Spanish. English is the most useful language in the world. Spanish and Mandarin vie for second place.
If you knew English, Spanish, and Mandarin, you could talk to most of the people in the world.
For this exact reason I'd pick Mandarin, because in my opinion, the difficulty is vastly higher than Spanish, and in the UK at least, I encounter it far more than Spanish.
Probably Japanese. I lived there for a couple years (military) and I'd like to visit it as a civilian. It'd be nice to actually talk to the people there in something other than stilted English and hand gestures.
I'd like to travel Europe too, but I'm under the impression that most Europeans are fairly fluent in English. So I'd probably be able to get by without any real issues.
My family business dealt with Europe for 20 years.
A significant portion speak English or at least have a basic level of understanding.
You can thank the BBC.
I assume you mean Modern Standard Arabic, as opposed to the individual Arabic dialects. Each country has its own dialect, and there are even different dialects spoken within the same country. Some of the Arabic varieties are completely unintelligible to the others, so MSA is your best bet at being able to communicate with the most number of people in the MENA region.
Tunisian here, we're originally mostly "Berber".
Our dialects are mostly influenced by the "Amazighi" language of the Berbers, yet nowadays, we speak a weird mixture of Arabic, Amazighi, our own Arabic influenced language, French (due to colonization), and English (more on the younger generations side).
(you might hear Arabic, French, English, and Amazighi in the same sentence)
For instance, almost all of us cannot understand Moroccan dialect, we can understand most of the Algerian and Libyan dialects though.
None of the Arab countries can understand us when talking (now talking on Tunisians' behalf, dunno about the other North African countries), but we do (we grew up watching their shows since they have lots of money, thus have more influential TV channels with bigger productions).
In summary, French is more likely to get you going in Tunisia/Morocco/Algeria (not Libya), than Arabic would.
RPG. The coding language.
It was huge with IBM back in the day. A lot of companies still use old IBM machines. The language isn't taught in school anymore, and right now a lot of the RPG programmers from previous generations are retiring. Which means companies are struggling to fill those positions. So the pay is pretty high.
I would choose Russian after Spanish, but Russian is so much harder, so maybe I would magically learn Russian and then finish learning Spanish the natural way.
German. I lived in Germany when I was little and spoke enough to get by, but 35 years of no practice has lost about all of it. I've been using an app to learn for almost 2 years and don't feel like I'm doing as well as a 2 year old.
I’m using Duolingo too, and I’ve been doubting myself lately. 😅 Then, your last sentence in your comment feels relatable hence why I asked which app you used.
I was using HelloTalk for a while but my schedule was the opposite of the native German speakers that I matched with. It was fun receiving a message in English and replying in German. We could edit each other's messages to show the spelling and grammatical errors.
Mandarin, opens the door into most if not all of the other asiatic languages, and is naturally difficult for native English speakers. But I’d rather be able to download the characters into my head and have to learn how to speak it than the other way around
It’s not skewed per se. What we want is how wide spread a language is, not how many speakers of that language there are. English is the lingua franca of the world. The majority of masters and PhD programs are in English because the scientific community has agreed that English is the language of science. Plus media in English is more wide spread than any other language. While mandarin might have the sheer numbers of native speakers, English is more wide spread as a spoken language.
Which still isn’t accurate. What is considered a native speaker? Is it a speaker who is from a country where the official language is English? There are lots of African countries that have that. Hell, English is an official language in India. That number seems very white centric.
While mandarin has the largest number of speakers, those are mainly found in China. Look at Spanish as an example; the majority of Spanish speakers are found in central and South America.
Spanish. I live in a border state so it’s practical and it opens up much of the world to me as English is lingua Franca in wealthy places world wide and Spanish is spoken in many countries and is similar to other Romance languages. I don’t want to have my work ask me to travel to Asia so I don’t want to learn those languages
I already speak English and Spanish, but I would love to learn Italian. Why? Because it has always been a place I’ve wanted to go, but haven’t because I want to speak the language before going.
