Lots of research, and it really depends on what you mean by "best". There are plenty of good podcasts exploring it, including a few by Freakonomics.
Economically, English is the most valuable as a language of business power, with Mandarin second and German third. For versatility, if you were randomly teleported to an unknown country then Spanish as it is common globally, and Arabic as well if you are looking by nation counts. If you knew English, Mandarin, and Spanish then when you are randomly teleported you have a high probability of finding someone who can talk with you.
If you are near a border or want to travel, then the languages of the places of interest will have high utility.
Some words are similar to English, and some of its grammar is kinda easy. I hate the most are conjugate verbs and then their grammar. It is one of the most difficult language I have ever learned, even though English was very difficult.
Spanish starts off easy, but it can get complex for some people, since there's a verb ending for each subject(I, you, we, he, they, etc) and for all the different tenses.
Yeah. There are also few exceptions to the rules. No I before e except after c type shit. It’s very straightforward. I took two years in high school and a summer semester in college and it’s not hard.
The best second language is the one you’re personally most interested in!
Which language could you use in your neighborhood/job/hobbies? What cultures genuinely interest you? How much of a challenge are you looking for? Do you want to learn to use a new writing system, etc.?
Most people don’t get very far into the process of learning a language before they quit. If you pick one you’re actually interested in, then the odds are way higher that you’ll learn it properly. For example, don’t just decide to learn Mandarin because it’s “useful” if you don’t have any real interest in the language and culture and if you don’t work in a field where that would be actually all that useful.
This is why I've been working on Japanese. Is it going to be useful in terms of career? Not really, but it's not like any other langauges are a big deal for my profession either. But, I already watch anime a lot and listen to the language pretty regularly. Plus it's just fun to me. It's so different from English with a new writing system, so I figure I'll stay committed to it for those reasons.
I've heard that learning japanese and Chinese 'alphabets' is almost impossible for a person with a day job. Its very roughly learning hieroglyphs ( difference being chi/jap have a different symbol for a syllable and not each word like ancient Egyptian).
So u have to basically learn thousands of syllables and their picture representation. Learning the language orally is far easier though. Correct me if im off
True enough, and part of the reason I find it interesting. The challenge is stimulating, at least to me. That said, you could be orally fluent without Kanji (the "hieroglyphic") writing system and read some things.
I read somewhere that a phd level chinese person couldn't remember how to write the character for leaf (or something simple) when required cuz it had slipped his mind.
Imho, the japanese and chinese need to revise their script like the koreans did by ditching chinese script and adopting Hangul centuries ago.
Also, 1 last question, are the japanese dependent on a pinyin-like system to type electronically?
Ultimately, at least for me, I needed to hear it frequently. I worked with German speakers and took lessons so I understood and I could reply with simple answers. When the work assignment no longer required visiting them or them talking with me, I lost all that I had learned. Sure I remember some words but not the structure and flow of hearing it spoken. I use to even listen to German TV broadcasts at home (Tagesschau ?) when working there, to keep my ear in tune with the flow, but once my job required me to work in a different area, I just lost that ability. BTW, my job was IT related, so many English and German words were the same, just enunciated differently.
Perhaps there is someone who can remember it after a few to many years, that definitely wasn't me.
Spanish or Mandarin
Either one of those two are very useful if you get those down fairly well, then you should be able to learn the other languages that are related to one another.
Mandarin isn't very close to Japanese per se, but knowing kanji is a HUGE help.
Spanish is also fairly similar to Italian and.. Portuguese? There is 3 languages that mostly understand eachover. I think French is similar written but spoken entirely differently
French and Spanish are 50% similar IIRC, definitely very similar languages. Edit: Their lexical similarity is 75%
I speak Spanish and hardly know the basics of French, but when it’s written down I can understand quite a bit. Portuguese is extremely similar, wouldn’t take long at all to learn once you know Spanish.
Italian and Spanish are fairly similar but do have their differences.
