Russian, Arabic, or Turkish

Buggie111
Sat, 23 Aug 2014 19:26:44 +0000

Coming from someone who’s half-Russian, half-American (and spends summers in Russia), I can say that there is no abnormal (meaning, nothing above any crap you might get in other countries, like the US) making fun of Chinese there. If anything, Chinese are respected as powerful, friendly neighbors. STEM oriented students in Russia study Chinese as well as English. So no, nothing bad there.

As for your main question, I’d say go with Russia if you’re planning on staying in China for college/career. There’s a lot of trade links between the two countries, and the language is just about as important as Spanish would be to me (I live near the Mexican border). Arabic would be my second choice, as it’s widespread and an important language in today’s world. Turkish…meh…in etymological terms, it takes second fiddle to Arabic. Sure, most Central Asian languages are Turkish based, but you’d find a lot more use for Arabic or Russian.