world's ten most influential languages:
(number of points given in parentheses)

English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)"

icy9ff8

A new charter school is opening near my home for grades K-8. All students will be required to study English, Spanish & Chinese (Mandarin dialect) for all 9 years. This is a great idea in my opinion.

Coño

The only way I'll ever feel the need to learn Chinese is if they scrap that horrible writing system.

Keshira

Since you say you're not that great with languages, and I'm guessing you don't really love learning languages for its own sake either, go with Spanish. It's much easier and there's a larger chance that you can become at least conversational in it-- although most people never become close to conversational not to mention fluent in their HS second language.

Keshira

BedHead: But it's compiled by a western source, so couldn't there be bias in the top 4 languages being western languages?

Newjack88

Do Spanish. Contrary to what others are saying, learning Spanish is probably more useful. There are far more Spanish-speaking immigrants who do not know English than Chinese-speaking immigrants who do not know English. In regards to the whole business argument, business around the world is done in English anyways. Almost every, if not every, person involved in international business knows English.

Keshira

East Asia and Southeast Asia is quite a chunk of Asia, imo. Or at the least the parts of Asia with influence/power.

Keshira

While there are tons of websites that list languages by difficulty for native English speakers, I can't find websites that list them from the POV of native speakers of any other language. Does anyone know any?

I was wondering, if Chinese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers (second only to Japanese), is it the same vice versa? Is English one of the hardest languages for Chinese speakers?

Coño

Yes, a chunk. Which proves my previous point that Chinese is only found a single region whereas Spanish can be found spanning almost two entire continents and isolated areas in others.

Russia has quite a bit of power as well as Korea IMO. I would hardly consider Southeast Asia a power house. China is only considered a power house because of its population and the supposed potential that its economy holds. We shall see.

And IMO it shouldn't be the same vice versa.

Have you seen the Chinese writing system? That alone should make it the hardest language to learn for any person that does not live in China (and even its own inhabitants). English is nowhere near as complicated.

BedHead

Look at the criteria that earned languages high positions on the list. What are the key aspects of the top 3? 1) Languages of colonialization 2) Relatively easy languages. I think those two things explain a heck of a lot. English is a no-brainer at the top. The US/Britain won WWII. English became the new lingua franca. I do think among his criteria "socio-literary prestige" must be a fairly subjective measure. I don't see a whole lot of bias possible in the other factors. I don't know when this list was put together. Surely China's economic power is growing, but it doesn't have a lot of primacy in other categories.