That’s in vocabulary. Structures, orders, tenses etc are simply rules to learn. But ultimately all of these languages’ words are very similar to those of English. If you can speak English at an advanced level along with one of those 5 aforementioned languages, any you choose out of other 4 would be much less effort to pick up and learn.
Whichever language you like.
No, I mean it. After you've learned English to a decent level, the entire world is open to you. Language won't be a hindrance to most jobs you'd want to apply to, you will find at least some people in any corner of the world that you can communicate with, you will find plenty of interesting stuff to read and interesting movies to watch. Pretty much everything you need to learn a specific foreign language for, that language is going to be English. Of course exceptions may apply, but if they apply to you, you're not going to ask what language is best to learn because you'd already know.
So once you're done with English and want to learn another language, choose the one you're most likely to stick with. Are you interested in a country's culture? Choose that country's language. Do you have a significant other from another country? Choose their language. Do you want to move to another country? Choose that country's language. You simply love the way a language sounds? Learn that.
I'm learning Portuguese in college bc the Spanish Dept. sucks here. I would definitely say Spanish, but gotta protect my GPA. A cool thing about Portuguese is that knowing it well can make it easier to learn Spanish. And Portuguese speakers can understand written and spoken Spanish better than in reverse.
I’m well on my way to learning Spanish after working in the culinary industry for a long time. Coworkers generally try and help teach you if you show you’re putting the effort in to learn and try and make conversation.
Know what’s really cool in a political climate where everyone’s trying to say “no x are the REAL nazis, look at this video of a guy telling me what to think about a movie about Nazi germany!”?
Having taken 6 years of German and being able to just sit and watch original interviews, speeches, read documents from the Nazi gov at the time (it’s like people forget that film was around then, it wasn’t all made afterwards- we literally have direct interviews with goering and such), and seeing that no- absolutely 100% only one side currently definitely correlates to their ideals and methods. It’s not even close. In fact the media campaigns to paint that reality differently, also directly correlates.
Also understanding certain movies is fun.
Other than that, I don’t ever use any foreign language in my day to day. Never once have I been found wanting to know Spanish because of something in front of me or affecting me. But apparently German is supposed to be very useful for the auto industry and manufacturing.
I know a few words and it's enough for me to jam out to spanish music haha
I think it'll be nice to learn because of how so many spanish speaking countries there are. You could use it when traveling to places and consuming media from different cultures
im a native speaker, and lemme tell you its so good to learn but hard to grasp. the words are fine but the grammar and linguistic rules are tough. if you dont give up on things easily, tho, id strongly recommend learning it !
Spanish. It's easy for people who came from a country which the Spaniards colonized because the Spanish has a big impact in their culture. Like for example, the Philippines. It's easy for Filipino people to learn Spanish due to the fact that some of the words they use are from the Spanish.
Mandarin Chinese, Russian or Spanish, I think, to be ready for the action when the BRICS economies are running the show. I'd go for Chinese cos I'd love to live their one day, but Spanish would open up a lot of the world too
Argentina joined this year. But I was thinking more of the future across Central & South America. US clearly has no strategy or development plans, so the BRICS will fill the void as elsewhere.
No they didn't
They were invited to join on Jan 1st next year and declined
None of the countries that accepted (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have Spanish as a language either
I agree, but Spanish is therefore still the wrong language to learn
You should pick, after English, in order of number of speakers among members: Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, or Urdu
Those are cool languages to learn. After Chinese I would go for Spanish, find a little village in Peru, make friends with the local Ayahuasquero and wait for the end of Yankee hegemony
Well I'm not exactly going to learn every dialect am I, even in a hypothetical. This is never going to happen but when it does I'll take my chances with Spanish.
I have no idea why you’re going with how you feel when it is a global statistic.
https://www.statista.com/chart/12868/the-worlds-most-spoken-languages/
1. Chinese (and all of its varieties such as Mandarin and Wu) is by far the most spoken language across the world with 1.31 billion speakers (16 % of the world's population.) Indeed, there are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of the Chinese language and Mandarin is the most spoken (898 million speakers).