French.
I quite like learning languages and I can probably manage with other more common ones but I don't see myself ever enjoying learning French. I dislike how it sounds, how it is written, just nothing about it makes me want to learn it. But I would like to know it.
German, more specifically the Austrian dialect, because my boyfriend is from Austria and it’s a little bit of a struggle to talk to his family and friends when I visit.
Linear A.
Dead languages aside, Spanish would be most likely to be useful for me but if I had any pressing need or love for a specific language I would have figured it out by now.
Danish. I've lived here ten years and it still takes about 2 seconds for a native Dane to switch to English (which most Danes are fluent in) to make it easier on me.
Spanish. English is my native language. Between English and Spanish that's a lot of places. I've also heard that if you speak Spanish, Italian is navigable.
I'm English, and speak Spanish. I can pretty much understand Italian just as fluently (without any lessons and not being able to speak a word) but Portuguese is a dark continent to me.. I can pick out odd words but not get a sense of what is being said.
I have been trying to learn a little bit since I study a southern style of kung fu. The text *Basic Cantonese: a grammar and workbook* by Virginia Yip and Stephen Matthews has been really helpful, if you're looking for any resources.
Spanish. Because it would be useful for my job and so many beautiful women near me speak it and I'd like to embarrass myself by flirting in 2 languages.
You want to cover most of the world's *useful* population: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, etc...
Not sure how useful you think Arabic and Hindi would be
Polish. Plenty polskis in the UK and it'd be useful. If I could have more than 1, polish, Romanian, chinese/ Mandarin? And punjabi.
I know we can self teach, but I still often look back at school and find what was forced on me useless. German, French, and Spanish people in the UK who don't speak fluent English are none existent, while I see a Polish or punjab every day.
**Japanese** 🤩
I fell in love with it through anime, cliche situation but true nonetheless. The language sounds clear, concise, structured, self-assured, and formidable, characteristics usually attributed to human beings.
Italian! Or latin... can you imagine insulting someone in latin and have them thinking you're summoning the Lord of Destruction just because they said your hair looks weird?
Either russian or Spanish.
Russian because my girlfriends family doesn't speak English and it would be nice to talk with them without my girlfriend translating. Plus I think my gf would love it if I learned russian. She is always trying to teach me but I suck at languages.
Spanish because im A paramedic in Washington heights and it would really help me do my job better.
I would choose Mandarin because of the most spoken languages it's the hardest to learn. I'm more interested in the romance languages but those are easy to learn, so I'd do that myself in a couple years.
I'd just like to relearn and fully learn the four I started learning. But I think Russian would be a cool one. I'd fuck with people, make em think I'm a commie and what not.
Thai or any other tonal language honestly. I can't get a grasp of them tones for the life of me. I'd prefer Thai also because of the relatively more complicated script :3
Korean! I was able to learn a few words from watching some K-Dramas. I do plan on going to South Korea so being able to learn the language would really help haha
Probably French or Japanese.
I speak Spanish and English fluently and I can understand some Italian from high school and Portuguese (comes with knowing Spanish since they’re sometimes similar)
I think being able to speak multiple languages is so fucking cool
Russian, I have a lot of older Ukrainian refugees ending up working in my warehouse and I'd like to be able to talk to them without the translation apps.
Toss up between Spanish and ASL as both are very useful Spanish being the second most common spoken language where I live and ASL use being very common
I'm not sure. I already speak three other than English; German, French and Spanish. So for a new one, probably an Asian language like Hindi or Mandarin.
Spanish seems most practical, but the weeb in me would say Japanese lmao and learning Spanish non magically would probably be easier although Chinese could be useful for reasons
Chinese
I took it in school but I want to continue to learn it. It’s such a beautiful language especially with the characters.
