Best foreign language to learn? (for an American)
 

I am a physics undergraduate (plan on going to graduate school) going into my junior year at a public university in the midwest United States, and I've decided that it's a wise idea to take four semesters of a foreign langauge. (And in all honesty, I am a little ignorant when it comes to the "real world." I grew up in a town of 250 and now I'm going to college whose campus is in a town of 20,000. I've never been to a big city (such as Chicago or St. Louis) for any longer than a day. I've heard that there's foreign language all over the place in large cities, but I honestly can't say I've experienced it first hand. Where I come from (area with town of 250), it's very rare to find somebody that's actually fluent in a language other than English. And when I do, it's Spanish.)

My school offers Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese and, given my current situation, I'm wondering what would be the best one to take. I'm wanting to learn a foreign foreign language mainly to expand my horizons but also to help me in my future career, which will most likely be related to physics.

I've thought about it and here's what I think about each one. Let me know if I'm thinking along the right lines:

Spanish - I took two years of Spanish in high school and, even though I've forgotten a lot of words, I still remember how the grammatical structure works and I can communicate with a native speaker fairly well if they are willing to work with me. Spanish in America is growing at a tremendous rate, so I'm sure that I will end up *almost* fluent in it over the next 10 years or so regardless if I take any more classes in it or not.

French - No offense to the native French speakers, but I don't like French. I don't like the way it sounds. And if was to take it, the only places it would be applicable are in French Canada and France, right?

German - As much as I'd like to speak this "harsh, ugly" language and as much as hearing it invigorates me, the only place I'd use it is Germany. Not to mention that it seems to me that a lot of Germans can speak English, or am I just seeing things?

Chinese - China's economy is growing at a tremendous rate, not to mention that it has the largest population of people in the world. Trouble is, I really don't know that much about China (culture, etc.) and I hear the language is hard to learn in all areas - listening, speaking, reading and writing. Not to mention I'm not really sure if it will help me all that much as many people I've talked to say that it will be awhile (a couple of decades) before China becomes a big enough influence for their language to be applicable.

Japanese - Well, Japan is the leading country in technology right now, which is highly applicable for somebody that (will have) a degree in physics. Not to mention that I've heard that there are buttloads of Japanese companies in the United States. Between my junior and senior year in high school, I ordered some books from Amazon.com and taught myself hiragana, katakana, a few phrases and at one time I knew about 75-100 kanji. I didn't really learn anything beyond the basic grammatical structure and particles and hardly learned any vocabulary. I've forgotten most of the kanji and a lot of the hiragana I learned. I've retained the katakana (since I actually have some idea of what I'm supposed to be reading as it's usually used for foreign words, usually English, adopted into Japanese), some of the kanji and the phrases. If need be, I can easily relearn the hiragana, as it's easier to learn something if you've forgotten it. The point is this: I've already got somewhat of a head start on Japanese.


Now, I've talked to a lot of people and told them all of this, and almost every one of them recommends Japanese. The only person that didn't was my differential equations professor. She is Chinese, so of course she is going to recommend that I take Chinese.

Any thoughts?

I believe Chinese will be the most handy, since there are just so much opportunities to practice, especially with the amount of international students. It'll be pretty hard to grasp though, being a tone language and all that. Mandarin or Cantonese?

Japanese is awesome for personal use too.

I believe that Spanish would be your best bet, though. Just a hunch, based on an assumption :s

Considering that it seems like you already know some Spanish, I guess you might as well continue there.

Yes, a lot of Germans do speak English. Same goes for many of the germanic/scandinavian countries, probably because they're easier for English speakers to pick up on and vice-versa.

I don't know much about physics, but if Japan is a heavy hitter in that area, then I'd go with Japanese. Of course, many Japanese people speak some amount of English as well, so unless you think you'll be interacting with them a lot in your future career...I'd go with Spanish. It's not hard to pick up, it's growing in use in the US every day, and since it's Latin-based it makes figuring out a lot of the other common languages (ie: French, Portuguese, Italian) much easier.

From the sound of your situation, Japanese would be a worthwhile language to study.

Unless there's some reason you want to move to Europe and live in either Germany, France or Spain?

Go with the Spanish.

My second language is French, and let me tell you, I expect it to be altogether useless when I leave Quebec one of these days.

I'd go with Spanish. It's got quite a foothold in the US like you were saying, and it's the primary language in several Central and South American countries, not just countries like Mexico or Spain. Very useful if you ever live in most parts of the Southern United States, particularly the Southwest.