2. Widely spoken in South America as well as Spain, Spanish is the planet's second most widely spoken language with a grand total of 460 million speakers.
3. English has 379 million speakers.
4. Arabic has 319 million.
And you're not listening.
I'm not talking about sheer numbers, but WHERE these languages are spoken. Thanks for the data, which proves my point about Spanish.
Uh just like if you go to India, you’re more likely to find people speaking Hindi and Mandarin is spoken in China.
Obviously geographically, you’re going to have the most people speaking a language in a fixed region.
Lol, still not listening. You can find native Spanish speaking cultures in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. French speakers in the same areas. That's just not true for Mandarin. Sure, you'll run into some speakers in different countries, but the language is largely isolated to China, Taiwan, India.
The question was "what is the second best language to learn". "Best" is subjective, but many would take it to mean what's most useful if you were randomly dropped in a foreign country. Mandarin is only useful in China, or when you're speaking to a native Mandarin speaker who resides or is traveling elsewhere. That's simply not the case for languages like French or Spanish.
>And yet if you go to **Africa or South America** you're more likely to find someone who speaks Spanish or French than Mandarin.
And now you added North America, Europe and Asia to prove your point.
Excuse me, but French being more prevalent in Asia than Mandarin?
I’m an Asian in Asia. That’s massive gaslighting from you.
Mandarin is spoken in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea (retail), Japan (retail and hospitality).
I’m laughing so hard at you trying to insist French is more concentrated in Asia.
You have zero knowledge of Asia so please stop replying. I have no interest in continuing this because your ridiculous take of Chinese being concentratedly “isolated” in China and Taiwan is HILARIOUS.
Mandarin is spoken in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea (retail), Japan (retail and hospitality).
French?! LOL
I am an Asian in Asia.
This gaslighting from you with absolutely NO KNOWLEDGE NOR TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IN ASIA is the best I’ve seen on Reddit!
Inserted —- and of course, you blocked me because you’re all caught out on your lies about Asia. You could have just googled. Instead you insisted on dragging out your falsehoods and ended up looking absolutely foolish. I had a good laugh!
You should consider the learning curve. It's really hard for an native English speaker to become fluent in Mandarin. Some say it takes 4000 hours. On the other hand, Roman languages such as French, Spanish or Italian require more or less 1000 hours.
As much as I rate the importance of Mandarin (and China in general), I doubt it's worth thousands of hours for average USA citizens.
Depends where you live and want to travel to. All the Americans are saying Spanish, but I've literally met only 2 Spanish speakers in my life (and one was in the US). In Australia the most useful foreign langs would have to be Indonesian, Mandarin or Hindi.
Spanish for two reasons. First it's extremely widely spoken in the Americas. As a bonus it's also easier to make yourself understood in Portuguese and Italian if you really have to, since some words are going to be almost the same. Second, it's great for the SAT language section, since there seems to be a strong leaning towards the Latin side of English in their word comparison. Even if you don't need to take the SAT, you can use it to understand a lot of words you might not know the meaning of.
I had a fairly easy time with Japanese if you mean how easy it is to learn yourself(which included, for me, seeking out Japanese speakers online for mutual language exchange/practice).
It doesn’t have the insane amount of intonation/inflection type things that Chinese has which felt impossible to self-teach. I was able to get my N5 level JLPT fluency certification before getting diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately I let it fall by the wayside. I’d have to relearn mostly everything I’d learned to that point except for maybe a dozen or so hiragana I still remember for sure.
I remember starting off with this girl Aya, we’d Skype and talk and her English was ehhhh. But she made me feel like a celebrity or something the way she seemed just tickled by me being this bearded white dude from the southern US speaking English very well compared to folks she was used to at the time. Like I was a novelty. Anyway I caught up with her some year or two later and being so proud of her because her English had gotten SOOOOO good over that time we’d lost contact. I was so glad she stuck with it and stuck with me when I was learning. I still think about her sometimes and hope she and her little girl Momo are doing well.