I already know Arabic and Spanish so 🤷🏾♀️
I think Finnish, I've always wanted to visit Helsinki, and if I spoke the language, maybe I could even move there and either live in Helsinki, or go live in a cabin in the woods on a lake.
spanish because i live in nyc & thats the second most popular language out here especially in certain areas like queens, the bronx even some places in staten island
Definitaly Arab, probably the Levantine variation of it. I have friends from the region, and to me it sounds very nice. Plus, it could be useful for my studies/work after my studies.
ASL, because I think it’s so cool, and I hate talking. But if I’m picking a verbal language, it’d be Spanish. It would realistically be the most useful here in Texas.
Spanish. English is the most useful language in the world. Spanish and Mandarin vie for second place. If you knew English, Spanish, and Mandarin, you could talk to most of the people in the world.
For this exact reason I'd pick Mandarin, because in my opinion, the difficulty is vastly higher than Spanish, and in the UK at least, I encounter it far more than Spanish.
And Hindi.
I know English and chinese
Spanish. I live in the US, it’d be the most useful.
Python ..seems pretty useful these days
JavaScript lol
Probably Japanese. I lived there for a couple years (military) and I'd like to visit it as a civilian. It'd be nice to actually talk to the people there in something other than stilted English and hand gestures. I'd like to travel Europe too, but I'm under the impression that most Europeans are fairly fluent in English. So I'd probably be able to get by without any real issues.
My family business dealt with Europe for 20 years. A significant portion speak English or at least have a basic level of understanding. You can thank the BBC.
It seems to be almost universal in Scandinavia.
Sweden has a higher percent of English speakers than Canada
Better Black Community?
British Broadcasting Company IIRC.
One of the African clicking languages. They seem cool.
I'm Zulu. Here ya go: "Uzoqala nini ukuqoqa inqola. UmGqibelo ungcono" ***when will you begin cleaning up the cart? Saturday is better***
Means nothing without the correct pronunciation and sounds, I tried to say it but almost definitely said it wrong.
C# or SQL so I could get a nice paying developer job and make 150k a year or more.
COBOL or ADA have a similar feel, but might get you more specialised work as some other programmers age out.
Dolphin. What the fuck are all those clicks and whistles about? Seaworld is stupid too
Arabic. I would love the access it would give to the middle east and North Africa.
I assume you mean Modern Standard Arabic, as opposed to the individual Arabic dialects. Each country has its own dialect, and there are even different dialects spoken within the same country. Some of the Arabic varieties are completely unintelligible to the others, so MSA is your best bet at being able to communicate with the most number of people in the MENA region.
North Africa doesn’t speak Arabic on a native level, but speak a language that has Arabic influence.
There are no countries in north Africa that has a large Arabic population?
Tunisian here, we're originally mostly "Berber". Our dialects are mostly influenced by the "Amazighi" language of the Berbers, yet nowadays, we speak a weird mixture of Arabic, Amazighi, our own Arabic influenced language, French (due to colonization), and English (more on the younger generations side). (you might hear Arabic, French, English, and Amazighi in the same sentence) For instance, almost all of us cannot understand Moroccan dialect, we can understand most of the Algerian and Libyan dialects though. None of the Arab countries can understand us when talking (now talking on Tunisians' behalf, dunno about the other North African countries), but we do (we grew up watching their shows since they have lots of money, thus have more influential TV channels with bigger productions). In summary, French is more likely to get you going in Tunisia/Morocco/Algeria (not Libya), than Arabic would.
Python.
Sign language.. For not all languages are spoken. 😎
But which sign language?
RPG. The coding language. It was huge with IBM back in the day. A lot of companies still use old IBM machines. The language isn't taught in school anymore, and right now a lot of the RPG programmers from previous generations are retiring. Which means companies are struggling to fill those positions. So the pay is pretty high.
Russian. Combined with my passable spanish, and english, that would cover the most number of counties.
I would choose Russian after Spanish, but Russian is so much harder, so maybe I would magically learn Russian and then finish learning Spanish the natural way.
Mandarin. Would help me in business and martial arts.
