<p>Hi I was just wondering what language you guys recomment to take to fulfill a foreign language requirement. I was thinking Chinese since I would be going into business but then I’ve heard numerous people learning Chinese is way too difficult. I also don’t want to learn Spanish or French for my own personal reasons. Any feedback would be great [=</p>
<p>For business, Spanish is the obvious choice. There’s an entire continent of them. The Chinese are learning English, you’ll waist your time learning their horribly inefficient writing system. </p>
<p>Maybe Portuguese? Brazil is a business leader in Latin America.</p>
<p>Lots of jobs are getting outsourced nowadays…Hindi and Chinese are your best bets.</p>
<p>The Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for English speakers for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve General Professional Proficiency in Speaking and General Professional Proficiency in Reading. Times shown are indicative of coursework at the FSI.:</p>
<p>Category I: Languages closely related to English - 23-24 weeks (575-600 class hours):</p>
<p>Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish</p>
<p>Category II: Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English - 44 weeks (1100 class hours):</p>
<p>Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik), Polish, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Zulu</p>
<p>Category III: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers - 88 weeks (second year of study in-country) (2200 class hours):</p>
<p>Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean</p>
<p>Other languages:</p>
<p>German 30 weeks (750 class hours); Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili 36 weeks (900 class hours)</p>
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<p>“Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean”</p>
<p>And there’s an asterisk next to Japanese labeling it the most difficult of all. :)</p>
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<p>You know Co</p>
<p>Dwindle, don’t be so dimwitted. I’ve stated on this forum on several occasions that I do study Mandarin and the writing system, Chinese.</p>
<p>There’s a fluent speaker of Chinese on this board who learned it as a second language and he openly admits that it is horribly inefficient, among other things.</p>
<p>Don’t let your foolish pride cloud your judgement, there are way too many characters, speakers of languages such as English have much larger vocabularies at younger ages than speakers of languages like Chinese, the literacy rates are lower because there are so many characters, and so on.</p>
<p>Yes, Chinese is a nice language, but we are discussing from a strategic viewpoint here.</p>
<p>Well strategic wise, both are good for business and global affairs no doubt. No need to bash a language with so much hate. Yes, it is difficult to learn compared to English but it is by no means impossible. Plus, if you use it everyday, like the people in mainland China, it will not be difficult. My parents and I strongly assert that if you practice well enough, it will not be difficult. Don’t let the writing system get to you.</p>
<p>I’ve met some people who have mastered the language as their second language who speak and write it much better than me or my parents (we’re native speakers). I wouldn’t be too pessimistic about it. </p>
<p>Honestly, just learn which ever language you personally think will be to your benefit. Co</p>
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<p>well, when taking language classes, you are learning the culture too. It is true that many people in the developing countries speak English, but being able to speak and read the native language ( not necessarily at proficient level) and more importantly understanding the culture will certainly give you an edge.</p>
<p>^ exactamente!</p>
<p>chinese is not for the faint hearted or those who are looking to “fill language requirements,” IMO. Of course it depends on what you expect to achieve. If you are interested and want to learn more about Chinese, than take the classes. If you want to become fluent, don’t expect that to happen after a couple of semesters. Expect it to take the rest of your life. (obv it won’t take your whole life but that’s the sort of dedication I’m trying to convey)</p>
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<p>Off topic, but I have to say it: Co</p>
<p>India’s two official languages are Hindu and English…I don’t see much point in trying Hindu,give it a few more years and English will takeover.:)</p>
<p>European languages are generally going into decline outside of their sphere’s of influence with the obvious exception of English. Spanish is ok,but unless you plan on running a sweatshop,business dealing seems hit or miss. Note:There isn’t an entire continent of spanish speakers,Brazil ruins the SA domination :P</p>
<p>Arabic would be interesting,but so would another language you have ancestry in.</p>
<p>Chinese would be fun if one could ignore the writing and just use pinyin(for those of us used to alphabets over characters). Total lack of,well,everything grammar seems refreshing-and SVO word order is familiar. Tones are good,since in english you have words like wind(moving air),and wind(to wind up)-and absolutely no way to tell in english without tonal markers…So I give chinese the win when it comes to spoken.</p>
<p>Then you have Russian. Not so phonetic,different but easy alphabet…The nightmare is all the gender,cases,conjugations,tenses… Still,more interesting than most(i’d say more than arabic).I didn’t mention hard VS soft,but that comes with the language.</p>
<p>And my personal favorite and language I’m in the process of attempting fluency…Japanese.