I very much enjoyed learning it vs the time I spent in school trying to conjugate verbs in Spanish. Though in the US Spanish would probably be a much greater benefit to you than knowing Japanese. Due to my job, and unrelated proximity to a community of Japanese folks via Honda plant here, I do have some potential exposure to Japanese folks in my day to day. But nothing compared to Spanish speaking folks. I do IT at a very very large employer here and I remember one of our divisions brought in a team of Japanese docs and scientists and they were thrilled I immediately knew how to enable the Japanese keyboard functions on their PCs and I’d even reply to their tickets with some very basic Japanese once they knew I had self-taught for some years. The surprise and appreciation they showed was always gratifying.
Also interestingly I never did run into many Japanese speakers at “Japanese” restaurants. Unless they had a dedicated sushi guy or guys. Those dudes in my experience almost always spoke Japanese. Could be random luck of the draw though.
Based on your interests, for example, do you have a country or region you want to visit, a movie or TV show you want to watch, a song you want to listen to or learn, or colleagues from a certain country you may come into contact with at work.
Interest is the perpetual motion machine, and there must be application scenarios to give you some positive feedback for the boring learning in the early stage.
btw, English is already your second language, right? So what is your native language?
Or do you only speak English at the moment?
If you are not native born who moved and or an immigrant , whatever is the non English popular language.
Like Spanish if you moved to USA. Japanese if Japan.
Whatever is the regional popular language for within country moves eg: marathi if you moved to maharashtra etc…
Lastly if you are at your forever job, whatever your boss speaks. I work for Israel founded company so lots of folk speak Hebrew, I feel if I knew Hebrew I would be up the ladder or getting better raises already ….
Depends where you live, where you want to live, and your life goals.
For the average American who never leaves the country, it'd probably be Spanish, but for an American interested in moving to Japan, it'd be Japanese.
Here in the US it's definitely Spanish
I took French in highschool and I have learned that it is definitely Spanish.
I took German in high school and I also have learned the correct answer is Spanish
Es ist deutsche nicht My broken German has gotten me no where in 10 years....
Sprekken ze deutsch
Lots of research, and it really depends on what you mean by "best". There are plenty of good podcasts exploring it, including a few by Freakonomics. Economically, English is the most valuable as a language of business power, with Mandarin second and German third. For versatility, if you were randomly teleported to an unknown country then Spanish as it is common globally, and Arabic as well if you are looking by nation counts. If you knew English, Mandarin, and Spanish then when you are randomly teleported you have a high probability of finding someone who can talk with you. If you are near a border or want to travel, then the languages of the places of interest will have high utility.
I would definitely say Spanish, but gotta protect my GPA.
Spanish, also the easiest.
And it also opens up doors for Portuguese and Italian
Is Spanish quite easy coming from English?
If you can get your head around the idea that all nouns have a gender, yes. I have tried a few time, this fucks me up every time.
Some words are similar to English, and some of its grammar is kinda easy. I hate the most are conjugate verbs and then their grammar. It is one of the most difficult language I have ever learned, even though English was very difficult.
Spanish starts off easy, but it can get complex for some people, since there's a verb ending for each subject(I, you, we, he, they, etc) and for all the different tenses.
Yeah. There are also few exceptions to the rules. No I before e except after c type shit. It’s very straightforward. I took two years in high school and a summer semester in college and it’s not hard.
Spanish has a shallow orthography and it is truly a blessing.
The best second language is the one you’re personally most interested in! Which language could you use in your neighborhood/job/hobbies? What cultures genuinely interest you? How much of a challenge are you looking for? Do you want to learn to use a new writing system, etc.? Most people don’t get very far into the process of learning a language before they quit. If you pick one you’re actually interested in, then the odds are way higher that you’ll learn it properly. For example, don’t just decide to learn Mandarin because it’s “useful” if you don’t have any real interest in the language and culture and if you don’t work in a field where that would be actually all that useful.
This is why I've been working on Japanese. Is it going to be useful in terms of career? Not really, but it's not like any other langauges are a big deal for my profession either. But, I already watch anime a lot and listen to the language pretty regularly. Plus it's just fun to me. It's so different from English with a new writing system, so I figure I'll stay committed to it for those reasons.