Some African countries have French as one of their languages (or at least some form or dialect of it), and German is spoken in other countries adjacent to Germany, such as Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

You know, in the physics field, you're not going to get to use that Spanish a whole hell of a lot. But in the REAL world (outside of your elected profession), Spanish will come in MIGHTY HANDY.

Spanish is probably the easiest of all of the languages you've already selected.

Chinese is probably among the most difficult.

I can tell you that French and German are both good mediums for the technological fields, since many different people speak them out there. But then, they probably speak more English than those 2.

Spanish will come in handy when Mexican immigrants go all conquistador on America!

I'd go with Chinese. China is set to become a huge world power, and many industries are just coming into fruition there. After that, I'd go with Japanese.

Like alot of other people have suggested, I'd suggest Spanish. It seems to me that that is the most spoken language besides English in America. I'd suggest German just on the basis that I find it fun to speak, but that's not a whole lot of incentive for you to speak it. Japanese might come in handy in some cases, but it does seem that a large percentage of Japanese know at least some English, and if you're dealing with them in the job place, I'd imagine that would make it even more likely.

You make it sound like you can only learn one though. There's nothing holding you back from learning more then one if you want/need.

Yeah, uh, I'm not so sure that a 'large' percentage of Japanese people know any meaningful amount of English.

Ok, maybe I didn't mean a large percentage per se. I know it's more common in larger cities and what not, as it is with most countries that English is a second language in. But if he's dealing with it in work, I'd imagine the people he was working with would more tend to know some English. That's more what I meant.

If you live on the West Coast: Spanish or Japanese
If you live in the South: Spanish.
If you live in the Mid-West: English.
If you live on the East Coast: Pick a European language.

I believe China will have incredible world influence in less than a decade. I don't know if that warrants learning their language though. If I were to learn a language, I think I'd choose Italian or Latin, but that's not one of the ones you're thinking about learning. Of course I don't think about it as methodically as you do and I just go by what language I would like to know how to speak instead of what would help me out. I hope you enjoy whichever language you choose to learn.

I wouldn't worry about which language would be more "useful"...you should pick the language you'd enjoy learning the most. If you like the material, you'll tend to retain more and get more out of the course.

So yeah, if you think German sounds cool, I say go for it. If you're interested in Japanese, you can try that too, but a lot of people have mentioned how complicated it is (especially in terms of grammar), and you may not reach the same level of fluency in 2 years that you could with German (or Spanish).

It's polish of course, as you can easily learn how to swear (let's say that swearing and complaining is the important part of polish tradition) by using english words, just say: who-you yeah-bunny.

If you're going to learn Chinese, Mandarin is the most useful. It's the most widely used and most Cantos understand Mandarin.

Japanese is also a very good language to learn. Excluding their use of three different alphabets including kanji and a difficult grammer system, their phonetics hiragana/katakana makes it very easy to learn. But unless you're going to Japan, the language doesn't come to much use except for watching anime. I've seen 1 Japanese person in my city and I think she was visiting from another city.

But I mean, Spanish might be a wise choice if you're going to live in the US, as it is the second language there. Haha French, no.

Japanese grammar is not that difficult. It is actually much more logical than english.
However, I am going to say that if you are going to go into the world of physics, that you would be better off to learn a teutonic language like german. It seems that the majority of physics research is going on either in Europe or America. There also seems to be a lot of materials research going on in Japan, but this is more technologically based, and I am not sure how much application someone with a physics major would have.

However, I want to know, what sort of direction of physics do you want to go for? This is improtant to know, I think, before you can really decide what language you should look into.

Another con against Japanese is that to get a job in Japan, you have to be really good at what you do. They have tons of Japanese people to choose from who can speak good English.

Well since you're going into physics you might as well learn some language based in Europe. However Chinese might be a good alternative, while China's economic growth might be grabbing most of the attention these days China still has a solid base of academics in physics and other material sciences.

Since you are working towards a physics degree, I wouldn't aim for learning Spanish as a second language if it's solely to aid your career. While it would be good for social interaction here in the states, other languages would open more doors for you in the science industry than it would. Depending on what field you want to enter, find out which country is leading in said field or will be in the near future and study their language. German and French seem to be good choices, and Chinese looks promising if they keep gaining economic momentum.

I believe that America is getting a lot of Spanish-speaking residents very quickly. So I believe that learning Spanish would be very beneficial for you in America. As a science major there's really no reason to study abroad since it would be suffiecient to just study the science here in America. If you were a business major then it would make sense to learn Chinese or Japanese or something.