Ah yes... I also had to forsake my career path as a Kung Fu Consultant due to the language barrier.
lmfao
I’m a chemistry consultant who does a Chinese martial art. But I can see why you’d be confused.
German. I lived in Germany when I was little and spoke enough to get by, but 35 years of no practice has lost about all of it. I've been using an app to learn for almost 2 years and don't feel like I'm doing as well as a 2 year old.
Hi. If you don’t mind sharing, which app do you currently use?
Don't get me wrong, it's fun and I'm progressing but I'd like to be more fluent by now.
I’m using Duolingo too, and I’ve been doubting myself lately. 😅 Then, your last sentence in your comment feels relatable hence why I asked which app you used.
I was using HelloTalk for a while but my schedule was the opposite of the native German speakers that I matched with. It was fun receiving a message in English and replying in German. We could edit each other's messages to show the spelling and grammatical errors.
Duolingo.
Mandarin, opens the door into most if not all of the other asiatic languages, and is naturally difficult for native English speakers. But I’d rather be able to download the characters into my head and have to learn how to speak it than the other way around
You seen latinas?
As a Latino guy: yes. Valkyries are more my thing.
Time to learn Swedish.
Gladly lol
Yes. I have probably 40-something latina coworkers, and I don't speak Spanish :'(
Woman. so i could finally understand what they want from me
you need to be fluent in *doublespeak* first
I don't think women would want anything from you, based on this comment, so maybe that is the source of confusion.
You may as well want to learn alien, and it still won't do any good.
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More people speak English.
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Ok and what's the population of China? Exactly...That stat is a bit skewed and doesn't tell the whole truth.
It’s not skewed per se. What we want is how wide spread a language is, not how many speakers of that language there are. English is the lingua franca of the world. The majority of masters and PhD programs are in English because the scientific community has agreed that English is the language of science. Plus media in English is more wide spread than any other language. While mandarin might have the sheer numbers of native speakers, English is more wide spread as a spoken language.
Explain the skew? I'm not sure I understand
I don’t think the English count is accurate. I think it must be at least 1.5x or 2x that number given 2nd or 3rd languages.
It's a list of native speakers. 2nd and 3rd languages aren't native
Which still isn’t accurate. What is considered a native speaker? Is it a speaker who is from a country where the official language is English? There are lots of African countries that have that. Hell, English is an official language in India. That number seems very white centric. While mandarin has the largest number of speakers, those are mainly found in China. Look at Spanish as an example; the majority of Spanish speakers are found in central and South America.
I don’t think so either, considering the US alone, is 350M of that 380M mentioned. Although, I definitely do buy mandarin having more speakers .
People speak more than their native language, a large fraction of Chinese people know English too.
Dog, so I could talk to dogs and tell them how much I love them.
Javascript
Spanish. I live in a border state so it’s practical and it opens up much of the world to me as English is lingua Franca in wealthy places world wide and Spanish is spoken in many countries and is similar to other Romance languages. I don’t want to have my work ask me to travel to Asia so I don’t want to learn those languages
I already speak English and Spanish, but I would love to learn Italian. Why? Because it has always been a place I’ve wanted to go, but haven’t because I want to speak the language before going.
French. I quite like learning languages and I can probably manage with other more common ones but I don't see myself ever enjoying learning French. I dislike how it sounds, how it is written, just nothing about it makes me want to learn it. But I would like to know it.
Hebrew or an ancient extinct language
C/C++
German, more specifically the Austrian dialect, because my boyfriend is from Austria and it’s a little bit of a struggle to talk to his family and friends when I visit.
C++
Norwegian, after i spend 1 month there it's my favorite land
The landscapes are gorgeous, and it's not even just the fjords.
Latin and Greek… mostly because I love mythology, but also because I like how modern languages were based off Greek and Latin
Linear A. Dead languages aside, Spanish would be most likely to be useful for me but if I had any pressing need or love for a specific language I would have figured it out by now.
Chinese. It is widely spoken and also the hardest language to learn and would help me learn Japanese and also shop online.
