<p>Hebrew and Arabic</p>
<p>It’s all in the mideast. Plus Hebrew and Arabic are very simmilar, so you can learn 2 languages basically in the time it takes for one. If you can only learn one Hebrew is by far better.</p>
<p>Spanish should be required for all American students. People whine about illegal immigrants and all and refuse to learn Spanish for that reason, but what they fail to realize is that the children and grandchildren of immigrants are at a huge economic advantage by speaking two languages fluently practically from birth, many of whom can pick up the other Romance languages very easily. Other Americans have to work harder to meet the status quo of Hispanics.</p>
<p>After Spanish, French (in most of the world, if people don’t speak English as a 2nd language, they will speak French), Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, and Farsi.</p>
<p>Chinese is not a language so please stop calling it as such.</p>
<p>1: Arabic, not only are there plenty of interesting dynamics occuring in arabic-speaking countries, many also play a huge role in US economics through oil.
2: Spanish, really useful in the US. Also useful due to Mexican-US relations and because South America is almost entirely Spanish speaking and has plenty of oil and interesting dynamics too.
3: Mandarin (better?), burgeoning power house.</p>
<p>Also, with the possible exception of Arabic, you´ll find plenty of people who speak the other languages in addition to English. If you want to be particularly in demand working in intl. relations, learning an obscure language such as tagalog, quichua, shuar, aymara, etc… might give you a unique niche. People obviously don´t have loads of options as to who they should hire when they´re negotiating with a small community that speaks only one poorly known language.</p>
<p>Hebrew is practically useless unless you’re a Jew. Most educated Israeli’s speak perfect English.</p>
<p>Spanish and Mandarin…definitley. There are multiple branches of Chinese. For example, Cantonese, Mandarin, so on.</p>
<p>English is the dominant language in the world for all facets of life. It’s considered a neutral toungue. As far as practical incentives to learn another language, there are few, if any. I don’t think we Americans should revel in our ignorance for all languages, except English. But, there our obstacles in learning a “useful” language that we shouldn’t disregard. For most countries, if one isn’t fluent in their languages, they’ll quickly switch over to English. Most Americans don’t have the opportunity to be fluent in other languages, like Europeans do, because we can’t take a train to Germany or a bus to France to have complete immersion in a language. </p>
<p>Again, I don’t know if it is as practical to learn German than it is for a German to learn English. I don’t think it’s practical to learn Arabic at all because Arabic is an umbrella toungue for dozens of dialects that are often unintelligible to each other. The Arabic learned in American schools is primarily literary Arabic that is mostly only found in written documents, such as the Qur’an and newspapers, which is equivalent to a formal, elaborate toungue like that of Shakespearean English to modern English.</p>
<h1>1 German or French: these comprise the two major languages of major texts in the scientific world; each is also highly advanced in cultural aspects</h1>
<h1>2 Chinese: enough said</h1>
<h1>3 Spanish: same as above</h1>
<h1>4 Hindi or Arabic: the final two major regional languages on the planet; learn whichever you choose depending on where you may be operating</h1>
<p>
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “Chinese is not a language.” If I recall correctly, Chinese is a language, Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken dialects of the Chinese language.</p>
<p>I would argue that Hindi is not as important to learn as some of the other languages mentioned, since a). English is also an official language of India and b). while the plurality of Indians speak Hindi, the majority do not. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi</a></p>
<p>Oh, and Chinese is still the most useful language to learn (excepts for perhaps Spanish) because a). it is the most spoken language in the world and b). it is the official language of a country that is soon to have the world’s largest economy. The assertion that most Chinese businessmen speak English, and thus Chinese is not necessary to learn, is rendered null because most INTERNATIONAL businessmen speak English, and speaking the language of potential business partners is a huge asset even if they already speak your language. If it wasn’t, Americans would stop learning foreign languages altogether.</p>
<p>Spanish should not be required for all American students; English should be. Having that said, if an American does not intend to travel to Asia, then Spanish is a wise choice.</p>
<p>I think Arabic, Persian, or Hebrew would be useful for a soldier or diplomat operating in the Middle East.</p>
<p>There are many dialects of spoken Chinese. Each region has its unique dialect as well as its version of Putonghua (Mandarin). Cantonese is the unique dialect of Hong Kong.</p>
<p>To learn putonghua could be useful in the near future.</p>
<p>It seems as if Hindi wouldn’t be as practical to learn as Chinese or Arabic. If you’re dealing with international business then you’d be dealing with educated people, and I would assume that the majority of (if not all) well-educated Indians speak English. </p>
<p>Both Spanish and French would be useful if you plan on doing business in Europe. While neither are growing in popularity as quickly as Arabic or Chinese, they are still widely used. Plus, if you learn one well and know only the basics of the other, you can still understand a lot of what is being said. (Our foreign language teachers once did a demonstration while the Spanish teacher and the French teacher spoke their respective languages in a conversation, and each was able to understand the other without knowing the actual language.)</p>
<p>Well, you are right to a certain extent that since educated Indians speak English, Hindi is not very essential to communicate… However, the advantages of learning Hindi are:</p>
<p>1) Being fluent in Hindi allows to you to understand Urdu.
2) Most Arabs in the eastern gulf region ( mostly on the east coast especially UAE and Oman) speak Hindi because of the high population of Indians here. Having been born and brought up in UAE, i’d say that knowing Hindi would benefit you tremendously here ( at times, moreso than Arabic ) because of the expatriate population here ( which is in majority ).
3) Learning Hindi helps you in Arabic to a certain extent because these languages originate from Urdu… Hence, they have words which mean the same because of the Urdu roots.
4) Knowing Hindi will enable the speaker to understand other local Indian dialects ( with some practice ).
4) Hindi, although not the native language of all Indians, is understood by most.
5) Learning a local language, such as Hindi, helps add the “personal” touch…</p>
<p>I’d put Hindi and Arabic on the same level and picking either one of those languages would be beneficial in addition to Mandarin!</p>
<p>P.S: I love both Hindi and Arabic and im slightly biased towards them 
Hence, please excuse me if it sounds a little too supportive of these languages…</p>
<p>Is Arabic a hard language to learn?</p>
<p>Yes!!!</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p><deleted>…</deleted></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Easier than Mandarin, Harder than Spanish in my opinion!</p>
<p>Well, learning to read and write Arabic is pretty difficult, if I understand correctly. Aren’t there different characters for the same letter depending on whether it is in the beginning, middle and end of the word? Hebrew has some final consonants (mem sofit, etc), but not too many.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>True…but definately easier than learning the characters of Mandarin…</p>
<p>Ya, Chinese characters aren’t easy to learn. Also, knowing how to understand Mandarin doesn’t help with trying to understand the other Chinese dialects like Cantonese or Hokkien.</p>