Best language to know (home, live, marketplace)

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Jones1

That's a big "if" plus Asia has too many different languages/dialects to come even close to Spanish as does Africa and Oceana.

Until then I would still recommend Spanish

Tambien

Well yes, in many of those areas English would be just fine.

If the option is between Spanish, French, and Italian, globally viewed, Spanish is definitely the most useful, yet one has to keep in mind that it's quite useless in Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

[Mrs. Jones1]

OK lingua geek excatly how many languages do you speak?

[Cornerguy1]

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[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Jones1

OK lingua geek excatly how many languages do you speak?

One, two, three, four.

[Mississippienne]

Originally Posted by Neutre

Well yes, in many of those areas English would be just fine.

If the option is between Spanish, French, and Italian, globally viewed, Spanish is definitely the most useful, yet one has to keep in mind that it's quite useless in Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

There's at least a few countries in Africa that still use Portuguese, a holdover from the colonial era, so someone with a working knowledge of Spanish could probably get by in Portuguese.

The 'which is the best foreign language to learn?' question will be different for different people with different needs. You already speak the world's most spoken language: English. Languages as widely spoken with as many native and second-language speakers are hard to come by. Your options are:

Spanish: South America, Spain, Equatorial Guinea (Africa), Andorra, Puerto Rico, Cuba.
Arabic: Most of the Middle East, educated Muslims worldwide. Probably only worth the effort if you plan to spend time in Arab nations.
Russian: The former USSR.
Chinese: China (hey, it's got 1 billion people!). You could probably scare up a Chinese speaker in most big cities in Asia. The writing system and tones don't make it the most attractive option for an English-speaker.
French: Not the lingua franca it once was, but still a good choice. Spoken in France and neighboring countries such as Belgium, part of Canada, a host of African nations including Bénin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, both Congos, Mali, as well as in the Arab nations of Algeria and Morroco, Haiti, etc.

Of these options, French, Spanish, and Russian are all Indo-European languages, and so related to English. Russian and Arabic are written in different alphabets. Chinese uses a logographic writing system. I'd rank difficulty as follows, from easiest to hardest for a native English-speaker:

Spanish
French
Russian
Arabic
Chinese

I suggest learning the language which interests you the most; you'll learn faster if you are entranced by the language and culture. I personally fell in love with French. Simple as that. I didn't care a whit for Spanish for no reason other than it wasn't French. If you want to learn something completely different from English in almost every way, try Chinese. If you think Arabic's writing is gorgeous, try Arabic. If you love extemely long Russian novels and want to read them in the original, try Russian. If you fall in love with a Mexican and want to whisper "mi corazon" in his/her ear, try Spanish.

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Mississippienne

French: Not the lingua franca it once was, but still a good choice. Spoken in France and neighboring countries such as Belgium, part of Canada, a host of African nations including Bénin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, both Congos, Mali, as well as in the Arab nations of Algeria and Morocco, Haiti, etc.

Ironically, lingua franca is Latin for French language, yet today, the world's lingua franca is English.

But you're right that French is not a very significant lingua franca anymore today. Except in parts of Africa perhaps. But even in many officially francophone African countries, people are learning English. No big deal for Africans which are so used to multilinguality.

[k350]

It really depends on what reasons and career goals you have.

If it is something in the intel communtiy, then obviously things like farsi, arabic, etc.. would be very good to know.

As far as business, english is the language of business but you need to have a specific area of interest or concentration for you to decide.

Do not look at just numbers of speakers, you have to look at economic power of the speaking countries also. For example, though spanish is widely spoken, its combined economic power is low as compared to other countries, Brazil speaks portugese and Mexico is the largest spanish speaking economy.

I speak russian, but the former USSR is my area of operations. Plus many in China and India along with eastern Europe speak russin also though english is more predominate in China and almost universal in India among anyone with an education.

My wife speaks many languages, russian, hindi, urdu, farsi and some turkish. As far as useful, we will see when college is done!

But learning a second language is great and getting to use it is even better.

[pigeonhole]

You forgot German; it's very useful not only in Germany (3rd or 4th economic power) Austria , Switzerland but it's the lingua franca of the whole of Central Europe, Baltic countries, Balkan countries, and even Turkey (a lot of turkish workers in Germany and German tourists in Turkey); you may add Italy and Spain (Germans say jokingly that Mallorca is the 18th State of the FRG). Add to this the NL (Dutch and German are very near, most Dutch understand a bit of German), the Eastern part of Belgium, and in Africa (yes, Africa!) Namibia (former German colony, German widespread), the Cape province in South Africa (a lot of German immigrants), southern Brazil (where there is even a Bavarian town where German is second official language, called Blumenau).
I think German is a very (if seldom choosed) bet , especially for an English speaker (Saxon language as well) and has a much underseved reputation of being difficult.
Did you know that close to 300 million people speak or at least understand German in the world ? secret tip : if you travel to Russia, German is well considered in that country right now in spite of History, and there are many offspring of "Rußlanddeutsche" (German Russian) in many regions. So why bother to learn Russian (save a few words), a very difficult language with another alphabet ? you'll always find a cultured Russian (or Ukrainian) who speaks German!

[k350]

Well, I use to live in Russia and I never ran across anyone that knew german worth the darn. They teach it school but it is disregarded shortly after, my wife who is russian learned it in school and only knows a few words now. Her sister was taught english in school.

I do not understand why you think someone in Russia is only cultured if they know german.

In Ukraine, my wife's relatives kids learn english in school also.

[pigeonhole]

Maybe, but having to choose between French and German as a second foreign language (the first being Spanish I think), I would choose German hands down.