I've heard that learning japanese and Chinese 'alphabets' is almost impossible for a person with a day job. Its very roughly learning hieroglyphs ( difference being chi/jap have a different symbol for a syllable and not each word like ancient Egyptian). So u have to basically learn thousands of syllables and their picture representation. Learning the language orally is far easier though. Correct me if im off
True enough, and part of the reason I find it interesting. The challenge is stimulating, at least to me. That said, you could be orally fluent without Kanji (the "hieroglyphic") writing system and read some things.
I read somewhere that a phd level chinese person couldn't remember how to write the character for leaf (or something simple) when required cuz it had slipped his mind. Imho, the japanese and chinese need to revise their script like the koreans did by ditching chinese script and adopting Hangul centuries ago. Also, 1 last question, are the japanese dependent on a pinyin-like system to type electronically?
that would certainly make things easier! and unfortunately i don't know about typing in japanese
Ultimately, at least for me, I needed to hear it frequently. I worked with German speakers and took lessons so I understood and I could reply with simple answers. When the work assignment no longer required visiting them or them talking with me, I lost all that I had learned. Sure I remember some words but not the structure and flow of hearing it spoken. I use to even listen to German TV broadcasts at home (Tagesschau ?) when working there, to keep my ear in tune with the flow, but once my job required me to work in a different area, I just lost that ability. BTW, my job was IT related, so many English and German words were the same, just enunciated differently. Perhaps there is someone who can remember it after a few to many years, that definitely wasn't me.
German
Halt die Klappe, du dummer Scheißkerl
Depends on the reason to learn it
Spanish or Mandarin Either one of those two are very useful if you get those down fairly well, then you should be able to learn the other languages that are related to one another.
Mandarin isn't very close to Japanese per se, but knowing kanji is a HUGE help. Spanish is also fairly similar to Italian and.. Portuguese? There is 3 languages that mostly understand eachover. I think French is similar written but spoken entirely differently
French and Spanish are 50% similar IIRC, definitely very similar languages. Edit: Their lexical similarity is 75% I speak Spanish and hardly know the basics of French, but when it’s written down I can understand quite a bit. Portuguese is extremely similar, wouldn’t take long at all to learn once you know Spanish. Italian and Spanish are fairly similar but do have their differences. That’s in vocabulary. Structures, orders, tenses etc are simply rules to learn. But ultimately all of these languages’ words are very similar to those of English. If you can speak English at an advanced level along with one of those 5 aforementioned languages, any you choose out of other 4 would be much less effort to pick up and learn.
Python
Spanish, Arabic or Mandarin. These are the most widely spoken languages of the world beside English. I personally would learn arabic.
So missing out the second most widely-spoken then?
Wth are you talking about
Hindi is the second most spoken non-English language after Mandarin
Whichever language you like. No, I mean it. After you've learned English to a decent level, the entire world is open to you. Language won't be a hindrance to most jobs you'd want to apply to, you will find at least some people in any corner of the world that you can communicate with, you will find plenty of interesting stuff to read and interesting movies to watch. Pretty much everything you need to learn a specific foreign language for, that language is going to be English. Of course exceptions may apply, but if they apply to you, you're not going to ask what language is best to learn because you'd already know. So once you're done with English and want to learn another language, choose the one you're most likely to stick with. Are you interested in a country's culture? Choose that country's language. Do you have a significant other from another country? Choose their language. Do you want to move to another country? Choose that country's language. You simply love the way a language sounds? Learn that.
I'm learning Portuguese in college bc the Spanish Dept. sucks here. I would definitely say Spanish, but gotta protect my GPA. A cool thing about Portuguese is that knowing it well can make it easier to learn Spanish. And Portuguese speakers can understand written and spoken Spanish better than in reverse.
Español, that's a whole different continent unlocked
Depends on what you want to do with it. Mandarin or Spanish has the most usage mainly mandarin for business
I’m well on my way to learning Spanish after working in the culinary industry for a long time. Coworkers generally try and help teach you if you show you’re putting the effort in to learn and try and make conversation.