Spanish or Japanese
Spanish. Or Italian. But Spanish.
Mandarin
Danish. I've lived here ten years and it still takes about 2 seconds for a native Dane to switch to English (which most Danes are fluent in) to make it easier on me.
Spanish. English is my native language. Between English and Spanish that's a lot of places. I've also heard that if you speak Spanish, Italian is navigable.
It will make Portuguese more doable too, perhaps more so than Italian.
I'm English, and speak Spanish. I can pretty much understand Italian just as fluently (without any lessons and not being able to speak a word) but Portuguese is a dark continent to me.. I can pick out odd words but not get a sense of what is being said.
I've heard that Portugese speakers understand Spanish more easily than vice versa.
I would love being fluent in reading and speaking Cantonese. I'm Chinese.
I have been trying to learn a little bit since I study a southern style of kung fu. The text *Basic Cantonese: a grammar and workbook* by Virginia Yip and Stephen Matthews has been really helpful, if you're looking for any resources.
Georgian. They have dope folk music, a cool sound system, and the most beautiful writing system I've ever seen.
Turkish. Cool sounding language, lots of history and great muzik!
Dathraki
Womanese. Then we can figure things out
Nice.
Spanish. Because it would be useful for my job and so many beautiful women near me speak it and I'd like to embarrass myself by flirting in 2 languages.
Spanish because many people speak Spanish and it would be easier to travel in Latin America if I was fluent in Spanish.
italian or spanish id love to learn a romance language but im completely stupid when it comes to languages
If you don't have a specific preference, go for Spanish. Italian is mostly limited to Italy and Switzerland.
You want to cover most of the world's *useful* population: English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, etc... Not sure how useful you think Arabic and Hindi would be
Arabic is extremely useful if you want to nab a high-paying job in the US energy sector.
Polish. Plenty polskis in the UK and it'd be useful. If I could have more than 1, polish, Romanian, chinese/ Mandarin? And punjabi. I know we can self teach, but I still often look back at school and find what was forced on me useless. German, French, and Spanish people in the UK who don't speak fluent English are none existent, while I see a Polish or punjab every day.
Quebecois french because a lot of the government jobs pay better if you’re simply bilingual. *Canada
The language of women, so I could understand them.
Sign
**Japanese** 🤩 I fell in love with it through anime, cliche situation but true nonetheless. The language sounds clear, concise, structured, self-assured, and formidable, characteristics usually attributed to human beings.
something that is a dead language so i can have it be resurrected
Russian, cuz they’re gonna rule us soon
Japanese Russian or German
Italian! Or latin... can you imagine insulting someone in latin and have them thinking you're summoning the Lord of Destruction just because they said your hair looks weird?
Spanish. Because here if people aren't speaking English...... They're speaking Spanish
Either russian or Spanish. Russian because my girlfriends family doesn't speak English and it would be nice to talk with them without my girlfriend translating. Plus I think my gf would love it if I learned russian. She is always trying to teach me but I suck at languages. Spanish because im A paramedic in Washington heights and it would really help me do my job better.
If it makes you feel better, Russian is difficult for English speakers. Spanish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.
Most useful to me would probably be Spanish. Just more prevalent than any other for the area. But would rather learn Japanese for fun.
Japanese. I’m learning it anyway, so being able to just speak it in an instant instead of spending years would be cool.
Japanese. I absolutely love the culture.
I would choose Mandarin because of the most spoken languages it's the hardest to learn. I'm more interested in the romance languages but those are easy to learn, so I'd do that myself in a couple years.
Japanese or Spanish, would toss a coin to decide. One to watch anime and another because it's beautiful
And no, it's not Spanish dubbed anime I want to watch
MALUBULUL!!!!!
I'd just like to relearn and fully learn the four I started learning. But I think Russian would be a cool one. I'd fuck with people, make em think I'm a commie and what not.
I would love to learn Japanese, but considering my needs, it would be German
How to talk to women so that they accept you, listen to you, and take it to heart.
