Blink182

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

Ya, I'm going to have to disagree. China might be making huge gains in its economy over these last several years, but it means nothing overall. Where is most of the money going? Ask yourself; Hong Kong + government or CHINA?

Most of China is dirt poor, literally.

BIGTWIX

i was talking about the nation, not the people

Blink182

Yes, as am I. The "nation" IS the people. A nation is some territory inhabited by a people with ethnic, religious, way of life, etc similarities. A STATE, which is what you are refering to, is some political entity.

So after correct terminology, the STATE of China is rich. But once again, who cares? It means nothing. China might be making all the gains in the world, but when a very minimal of these gains goes to the public, China's power is severly diminished on a grand scale.

Ex: China might be raking in the dough' to fund its military, but what happens when the people of China have nothing to look forward to? Order and productivity go down, which affects the way China can utilize its military (global or domestic problems; right now China has a few global problems to worry about, North Korea, Japan, and the US to name a few).

Ok, after hijacking this thread and traveling wayyy off course, learn French. A LOT of "third world" countries speak it.

tokyorevelation9

Here's my ranking for an English-speaking resident of the United States:

1. Spanish/French (French is #1 for outside North America, one of the official languages of a billion international institutions, most importantly the UN)
2. German (strongest economy in Europe)
3. Arabic - Intelligence/ Military
4. Russian - Intelligence/ Military/ Work in former Soviet Union (IAEA, etc)
5. Chinese - Because many of the Chinese you'll be dealing with will already know English, and will prefer you not to speak Chinese, sadly enough.
6. Japanese - Same goes for Japanese as Chinese...strongest economy in Asia
7. Portuguese - Brazil
8. Turkish
9. Italian - fashion industry, along with French
10. Polish, if you happen to find yourself in Chicago during Polish Constitution Day.

Alzenauer90

I learned German and Frech...Both are spoken in Africa, because both Germany and France had colonies there....and Dutch is also good, but english speakers can't get the tone down and whole weird lip/throat movements sto save our lives.....

4321234

spanish or chinese, i'd say

joexc07

Which language would be most valuable in journalism? How about publishing?

BedHead

Tokyorevelation, I found your list interesting only because the reasoning behind it was so occult. I would have to say to anyone looking at what languages to learn that, if they didn't know English, they should start there. It's not enough to look at the following list:

Most Commonly Spoken Languages
Rank Language Number of Speakers
1 Chinese (Mandarin) 1,000,000,000 +
2 English 508,000,000
3 Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) 497,000,000
4 Spanish 392,000,000
5 Russian 277,000,000
6 Arabic 246,000,000
7 Bengali 211,000,000
8 Portuguese 191,000,000
9 Malay-Indonesian 159,000,000
10 French 129,000,000

I think it's better to look at the following list, which derives from the named rating factors:

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)


Beyond English, you have to make some judgement calls, IMO. If you want to do journalism, what stories/regions do you want to cover? Terrorism/Middle East/Oil? Learn Arabic. Africa? Learn French. Economies? Learn Chinese or Hindi or even Portuguese.

Remember that learning Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and perhaps Russian (I don't know about Hindi) will require sometimes much more effort than learning one of the simpler European languages. E.g., they say you can learn 4 europeans in the time it takes to learn Chinese.

In terms of difficulty of learning, here's how teachers rated the following languages. The higher the number, the more difficult the language.

French 2.4 Spanish 1.45 Italian 2.73 German 4.00 Russian 6.1 Chinese 8.64 Japanese 8.18 Latin 3.18 Ancient Greek 6.2 Hebrew 7.4 Arabic 7.91

Though it's rated as being easier here, I have personally heard that Japanese is harder than Chinese from a person who mastered both (at Berkeley, Harvard, and in Asia). I found the following analysis on the web:



Good luck. For me, it really boiled down to be about the ladies. As superficial as that sounds, it's the truth. I tend to like women from romance language-based cultures. Though it wasn't ultimately my cup of tea, my male friends who learned Chinese and stuck with it (I basically gave up after a few years only because I didn't want to stay in Asia) did so because they liked the ladies -- and then it became a good career choice for them as well. With me, I started on Chinese for career, but ended on Portuguese for love -- or for something a bit more visceral and sometimes related to love.

Taiwaneseterror

List of countries by GDP per capita
17. Singapore $32867
23. Taiwan $30084
70. Thailand $9084
87. China $7598

China is not the second richest nation in the world....lol

Despite its economic surge in the past few years, the average earnings for Chinese citizens have not increased significantly. The gap between the wealth and the poor has become greater though.

BedHead

China just surpassed the US as the world's largest economy measured in ABSOLUTE, not per capita terms.

http://www.newsoffuture.com/china_an...e_economy.html

But seriously, for the purpose of the question at hand, I would think richest which could be measured in per capita or absolute terms, would be defined in absolute terms. Iceland is pretty high up on the world's list of richest nations. But that doesn't mean that you should go out and learn Icelandic right away.

Even though China is only the 4th largest economy in the world now, if you learn Chinese you can communicate with most Taiwanese very well anyway.

Sungchul

English, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Spanish, and French are all nice to have under yourbelt.

frankie38

FWIW, I watched the 2007 Asian Entertainment award show hosted in Hong Kong. TV and film stars from HK, Taiwan, PRC, Singarpore, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan were in attendance. The show was hosted in English!

herodotus53

If you're interested in doing humanitarian work, I would advise you to definitely learn Spanish or even French. There are many desperately poor nations in Latin America and the Caribbean whose national language is Spanish, while many African countries actually speak French as one of their primary langauges.

Granted, Arabic will be useful in Africa as well. French AND Arabic would be even better, though. I know for a fact that Morrocco uses both French and Arabic as primary languages, and there might be other African nations that use Arabic as well.

Beyond Spanish, French, and Arabic, I would think about Creole (for work in the Caribbean) or some African dialects such as Swahilli, but you might have trouble finding a college or university that teaches those languages.

Here is a link to the Peace Corps website discussing their geographic areas of operation. You should be able to judge their own language needs by the regions of the world in which they work. Hope this helps. Good luck!

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc

kfc4u

you can't choose a language based on overall GDP, number of speakers worldwide, number of countries it is spoken in, where it is an official language, etc. if you want to get into humanitarian aid or public health. these factors don't determine where the international humanitarian aid jobs are.

i think you should choose the region or country that you want to work in, and then pick the language(s). some regions that may see more opportunities include china, india, sub-saharan africa, and latin america.

do you plan to work in administration or actually in the field? if it's administration, then french is probably necessary, since most international agencies are bilingual english/french. if it's field work, then pick the local language.


to clarify about china... china as a country is rich, but the inequality gap is HUGE. there are hundreds of millions of people living in poverty in central and western china. a huge chunk of china is closer to latin america than it is to shanghai. humanitarian aid, public health, and even disaster management are certainly widely applicable here. of course, this assumes that the jobs are as available as the problems though. for example, the AIDS crisis in china is usually swept under the rug rather than confronted.

GAclassof2008

don't ever think about latin. it is the most pointless waist of time. there is no use for it, not even in science majors. cause anyone can major in science and over exceed- w/o ever taking latin. root words are common sense.