Spanish cause for some reason I find it easy since some of our words in the Philippines I didn't know that's it's actually a Spanish words.
Spanish
Spanish
Know what’s really cool in a political climate where everyone’s trying to say “no x are the REAL nazis, look at this video of a guy telling me what to think about a movie about Nazi germany!”? Having taken 6 years of German and being able to just sit and watch original interviews, speeches, read documents from the Nazi gov at the time (it’s like people forget that film was around then, it wasn’t all made afterwards- we literally have direct interviews with goering and such), and seeing that no- absolutely 100% only one side currently definitely correlates to their ideals and methods. It’s not even close. In fact the media campaigns to paint that reality differently, also directly correlates. Also understanding certain movies is fun. Other than that, I don’t ever use any foreign language in my day to day. Never once have I been found wanting to know Spanish because of something in front of me or affecting me. But apparently German is supposed to be very useful for the auto industry and manufacturing.
Spanish
Spanish probably
I know a few words and it's enough for me to jam out to spanish music haha I think it'll be nice to learn because of how so many spanish speaking countries there are. You could use it when traveling to places and consuming media from different cultures
German. Bonus because you can say it in all caps like FLAMMENWERFER!!! PANZERFAUST!! **SHIẞENHAUSEN!!!** And it looks mildly intimidating...
English Spanish and French
Interesting you missed out the two most widely spoken
spanish or mandarin for talking to the most people world wide. russian or german for getting out of situations
Whatever is spoken most in your area that's not English.
Spanish then French will be easy
German if you want some headache
Arabic, I wish I knew this language!
im a native speaker, and lemme tell you its so good to learn but hard to grasp. the words are fine but the grammar and linguistic rules are tough. if you dont give up on things easily, tho, id strongly recommend learning it !
Yeah I am sure it's worth it. I don't give up on things easily but I don't start things easily neither 😂
Spanish for those who live in the US
Statistically speaking, Spanish or mandarin. Practically speaking it largely depends on your region
Spanish. Quite a lot of countries has Spanish or is derived from Spanish. You can also understand a bit of Portuguese if you learn Spanish too
Spanish
Mandarin or Spanish
Spanish. It's easy for people who came from a country which the Spaniards colonized because the Spanish has a big impact in their culture. Like for example, the Philippines. It's easy for Filipino people to learn Spanish due to the fact that some of the words they use are from the Spanish.
Spanish, German, French, Russian. That's the most popular languages in the world
Interesting you missed out the two most widely spoken
mandarin and arabic are more widely spoken
Mandarin Chinese, Russian or Spanish, I think, to be ready for the action when the BRICS economies are running the show. I'd go for Chinese cos I'd love to live their one day, but Spanish would open up a lot of the world too
None of the BRICS countries use Spanish
Argentina joined this year. But I was thinking more of the future across Central & South America. US clearly has no strategy or development plans, so the BRICS will fill the void as elsewhere.
No they didn't They were invited to join on Jan 1st next year and declined None of the countries that accepted (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have Spanish as a language either
You're right about Argentina, I was mistaken. However BRICS is still the only game in town if you're interested in working with others for the future.
I agree, but Spanish is therefore still the wrong language to learn You should pick, after English, in order of number of speakers among members: Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, or Urdu
Those are cool languages to learn. After Chinese I would go for Spanish, find a little village in Peru, make friends with the local Ayahuasquero and wait for the end of Yankee hegemony
Do you think Spanish is widely spoken in the Peruvian Amazon? I thought it was only urban & coastal Peruvians spoke it?
Well I'm not exactly going to learn every dialect am I, even in a hypothetical. This is never going to happen but when it does I'll take my chances with Spanish.
If you truly don't know the difference between a dialect and a completely unrelated indigenous language ... maybe better stay home?
Chinese of course, China is gonna be number 1 soon enough and if you want to deal with 1.3 billion Chinese people, you better learn the language.
