Most profitable foreign language?

[mengzi]

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MrMon,

If you want to spend 3 years on a language, then yes.

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to do work in some sort of an intelligence/diplomacy capacity, i would take the over on 3 years.

that is aussuming of course that you have some ability with languages to begin with...

[MrMon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
MrMon,

If you want to spend 3 years on a language, then yes.

[/ QUOTE ]

to do work in some sort of an intelligence/diplomacy capacity, i would take the over on 3 years.

that is aussuming of course that you have some ability with languages to begin with...

[/ QUOTE ]

I was referring to the ability to directly benefit from learning a language. Obviously Chinese is going to be better if you are in business, but that's an additional skill set.

FWIW, the NSA lists the languages they're looking for on their website. It's an interesting list, to say the least.

[jupiterpig]

Spanish ftw if you live in/near the south...if you are in a science major maybe an Asian language

[ShakeZula06]

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Didn't read thread, but the answer is Mexican

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Is this some sort of joke? Hope it is because you are either:

A) A [censored] idiot.
B) An unethical person (to not call you racist).
C) A [censored] idiot.

You pick.


---
My opinion: Spanish
No way influenced by the fact that I'm Puerto Rican and apparantly speak "Mexican."

<^>-.-<^> [censored]

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lol, reminds me of something this girl said one time in a highschool class:

her: What language do they speak in spain?
me: uh, spanish
her: no, that's what language they use in mexico.
rest of class: *slaps forehead*

[Thremp]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
MrMon,

If you want to spend 3 years on a language, then yes.

[/ QUOTE ]

to do work in some sort of an intelligence/diplomacy capacity, i would take the over on 3 years.

that is aussuming of course that you have some ability with languages to begin with...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I was going with a functional approach. Its not like a white person is ever gonna convince anyone they were born and raised with that as their native tongue. Some people may never become proficient let alone fluent enough for that line of work.

[quirkasaurus]

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c'mon someone should make the distinction between Mandarin and Cantonese.

which of the two will be more useful in the future?

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They are written differently, but spoken similarly. If you learn one, you can "get by" speaking with someone using another, at least that's how I understand it. If you know "Chinese" you are generally OK speaking with people in Cantonese, Mandarin and Taiwanese - they are all close enough. You may not be able to pick up every word but enough to make do.

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egad... if you don't know something....

Mandarin and Cantonese are BOTH Chinese.

Mandarin is by far the most popular, with better than
half the population of China speaking it.

Cantonese is the 2nd most popular, but also
has many dialects. Think British English vs.
Appalachia Mountains English vs. Urbanese but worse.

Mandarin is as different from Cantonese as Italian
vs French. Sure the root language is similar, ( latin ),
but beyond that...

If you can write Chinese, then that is a common thread.

The most lucrative is clearly Arabic and all those
terrorist country languages. The USGOV is paying big
bucks for translators, etc... What's that Iranian
language again, "punji" ???

In the normal US, Spanish is good, because of the large
Spanish population living here.

Japanese is cool, too, but Japanese folks all learn
English in High School, similar to how we all learn
French, so their English is already usually passable.

But clearly, the most profitable language, ie, most
lucrative is English. Yay, us.

[ilya]

Chinese, Arabic, I'm guessing Russian is gonna become valuable again also. Random story, a week after 9/11 my friend who at the time was a college junior with maybe 2-3 years of Arabic under her belt was getting $150k offers from the government to quit college and start immediately. However I imagine some of that demand has been filled...probably not all that much though -- Arabic is hard and even very smart people I know have a lot of trouble with it. However in about 20 years this will all be moot as we will have portable universal translators, so IMO it's not worth investing a lot of time into learning a foreign language unless you just enjoy it.

Spanish is useful but it's so similar to English that using up your credit hours on it would be a waste of money. You can just learn it through self-study. If you don't think you are good enough at languages to do that then IMO studying languages in general will not be an efficient use of your time.

[Thremp]

They speak Farsi in Iran. It looks like Arabic, since it uses the same alphabet.

[KUJustin]

This depends a lot on whether you're looking to get a job or make jobs.

If it's the first spanish is a pretty clear winner, especially since it's easy.

Arabic would fall in between.

And whatever Chinese is the impt one would be best for a job-maker.

[choccypie]

Mandarin Chinese isn't profitable right now, however considering it's apparently one of the most difficult languages to learn, it'll take you at least a few years to learn. By then yes it'll be profitable [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]