Get past the SOV word order and it’s easier than it seems. Overall,it has no cases and word specific gender(some words are just ‘girly’ or masculine outright). Conjugation and endings are easy-and dare I say-fun when you get the hang of it. Polite,deferential, and humble endings sound hard,but easy to keep up with once learned,and add depth. Most of the time,it’s context related,so subject/topic is assumed. Two alphabets,but overall it isn’t THAT bad compared to english alphabet-it’s capital and lower cases,then you have cursive-so it evens out a little better when you realize katakana and hiragana are really similar and having none of that capital and cursive nonsense(though kanji would be a problem if you don’t like Chinese…Japanese is just less reliant on those special characters).Future/present then past for tenses.</p>
<p>It just depends what kind suits your learning style. Your going to have to work on whatever you do,and what you feel is rewarding. I wouldn’t go with Cantonese,just Mandarin. The only major dialect you should concern yourself with is Brazillian VS Portuguese dialects of the same language(portuguese sounds dated-omission of older words like ‘tu’ and such stuff is common in Brazilian portuguese).</p>
<p>EX)Japanese suits my learning style,but Chinese would be fun to speak(though,it’s obvious not at writing). They’d have a boom in learning if they just allowed official pinyin as the main written language.</p>
<p>I vote for Arabic.</p>
<p>I’m slightly curious why this thread was rejuvenated but I will provide a basic comment.</p>
<p>In general, Spanish probably has the greatest utility as a second language within the United States. Moreover, a foreign language course can be nice to integrate into the academic schedule for the diversity it provides to the academic load and the unique intellectual challenge. Introductory (level A) courses at Harvard, though, can be quite work-intensive.</p>
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<p>This is a stupid question. It depends upon</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Objectives – Are you trying to learn just any language that will increase your travel options? Are you anticipating careers in foreign service or business? Are you trying to be able to, in theory, communicate to as many people in the world as possible? Are you looking for an intellectual challenge? </p></li>
<li><p>Your prior foreign language foundation – If you already speak Spanish fluently, learning Portuguese is a smart choice over Afrikaans because you’ll get more results from less work. If you speak Turkish proper, perhaps you’d want to consider Uzbek.</p></li>
<li><p>The time you have to put into it – This depends upon the particular language departments that you’d be taking classes in, in this case Harvard. I’ve heard the Italian program is fairly easy, whereas Arabic is a bigger commitment.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am interested in the historical and contemporary Middle East, so it makes sense for me to learn Arabic. I already speak Spanish so that opens the door for me to other romance languages. I don’t see myself really getting involved with Japan so Japanese would be a dumb choice for me.</p>
<p>Why do you want to learn a language? Is it merely because Harvard has a requirement? Is it because you are looking for utility/practical advantage? Is it because of the ability to read/think in a different way? That, it seems to me, is the first question you need to answer for yourself before you ask which language is the “best” to learn.</p>
<p>If you are going to apply for graduate study in the humanities most departments require a reading knowledge of French and German before the PhD, if you are going into business-- then make a decision as to which country will have the biggest impact upon your future career and choose. If politics, then which language is important in your region of the country? If you are doing it for inherent reasons then which language has the most appeal–have you always wanted to read Pushkin? Or Aristotle? or Cicero? Do you want to read the Old/New Testaments untranslated? </p>
<p>I’m not answering your question, because you haven’t asked the right one–yet. And when you do, the answer will be obvious to you.</p>
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<p>What do you think would be better for a physicist to learn, French or Russian? Right now I’m leaning toward French for ease of acquisition, but Russian just seems so much cooler. Dos vedanya, baby. 
</p>
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<p>Latin 'n Greek.</p>