Mshed001

Chinese, definitely, because if you do humanitarian work in Africa, most of them will speak English or French (so brush up of French). In Latin America, Spanish will get you everywhere (it?s much better to speak Spanish in Brazil or the Islands, since most will understand you, and you won?t look like an American tourist). But in Asia, Chinese will be your best choice!

Mshed001

Oh, and if you do any work in mid-Asia - Kazahstan, Uzbekistan, Azeibarzhan, Moldova, even Afghanistan, and many-many more, you definitely need to know Russian!

wis75

Hindi may be one of the two official Indian languages, but English is the other... We sponsored children through Plan USA, even the poorest of the poor are learning English, plus their native language and probably Hindi.

mrego

In the 1970s and 1980s, the "in" language was Russian. So what happens when you spend literally years and years learning Chinese only to find that 10 years later it is not "in" anymore?
Least useful language: French. I don't know why schools even bother to teach it. It is increaslingly one of the least spoken languages.
BTW, Brazillians speak Portuguese, not Spanish.

88888888

Mandarin .

BIGTWIX

Maributt,
chinese speaking countries as a whole are not poor at all

so what if taiwan, malaysia and Thailand arent.

China is, and u said it wasnt.
CHina is the second richest nation in the world.
Also, singapore is freakin rich.

it is 1/750th the size of california, but has about as much money as 1/6th of california.

If singapore was as big as california, and had the same ratio of money to saize as it does now, it would be the Richest country in the world.

so yeah
chinese countries as a whole are freakin rich.

also, i think learning a language u dont desire to learn is stupid, so dont learn mandarin unless u really want to

Sharone

hmmm... well, merributt, persian=farsi, and it's very difficult for americans to get there, esp to volunteer, so it's not worth it except for security.

honestly, chinese is awesome for business, but it's not worth it for what you want to do. Chinese is SO difficult- I've put hundreds of hours into it, and lived in Taiwan for a year, and still can't read a children's book. You need to really love the language to study it. Also, China is so rich- there are many other countries that need your help more.

French is an excellent option. You've got a huge portion of Africa, as well as some parts of the Carribbean and Asia, to work in with French. Spanish is also great. I say stick with those languages. Arabic, like Chinese, is extremely difficult (I study it as well), and is not worth it unless you're absolutely sure about it. Also, Arab countries, though many are poor, tend not to be as poor as French-speaking African countries.

Sharone

You might also want to learn some of the more commonly spoken african languages, like swahili and amharic. russian is also an excellent choice.

frankie38

According to the World Bank, (2005)

Mexico ranked 71
China ranked 128

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/D...rces/GNIPC.pdf

Incredulous

There are a number of issues to consider. For Chinese, consider the fact that you could learn 3-4 phonetically or alphabetically-based languages in the time that you could learn Chinese, and it's not likely to get you much.

I can't think of one country where knowing Chinese would involve you on the ground in large humanitarian or public health kinds of emergencies. The Chinese, for instance, are not going to let you into Tibet or Xinyang. I worked in Indonesia and my Mandarin was helpful on a World Bank project I worked there, but this was only because one of our project assistants was Chinese. Only 2% of the population is Chinese. Etc.

See this earlier thread about Chinese vs. Portuguese:

Chinese or Portuguese? Which is more important?

On the other hand, China itself is becoming a bigger and bigger actor on the international scene in terms of flows of aid or tied aid dollars (usually as I understand it to secure oil rights), so maybe knowing it would help you deal with an important player. But this is of dubious value, in my opinion.

Some have said French is not worth learning, and if you want to stay in the US, I agree. But for international public health/humanitarian issues, Francophone Africa itself could provide you with a career's worth of work.

Spanish has a very good effort expended/value achieved ratio for you.

Arabic particularly but also Russian could be of good value, though with these and especially Arabic, you are talking about really tough languages to learn. Also, different kinds of Arabic are spoken in different countries and in classes one learns the classic Arabic.

One thing to consider: there are good scholarships ($25,000 good) available at many grad schools for Chinese, Arabic, and a couple of other tough ones. If you got a head start with one of these languages, you could potentially fund your grad school education. These scholarships are competitive, though, and you have to schmooze the people within the school you are attending who actually make the decision (best to ask about this scholarship before you actually choose a a school and get some commitments from the people who make the decision to fund you). FLAS is what they're called and I think they're given by the Dept. of Education or maybe the Dep. of State.

I think an element you most need to consider is where your skills will actually get used. I mentioned that you aren't going to be granted access in countries where Chinese is heavily spoken to help with humanitarian emergencies/public health kinds of issues. On the other hand, in most of Africa, and in some situations in Latin America, you would.

Another way of looking at this question is to consider areas of civil war or future areas of flooding owing to global warming (e.g., Bangladesh), find out what languages are spoken there and if you'd be given access to pursue activities there and choose that or those languages.

Lotus123

If you are looking for certain economic gain now rather than 10+ years down the road (as MIGHT be the case with Mandarin), then the languages that would make a great deal of sense would be Japanese or German. After the US, Japan and Germany currently have the second and third biggest economies and very few native English speakers that speak their languages (however, in my experience, most Germans can speak excellent English).

Aside from these, with the continued immigration from Spanish speaking countries, Spanish would make a lot of sense. Spanish is WORLDS easier than Japanese, and a smaller percentage of the Spanish speaking community speaks English than Germans do.

For humanitarian issues, French would be a good choice as numerous countries in Africa speak it as a first or second language.

sauronvoldemort

if u want to be a hard-core scholar, classicist, take greek and latin..

if u want to read alot, take arabic.

if u know french and hate memorizing foreign vocabulary, take italian.

germanic languages, i'm totally against. romance languages, afro-asiatic languages (hebrew, arabic, etc) are preferrable..

walnut

Just learn all the languages that are relevant to your desired area of work. This of course, may involve a humanitarian corroboration between many ethnicities and international countries.




No really. Most people I met at the ICJ, EU Parli, UN branches, all knew multiple languages. I've rarely met a humanitarian worker who knew only only two languages. The documents used at the UN are translated into 7 languages on a daily basis too. It takes hard work to change lives .

charizardpal

You're all cheaters!!!! You just learn languages that have something in common with languages that you already know, so that you can rely on cognates and simular gramatical structures! Here's what you should study to be a real master:

Classical Chinese
Modern Finnish
Middle English
Russian
Classical Arabic
Hebrew
Cherokee


There! Study these and I guarentee learning '2-3 languages in a flash' won't be so easy! You're all just cheating by studying Itallian, Spanish, Portugese and latin at the same time!!!!

kyledavid80

^^ uhh, similar* grammatical*

Learning languages that have cognates can be helpful -- like Latin (can help you understand your own language better). In addition, if you didn't know, many of the languages that are useful happen to be related to English. You'll notice, also, that people have suggested Asian languages, which, in many cases, are language isolates...