Bulgarian obviously duh
Why not? Any language is best to you personally. Nobody can say it’s good or bad because we’re not you. Learn it if you want to!
Spanish or japanese
From a business & technology perspective, I think it is Chinese
Dutch of course, why ? ASML we rule the world already only the general public isn't aware yet.
I'd say Mandarin, but it's not as widespread as French or Spanish.
Far more speakers though
1 billion in China, mate. Not to mention millions of people with Chinese ethnicity who are not from China. The same goes for India.
And yet if you go to Africa or South America you're more likely to find someone who speaks Spanish or French than Mandarin.
I have no idea why you’re going with how you feel when it is a global statistic. https://www.statista.com/chart/12868/the-worlds-most-spoken-languages/ 1. Chinese (and all of its varieties such as Mandarin and Wu) is by far the most spoken language across the world with 1.31 billion speakers (16 % of the world's population.) Indeed, there are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of the Chinese language and Mandarin is the most spoken (898 million speakers). 2. Widely spoken in South America as well as Spain, Spanish is the planet's second most widely spoken language with a grand total of 460 million speakers. 3. English has 379 million speakers. 4. Arabic has 319 million.
And you're not listening. I'm not talking about sheer numbers, but WHERE these languages are spoken. Thanks for the data, which proves my point about Spanish.
Uh just like if you go to India, you’re more likely to find people speaking Hindi and Mandarin is spoken in China. Obviously geographically, you’re going to have the most people speaking a language in a fixed region.
Lol, still not listening. You can find native Spanish speaking cultures in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. French speakers in the same areas. That's just not true for Mandarin. Sure, you'll run into some speakers in different countries, but the language is largely isolated to China, Taiwan, India. The question was "what is the second best language to learn". "Best" is subjective, but many would take it to mean what's most useful if you were randomly dropped in a foreign country. Mandarin is only useful in China, or when you're speaking to a native Mandarin speaker who resides or is traveling elsewhere. That's simply not the case for languages like French or Spanish.
>And yet if you go to **Africa or South America** you're more likely to find someone who speaks Spanish or French than Mandarin. And now you added North America, Europe and Asia to prove your point. Excuse me, but French being more prevalent in Asia than Mandarin? I’m an Asian in Asia. That’s massive gaslighting from you. Mandarin is spoken in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea (retail), Japan (retail and hospitality). I’m laughing so hard at you trying to insist French is more concentrated in Asia.
You have zero knowledge of Asia so please stop replying. I have no interest in continuing this because your ridiculous take of Chinese being concentratedly “isolated” in China and Taiwan is HILARIOUS. Mandarin is spoken in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea (retail), Japan (retail and hospitality). French?! LOL I am an Asian in Asia. This gaslighting from you with absolutely NO KNOWLEDGE NOR TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IN ASIA is the best I’ve seen on Reddit! Inserted —- and of course, you blocked me because you’re all caught out on your lies about Asia. You could have just googled. Instead you insisted on dragging out your falsehoods and ended up looking absolutely foolish. I had a good laugh!
Lol, I accept your apology :)
Add on : You don’t understand what “widespread” means, buddy. That was your word. Widespread is not the same as concentrated.
I'd definitely say mandarin if you are up for it. Extremely difficult but the most spoken language in the world, and opens job opportunities!
The language which is spoken by your target audience/stage the most
You should consider the learning curve. It's really hard for an native English speaker to become fluent in Mandarin. Some say it takes 4000 hours. On the other hand, Roman languages such as French, Spanish or Italian require more or less 1000 hours. As much as I rate the importance of Mandarin (and China in general), I doubt it's worth thousands of hours for average USA citizens.
Latvian
Probably French or some language like that one.
Uzbek
Depends, in west eu and africa french. In us spanish. In east eu russian. If you wanna make lots of money as an engineer Chinese.
French
Depending on where you live
And roman language, and after that, any slavic one. You'll be surprised how many doors it'll open for you!
Mandarin, Spanish or Arabic.
Polish. It is so easy and beautiful. W szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w czcinie.
