<p>In terms of usefulness, Spanish, especially if you’re staying in the U.S.</p>
<p>I just started studying Arabic. Do you think this will help, or do you need to be fluent in one of these languages?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>ممتاز! Help for what? Need to be fluent for what?</p>
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<p>Italian - it’s such a beautiful language :)</p>
<p>But if you want to be strategic, then Chinese or Portugese would be the way to go.</p>
<p>Portuguese, its a complex and rather poetic language.</p>
<p>And I take Japanese which uses Chinese characters. </p>
<p>Japanese people can’t thoroughly read a newspaper until around 18.</p>
<p>That’s saying something =P</p>
<p>why not learn TURKISH? Haha, Im Turkish, so I might be a little biased, but it IS the bridge between Europe and Asia and is becoming a more and more important country every day.</p>
<p>BUT I suggest you learn a language of a country that you might also consider LIVING IN. I, as a matter of fact, can speak Turkish, English and German fluently (and also un peu français :D) and considering learning Italian or Spanish, in case I ever want to live in one of those countries.</p>
<p>And keep in mind that most businessmen nowadays (at least the younger ones) can speak a few of these “popular” languages, so it might be better to learn a really different and NOT widely-known language to have an ADVANTAGE against them. Maybe Swedish? Its really easy to learn. Or Russian, if you have a thing for the cyrillic alphabet 
Or
maybe
TURKISH!!! :)</p>
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<p>Easy - Arabic or Mandarin will get you noticed by recruiters for business/banking jobs. Londondad</p>
<p>Not attending harvard, but I will reopen this thread so I don’t have to start a new one. My native language is English, and I’m planning on minoring in Spanish in college. If I were to rank my proficiency in Spanish between 0 and 1, 1 being fluent I would say I’m anywhere between a .75 to .9 depending on what area (reading, writing, speaking, listening). </p>
<p>I want to teach myself a second language; planning on moving to Europe so I’m not really sure which European language has the most economic dominance over there. So practicality and ease of learning are most important to me.</p>
<p>Any opinions?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
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<p>everyone north of france (i.e netherlands, germany, sweden etc.) can speak english. so the only part of europe where language might be an issue is france and all southern european countries.
Since you already know spanish and given the relative importance of france and italy in southern europe, I think these two are the languages that will give the most versatility in europe. And they are easy to learn since you already know a latin language</p>
<p>Farfalla is exactly correct. I would go for French, although it might be a bit more difficult for you to learn than Italian. Within the EU, France is much more influential and important than Italy for both business and political issues.</p>
<p>True French might be a little more difficult to learn, but it couldn’t be as bad as german, russian or something like that. But I was reading around the web and this question came up on wall street oasis and people said that it is pointless learning french:</p>
<p>“French: useless. French people won’t do business with you if you are not French or have perfect native fluency. Small market by the way.”</p>
<p>What are your opinions on portuguese? I could probably become as fluent as I am in spanish within a year or so since the only differences are basically vocab and some word endings so it would be an easy add on.</p>
<p>So say I have both time and motivation for all this (which may be difficult to obtain while in college and focusing on other things) the path of Spanish>Portuguese>Italian might be easy to do in a matter of years since they’re all so closely related. </p>
<p>Just food for thought.</p>
<p>[How</a> to: Use your Spanish to learn Portuguese | Matador Network](<a href=“http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-use-your-spanish-to-learn-portuguese/]How”>How To: Use Your Spanish To Learn Portuguese)</p>
<p>if you think of france as “a small market” then what would be portugal whose GDP is 250b$ compared to france which is 2200b$ !
population is also 6 times less.
Unless you want to learn portugese having brazil in perspective, I think it is insignificant compared to french from a european perspective.
Last, the fact that
is, in my opinion, totally exaggerated</p>
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<p>With a good knowledge of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are both easy, and French isnt much harder. Much of the vocabulary and the basic grammar are similar, though French spelling takes a little more getting used to. But picking up those languages is likely to be more useful in shops, on the street and in reading the local paper than in business communication, since English is the universal language of business throughout Europe. German is also worth considering, since Germany is such a major economic power, but its a bigger challenge. Russian is even harder because the grammar is complex and theres not much familiar vocabulary, but English is less widely spoken and in Moscow the signs in the subway are only in Cyrillic, so some knowledge of Russian comes in pretty handy.</p>
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<p>I’m learning Chinese, Japanese, and Esperanto. Chinese and Japanese are difficult but not impossible. I find learning Chinese and Japanese very fun and it makes learning other languages a breeze.</p>
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<p>@Farfalla:</p>
<p>That’s not my opinion, i was just sharing a viewpoint others brought up; I had no idea France had such a large market. </p>
<p>And my logistics behind learning portuguese would simply be so I could be very knowledgeable with the latin languages since, as stated many times on here, most of europe speaks english.
Not really sure where I want to live though since that plays into what I should learn. I’ve been to England, France, Italy, Malta, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico so I have a little taste of what everything is like. I really want to visit Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Croatia, Russia, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Spain so I have an idea of what everything is like. I plan on studying abroad in college for a semester or full year so I’m sure I’ll be able to see everything.</p>
<p>1 Germany 3,315
2 France 2,582
3 United Kingdom 2,247
4 Italy 2,055
5 Russia 1,465
6 Spain 1,409
7 Netherlands 783</p>
<p>Here’s the GDP rankings of countries in Europe so I’m guessing it’s only beneficial to live in those ranked 6 and up?</p>
<p>So I picked up how to learn german book today. It was between german and french since I could probably just learn portuguese with my schools online resources. French seems like it would be way more work to learn and since I was also split down the middle still I based it off of the book ratings and prices the store had. The german book was less than $15 and had a bunch of 5 star ratings whereas the french books were roughly $30 and had much lower ratings. Thanks for the help.</p>
<p>It is a pity you missed the “teach yourself Basque language” which sells for $1 only</p>
<p>If you but the Basque book, you can also pick up Esperanto and Pig Latin for half-price.
Also, why is this thread listed under “Harvard”?</p>
<p>I don’t think that had that book! I was just at barnes and noble and me being impatient so I didn’t want to get anything online. Maybe I’ll get that book for french or portuguese!</p>