Best foreign language to learn? (for an American)

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

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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.

Originally Posted by nabhan

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.

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.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

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.

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?

I was speaking idiomatically.

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

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?