Is French useful?

[Shadow Fox]

I've been considering learning a few languages myself. Vocal and Written.
I'm currently looking at Mandarin (Yue Dialect for the English familiarity), Swedish(Family).

As a English speaker, been hearing that Mandarin is going to be the most difficult of languages.

If I recall, English and Mandarin are the two most complicated languages on the planet in the current spoken languages, but also seem to be the two dominant languages, with Spanish and Arabic close behind.

[Kurioxan]

Before WW2, sure, it was THE language of the world.
Nowadays its English, but hey if you have prospect of working in a French speaking country, go for it, realistically, its not that useful.

[Baracuda]

From my experience: should had gone with Spanish instead... Or even German but Spanish is so much more common.

[Deleted]

Living in America, you should only need to know English.

Absolutely need to know? Maybe. But knowing additional languages is never a bad idea - it is called general education.

[Shadow Fox]

French does seem to be accepted in northern Africa, parts of Europe still, and several island-nations all over.
But, the same could be said for several other languages as well at different regions.

Such as Mandarin beginning to show up in Africa and parts of the Middle East, and taking over the other languages in some south-east Asian countries with China being a heavy influence in politics and economics.

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Absolutely need to know? Maybe. But knowing additional languages is never a bad idea - it is called general education.

If you work in Trading, Commercial, or even Marketing, Mandarin is massively use full and valuable. Several Colleges and Universities would like to have you around as well.

But seeing as the United States does not have an official primary language, legally, you don't have to know English, and I believe Federal, State, and Locals services will have to adhere to it and get a translator.

[Baracuda]

I had to choose between French and Italian in school

Makes me think of Scylla and Charybdis...

[imabanana]

1. Jobs prospects and economy: which language do feel would boost your market value the most?
2. Culture: which language do you think has the biggest cultural output, i.e Music/Television/Cuisine/etc?
3. Difficulty: which one is the easiest?
4. Tourism and Travel: places worth visiting where they speak said language.
5. Future: is the language booming or declining?

Spanish is definitely the most used in there, even in Europe (outside France) and Asian countries you meet Spanish speaking people more often than French or German.

About the different points:
1. Jobs: definitely depends on where, and what job. All of them can be really useful depending on that.
2. Culture: French might be best there yep. Spanish also quite good but I think a bit less.
3. Difficulty: Spanish by far the easiest of the 4. French and German both have lots of complicated things that even most native speakers don't fully understand or follow. Don't know enough about Russian to compare but it didn't seem as hard as these two.
4. Tourism & Travel: Once again depends on where you want to go, French will be useless in South America except in a few tiny places, same for Spanish in Africa, etc. As you pointed, many places related to France history with quite a lot of French speaking people might have a lot of interesting things if you can understand it. Russian can be really good too for tourism in Europe too (eastern mostly), very widely used in many different countries, don't have the numbers but I'd say you can travel without any trouble to something like 10 different countries there if you can speak Russian.
5. Future: Hard to tell. Many French speaking people in Africa, but hard to tell if this will keep on, I could see it go down quite easily in many places. Seems harder for Spanish and Russian, both have a much more solid base in many countries, can't see lots of openings for German.

Overall I'd say French and Spanish > Russian > German.

[Deleted]

Makes me think of Scylla and Charybdis...

*shrug* Like I said, I think French is a really beautiful language, and even though Italian would have been a lot more useful where I live, the choice still was pretty obvious.
My brother had to choose between Spanish, Russian and Italian - which is a lot worse in my opinion.

[Aggrophobic]

Russian, without a doubt.
French as second.
Germans speak english well. Spanish? Meh, not really usefull.

If you could choose any language, chinese would be awesome though!

[Deleted]

I've been considering learning a few languages myself. Vocal and Written.
I'm currently looking at Mandarin (Yue Dialect for the English familiarity), Swedish(Family).

As a English speaker, been hearing that Mandarin is going to be the most difficult of languages.

If I recall, English and Mandarin are the two most complicated languages on the planet in the current spoken languages, but also seem to be the two dominant languages, with Spanish and Arabic close behind.

English complicated?

[Deleted]

English complicated?

There's always some form of exception to every rule which makes it difficult. There's also a huge amount of slang and phrases which deviates from literal meaning.

But overall, most of the language difficulty comes down to the family of your native language. Learning another latin language when you know one makes it easier.

[Deleted]

Spanish has a strong presence not only in North and South America and even in Europe with Spain but in Africa and Asia. I mean, just look at the charity program of the catholic church, most people that go to help countries in need are volunteers from south america and spain, even when they teach religion to these countries they do it in spanish so there you go, that´s how the language is growing so much. At least that´s my theory.

[Noradin]

If I recall, English and Mandarin are the two most complicated languages on the planet in the current spoken languages, but also seem to be the two dominant languages, with Spanish and Arabic close behind.

This depents entirely on the definition of 'complicated', I for one find the concept of isolating languages embarrasingly simplistic (and aestheticaly disappointing).

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Spanish is definitely the most used in there, even in Europe (outside France) and Asian countries you meet Spanish speaking people more often than French or German.

What parts of Europe would that be? Spain and Portugal? Go a bit more east and they suddenly speak French and German. The only ones where there is a lot of Spanish around are Italy and France, because it is so easy to learn for them.

[Deleted]

[*]Jobs prospects and economy: which language do feel would boost your market value the most?

If you are in the US, I'd say Spanish for the Latin American market. If you are in Europe, I would say French for Africa and also because the Germans and Russians probably speak English. (The French probably will too, but are likely to value you being able to speak their tongue.)

[*]Culture: which language do you think has the biggest cultural output, i.e Music/Television/Cuisine/etc?

I'd say French: they are less willing to switch to English, so have more of their own language cinema etc.

[*]Difficulty: which one is the easiest?

UK English speakers seem to find German closer in pronounciation and grammar, but it's probably not a big difference (except Russian would be harder, for the alphabet).

[*]Tourism and Travel: places worth visiting where they speak said language.

As a tourist/traveller, you could probably get by with English but as I said about business, I suspect the French speakers would value you being able to speak English the most.

[*]Future: is the language booming or declining?

I take your point about emerging Africa, but I am not sure to what extent Francophone Africa will stay French speaking. English is just too dominant internationally, I suspect their "elite" will switch to it. I suspect Spanish is more entrenched in Latin America than French is in Africa.

[PaladinBash]

Germany has a proud and successful history and is a badass country now. Russia has been pretty solid for a while now and is just getting better. Spain and France haven't really conquered anyone for ages and are pretty lame by comparison. Learn German or Russian.

[Kuntantee]

Spanish and Russian in my opinion. German is the least useful on that least.

[Deleted]

It depends if you can profit from it.

[Othraerir]

not really

[zealo]

Depends on what you want to achieve, its definitely German for technology related job prospects though.

[Kuntantee]

Depends on what you want to achieve, its definitely German for technology related job prospects though.

IT sector is full English. Localized jobs require local language. Most of the time, good paying IT jobs are on non-developed, developing countries which makes German useless.