However, Physics - you could think about learning an Asian language but realistically, are you going to work with China or Japan? Or are you going to work in the United States in some laboratory or something?

Spanish would be beneficial. But any language would be beneficial too.

I'd like to add that learning German isn't that easy either. There are many exceptions regarding grammar and the grammar itself is really complex. German might be an interesting language, but it's necessary to have perseverance.

yes plis...learn spanish and save us all the "hasta la vista baby" n the "mi casa es tu casa"...
plis, i mean plz..
roll

seriously..
it is increible china is a comunist country, where there is no human right (at least freedom thinking), but it has a good "market" of potential costumers, so we will accept it ...

and it is more increible see a korean drama in the public television in chile...

How bout Canadian? Then we could find out what you guys are saying.

From the way you described your options it seems like already want to do Japanese.

First off, ditch Spanish. I doubt it'll help your career out, like, ever.

German's a solid language that a lot of people in the sciences talk. Lots of terminology in physics actually draw their names from German, so you could see learning some of it like taking Latin as an English major. And Germany/Switzerland/Europe isn't that bad of a place to spend a year or two at to do some work.

Chinese is a possibility, though I don't think it would be really useful as a physicist. If you were an engineer interested in supervising large projects, then you'd be pretty desirable for American companies that are subcontracted by the Chinese government, but since you're not, it doesn't really matter.

Japanese would be useful, but you have to think about how much time you'll actually spend learning this language. One semester of Japanese probably won't get you as far as one semester of German due to the larger gap in languages between English and Japanese from English and German.

Also, beware of Intro Japanese classes. They're usually packed with animu fags and kids that learned Japanese while growing up and are looking for an easy A. Totally going to kill any sort of fair grading scheme the professor can come up with.

Being a physics major, you will probably essentially need German and French languages. There are physics journals and manuals written fully in those 2 languages. And when the day comes that you need to get cracking on those, you will either A.) Regrett for not seeing this comming, or B.) Be thankful you took those languages to your heart.

For business related things, spanish would be very useful.

First of all, I thank everyone for their replies. Second of all, sorry I didn't reply sooner.

I've read through every reply and I have to say that I'm a little suprised as the replies here didn't really reflect the replies that I got from the people I know in person.

I'm suprised that there are this many suggesting that I take Spanish, since I'm slowly teaching it to myself anyway and there really aren't that many applications of the Spanish language in physics.

Right now, Chinese in physics probably isn't all that existant. While I do agree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to learn Chinese because their economy is soaring, I'm basing that decision on an oppurtunity that I may have in the future instead of basing it on what I know now.

I knew that German would have some application, but I wasn't sure if it would be more or less than Japanese. I guess it would depend on which area of physics I want to go into, which I really can't say at this point because I haven't taken all of my upper level physics classes yet and the freshman and sophmore physics aren't really detailed enough for me to make a good judgement from.

At any rate, it basically boils down to German and Japanese. Realistically speaking, I'd like to learn at least one, if not both.

Yeah, that's another thing. If I was working for a Japanese company, their expectations of me might be higher than that of an American company.

Actually, Reaver, I can't see that happening that badly at my university as I really haven't met any "otakus." (Most of the people around here seem to be drunken basketweaving majors.) However, I did meet a girl that was taking Japanese last semester and she said there were only about 15 students in the intro class and none of them had any knowledge of the language before taking it.

This isn't to say that that will happen if I take Japanese, but I can't see something that you described happen to the degree that I'll automatically be at the bottom of the grading curve. (Not to mention I already have some knowledge of Japanese.)

Also, I do know a little bit of German. I bought myself two of those laminated 3 page "quick review" things of German grammer and vocabulary. Sometimes when I hear sentences in German they stick out like a sore thumb because I can almost understand them like they were my native language. I can't say the same about Japanese.

I'll have to think about this for awhile. Any additional thoughts?

my 2 cents:
i still think chinese is the way to go :/
and as many people learning a second language, with english being their first,keeps on telling me that they hope to learn chinese one day because it will be the main stream language... there might not be physics in china right now, but doesn't mean it is totally non-existent. perhaps you can even be a pioneer in some ways if you know the language and go there rather than be in competition~

my second choice would actually be german, donno why :p

thirdly: japanese - being sort of in competition with the first 2 IMHO-, and let's face it, i do believe that most of the people want to learn the language for its anime. ^^ (not that it's bad, i am learning it myself). but from 2 examples given to me. when you goto japan, they're probably gonna try to speak english to you rather than you speak japanese to them.