Most logical foreign language to learn.

[El Rhino]

Klingon. Chicks dig it.

[AliveandWell]

Originally Posted by Simple Living

Why wouldn't I?

That's a good point. Learning Norwegian would give you access to a beautiful country, and the women over there... oh my goodness! They are so nice both on the inside and outside. If you really love their country and language I say go for it.

[Nosferatu]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948

spanish -- but first thing you should learn to say is
no quiero prestado de dinero por esquela (i dont want a student loan)

-----Yockelberry:No quiero prestado de dinero por esquela Translation:I don't want a loan for my obituary (death notice)

[RobE]

Spanish and Chinese.

The 21st century is more and more looking like the Century of China and, just as with Japan in the 80's, you are going to find more companies demanding at least some Chinese language background.

Some of the earlier posters pooh poohed Spanish, but the fact is that the U.S. does a lot of business with the Spanish speaking world and they also are putting more of an emphasis on marketing to the domestic hispanic population.

Now personally, I found Spanish harder to learn than Japanese because of how the pronouns are inflected in Spanish whereas Japanese has very relatively few personal pronouns and extremely few plural inflections. Japanese, from a grammatical perspective, is incredibly easy. Learning to read the kanji and kana isn't that hard if you are dedicated. The main thing that will drive you a little nuts about Japanese is learning to decipher vague speech (since speaking vaguely/indirectly is often more preferred, especially by women) and keeping your use of pronouns at a minimum (since to oversimplify things, values the other and not yourself).

One other thing: in Japan, you often have foreigners who can speak it pretty well but who can't read it worth a lick. So my reading ability was kind of a novelty to my then Japanese coworkers as a result. One of my then colleagues, a Japanese-American women who grew up in the U.S. and whose parents were from Osaka, could speak the language better than me, but when she wanted to know what some pamphlet or magazine article said, she would bring it to me and have me read it to her because she knew few kanji characters.

[DrEarth]

The BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China are the projected fast growing developing economies. Chinese and Russian were mentioned.

What about Portuguese? It would be easy considering you already know some Spanish.

[DBCC]

I would, personally, get my priorities right.
You are doing economics/business.
Which are the developing super economic powers?
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Mandarin/ Cantonese - which is the language used for international business with China?
2. Russian/or derivations thereof: Which is the language most used for international business?
3. Spanish: How many "developing nations" do you see being a possible commercial/Economic power in the next ten years? With corrupt, socialistic, incompetent and /or archaic controls that favor only the "chosen few" within their borders, narcos managing their governments, security and lack of human rights, Ignorance, and antiquated laws, then choose Spanish only if you are dealing with Chile.
The rest of South America has to learn what the word "democracy" means. It will take them fifty years to understand the true meaning of the word, and maybe another century to apply it.
It will certainly take more than that to respect human rights and put in practice a legal system that protects the rights of its citizens.

[DBCC]

.....add to that the 'Siesta" attitude and lack of productivity in South America as a whole....

[DBCC]

Damn.........
And the only way to to business in another country.... is to live amongst them, learn their traditions/ customs and courtesies, business ethics, protocols etc.... without it it would be the same as trying to sell laptops to a Koi, the average citizen of Kgadalgadi.........Namibia

[City of Rain]

Originally Posted by AliveandWell

That's a good point. Learning Norwegian would give you access to a beautiful country, and the women over there... oh my goodness! They are so nice both on the inside and outside. If you really love their country and language I say go for it.

well, being the "middle language" of the scandinavian languages, it will also let you communicate with both danes and swedes..

together thats 19,6 million people.. and finns also learn swedish in school.

my friend was just in helsinki and she said that she could speak norwegian to everyone there, and they would answer in swedish. it wasnt any problematic at all.

together thats over 25 million people. icelandic people also learn danish in school.. so yeah, it opens up to all of the nordic countries, which is a place for anyone who like extremely high living standards and stuff like that

there are also like 5 million people of norwegian ancestry in USA, and many of them speak norwegian.

surely it cant compete with huge international languages like spanish, german, french and english etc.. but i wouldnt call it completely useless

yes, the beautiful women, nature and cities could be counted as a plus

edit: did i mention that the nordic countries are growing at an extremely fast pace?

especially Norway and Sweden, as both countries are very welcoming to immigrants.

Oslo is actually the fastest growing capital in scandinavia, growing at a pace of something like 2% each year

[sarahkate_m]

Originally Posted by Cornwell

I'm about to start college and I was just wanting some input on which foreign language would be the most useful to learn If I plan on trying to get an M.A in Economics concentrating on global business. Would Spanish be the best bet because it has the most countries speaking it, or Chinese because it will probably have the most thriving economy by the time I'm done with school. Or would anyone else have a different recommendation? Thanks.

Chinese.