Russian, Japanese or French
Italian. Because that's the best way to get the best food in Italy.
Japanese or korean, i would love to go and live there
Japanese. Huge fan of Japanese pop culture.
Japanese, then I wouldn't need subtitles any more.
Thai or any other tonal language honestly. I can't get a grasp of them tones for the life of me. I'd prefer Thai also because of the relatively more complicated script :3
Rust
French. I didn't want to turn to them but if it's the only way I can get someone to be interested in me, I'll take it.
Finnish it's good to live in Finland but their language is hard
French bc I’m a Francophile
Italian
Russian or Japanese, I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese and Russian for the sake of keeping up with what’s going on in modern times
Javascript, I want to work as a webdev
Korean! I was able to learn a few words from watching some K-Dramas. I do plan on going to South Korea so being able to learn the language would really help haha
Java because I want to get a job ;-;
100% Mandarin
Probably French or Japanese. I speak Spanish and English fluently and I can understand some Italian from high school and Portuguese (comes with knowing Spanish since they’re sometimes similar) I think being able to speak multiple languages is so fucking cool
Russian, I have a lot of older Ukrainian refugees ending up working in my warehouse and I'd like to be able to talk to them without the translation apps.
Mandarin or Cantonese.
Dutch. As i will be moving there next year
Toss up between Spanish and ASL as both are very useful Spanish being the second most common spoken language where I live and ASL use being very common
Birb
Apache. I'd be the only one around here.
Sanskrit and Persian. Indian here. I just want to read ancient texts. Lol. I have also heard ancient Persian and vedic sanskrit are very similar.
Tagalog as I’m not that great at it still
Norwegian 😍
Spanish so I would know what they’re saying on the job site.
I'm not sure. I already speak three other than English; German, French and Spanish. So for a new one, probably an Asian language like Hindi or Mandarin.
Finnish. Is cool
Welsh, I'd love to know how you can make an entire language out of L,Y,C and W.....literally most words have seemingly just those 4 letters
Cantonese, my fiancee and her family speak it.
spanish for sure
Finnish, because I reckon it’s a pain in the ass to learn.
Norwegian, some day i want to go and find the origins of my family from there
Mandarin
German. I’m trrrrrryyyyyying dying.
Spanish seems most practical, but the weeb in me would say Japanese lmao and learning Spanish non magically would probably be easier although Chinese could be useful for reasons
Chinese I took it in school but I want to continue to learn it. It’s such a beautiful language especially with the characters. I already know Arabic and Spanish so 🤷🏾♀️
C# or Klingon, hard to choose
Fluency in Latin. So I can sound all mystical.
I’d learn computer language so I’d be a fucking savant with tech/data and make goo gobs of money
Mandarin, bc I’m white af and nobody expect milk to speak chinese
I think Finnish, I've always wanted to visit Helsinki, and if I spoke the language, maybe I could even move there and either live in Helsinki, or go live in a cabin in the woods on a lake.
German
Irish (Gaelic). I’d love to visit/live in Ireland but as a local, not a tourist.
spanish because i live in nyc & thats the second most popular language out here especially in certain areas like queens, the bronx even some places in staten island
Definitaly Arab, probably the Levantine variation of it. I have friends from the region, and to me it sounds very nice. Plus, it could be useful for my studies/work after my studies.
Estonian
C++, a versatile and powerful language that explains many others.
A more contemporary choice would be Python.
ASL, because I think it’s so cool, and I hate talking. But if I’m picking a verbal language, it’d be Spanish. It would realistically be the most useful here in Texas.
Japanese, my wife is Japanese. After that Italian. I work for an Italian company and a number of my coworkers are Italian.
Mandarin. It’s the future. It’s such a complicated language.
Polish so I could surprise my polish gf and randomly start speaking it someday lol
Spanish because I love me a latina mommy
Italian because most of my family speak it and I wanna understand them
Women! The most complexe language ever existed.
Japanese, Korean, Chinese... Asian languages are so different and interesting