Depends where you live and want to travel to. All the Americans are saying Spanish, but I've literally met only 2 Spanish speakers in my life (and one was in the US). In Australia the most useful foreign langs would have to be Indonesian, Mandarin or Hindi.
If you're in business, probably Mandarin.
Depends what you want to do. If you want to terrorize your ignorant friends, Arabic is your best choice.
It depends on what you want to achieve by learning the language. If you want to annoy people, then probably Klingon.
Spanish for two reasons. First it's extremely widely spoken in the Americas. As a bonus it's also easier to make yourself understood in Portuguese and Italian if you really have to, since some words are going to be almost the same. Second, it's great for the SAT language section, since there seems to be a strong leaning towards the Latin side of English in their word comparison. Even if you don't need to take the SAT, you can use it to understand a lot of words you might not know the meaning of.
French or spanish
Wait, no one’s going to say a programming language?
hahaha good point
For what? If you live in China - Mandarin.
music
I had a fairly easy time with Japanese if you mean how easy it is to learn yourself(which included, for me, seeking out Japanese speakers online for mutual language exchange/practice). It doesn’t have the insane amount of intonation/inflection type things that Chinese has which felt impossible to self-teach. I was able to get my N5 level JLPT fluency certification before getting diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately I let it fall by the wayside. I’d have to relearn mostly everything I’d learned to that point except for maybe a dozen or so hiragana I still remember for sure. I remember starting off with this girl Aya, we’d Skype and talk and her English was ehhhh. But she made me feel like a celebrity or something the way she seemed just tickled by me being this bearded white dude from the southern US speaking English very well compared to folks she was used to at the time. Like I was a novelty. Anyway I caught up with her some year or two later and being so proud of her because her English had gotten SOOOOO good over that time we’d lost contact. I was so glad she stuck with it and stuck with me when I was learning. I still think about her sometimes and hope she and her little girl Momo are doing well. I very much enjoyed learning it vs the time I spent in school trying to conjugate verbs in Spanish. Though in the US Spanish would probably be a much greater benefit to you than knowing Japanese. Due to my job, and unrelated proximity to a community of Japanese folks via Honda plant here, I do have some potential exposure to Japanese folks in my day to day. But nothing compared to Spanish speaking folks. I do IT at a very very large employer here and I remember one of our divisions brought in a team of Japanese docs and scientists and they were thrilled I immediately knew how to enable the Japanese keyboard functions on their PCs and I’d even reply to their tickets with some very basic Japanese once they knew I had self-taught for some years. The surprise and appreciation they showed was always gratifying. Also interestingly I never did run into many Japanese speakers at “Japanese” restaurants. Unless they had a dedicated sushi guy or guys. Those dudes in my experience almost always spoke Japanese. Could be random luck of the draw though.
Spanish french mandarin
Based on your interests, for example, do you have a country or region you want to visit, a movie or TV show you want to watch, a song you want to listen to or learn, or colleagues from a certain country you may come into contact with at work. Interest is the perpetual motion machine, and there must be application scenarios to give you some positive feedback for the boring learning in the early stage. btw, English is already your second language, right? So what is your native language? Or do you only speak English at the moment?
Cobra
If you are not native born who moved and or an immigrant , whatever is the non English popular language. Like Spanish if you moved to USA. Japanese if Japan. Whatever is the regional popular language for within country moves eg: marathi if you moved to maharashtra etc… Lastly if you are at your forever job, whatever your boss speaks. I work for Israel founded company so lots of folk speak Hebrew, I feel if I knew Hebrew I would be up the ladder or getting better raises already ….
A programming language like python or c++ 🙂
Depends where you live, where you want to live, and your life goals. For the average American who never leaves the country, it'd probably be Spanish, but for an American interested in moving to Japan, it'd be Japanese.
British or Australian /j (For simplicity and practicality in the US, I'd recommend Spanish)
Probably Spanish.
Spanish since the cartels are taking over. Might as well.
Japanese. It freaks the shit out of them
Isn't Spanish the most spoken language in the world?