Learning additional foreign languages

[danphuket]

If you learn an additional foreign language (assuming knowledge of Thai and English) which one would you pick up to potentially enhance your career?

My options now:

Korean (vibrant society, unusual culture, delicious food; hugely popular among South East Asian countries ("Korean wave"); Korean brands everywhere now)

Japanese (can't help it: "love anime!"; unique philosophy of life; big investor in South East Asia)

German (sounds rough and cool; largest European economy; lots of deep quality books)

Chinese (even after struggling with Thai this language is still scary; is it worth the effort?; the biggest state population on Earth and probably will be for this century; main manufacturing base for many industries)

[Ajaan]

You don't give enough (any!) information about your career for anyone to give an accurate answer to your question. But just speaking of similarities of the languages you listed to English and Thai, I don't think knowledge of Thai will help particularly with any of those; knowledge of English would certainly be helpful in learning German.

[celso]

You missed the world's second most widely spoken language (and most romantic), Spanish There is actually a school in Plon Chit area.

[Mole]

Russian is also becoming more and more useful these days.

French is also an important language, so is Hindi.

You can't just ask a vague question like this.

[danphuket]

Russian is also becoming more and more useful these days.

French is also an important language, so is Hindi.

You can't just ask a vague question like this.

Strangely, I just checked the number of speakers of Hindi- there are only 258 million (2001 census, wikipidea), compared to a population of more than a billion!

By 2050 7 percent of world's population will speak French and 1 billion people in 2060 (in 2025 500 million). At the moment there are 300 million

The most widespread languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers#More_than_100_million_native_speakers):

Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese - they all have more than 100 million native speakers

Interesting article about value of learning second language (http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/22/popular-foreign-languages-tech-language_sp08-cx_rr_0222foreign.html). The last chapter: While Chinese and Spanish are becoming global languages, the demand will rise at the same pace as supply.

Well, you are right that the question is not specific.

[Mole]

That's NATIVE speakers of Hindi.

Don't forget that speakers of Urdu will also understand Hindi. Some scholars even considers both to be same language.

Also, there's huge amount of people who speak Hindi/Urdu as second language.

For Russian, virtually everybody from Eastern Europe and former Soviet states will be able to speak it.

French, large part of Africa & Canada will be able to speak it.

As for Mandarin, almost the entire population of China and of course Taiwan will be able to communicate in it.

All that numbers you're referring to are NATIVE speakers, which of course will be a much smaller numbers than TOTAL numbers of speakers.

I'd say that nowadays majority of world's population is able to speak more than 2 languages/dialects.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Mole

[AyG]

If the OP's career is in Engineering, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend German.

However, for other careers it would be important to consider both the usefulness of the language to that career, as well as local competition. There may not be much point in learning a Chinese language for use in Thailand where there is already a large number of speakers.

[kriswillems]

If you look at the people that study foreign languages at Thai universities (master degree), you'll find that those studying Japanese are very much wanted and they usually get a good job with a very high income (>50K).

[AyG]

French, large part of Africa & Canada will be able to speak it.

Are you sure about that? In my experience in northern Africa it's only the older generation that still speaks some French. It's very similar in that respect to Vietnam - the younger generation is much more interested in English. There is also a sense of backlash against colonialism. And as for Canada, even educated people outside the French-speaking areas have very limited French (again, in my experience).

[Costas2008]

Why don't you learn Greek, so many things you hear, will not sound Greek to you.

Just a suggestion

[Mole]

I'm of course speaking more of the central African countries. Also every Canadian citizen will know English.

But my point is that although French may have not so many NATIVE speakers, there's still a substantial amount of world's population able to communicate in it.

Most educated Germans will be able to communicate in English just fine, so I can't really see the point of learning German actually, unless you plan a career in German speaking countries dealing mainly with people who aren't really proficient in English. But the fact that you're unable to communicate fluently in German will already become your major obstacle of ever getting any work in those fields anyway.

[AyG]

Most educated Germans will be able to communicate in English just fine, so I can't really see the point of learning German actually, unless you plan a career in German speaking countries dealing mainly with people who aren't really proficient in English.

A lot of documentation for German technical equipment is available only in German - particularly equipment from smaller manufacturers.

[Mole]

I have a hard time believing that if these equipment are to be exported, that they haven't even bothered to translate the documentation to English???

On the other hand, if they are for domestic use, then I can see that there's little point in making the documentation in any other languages.

But then comes my argument again that you would never be eligible to work in a field where you would ever stumble upon these manuals, unless you already are a native German speaker.

Unless of course you are not a native German, but are interested to work in a German speaking country, then it's a no brainer that you've got to learn German.

But an engineer in any other country, learning German will be of very little use or advantage.

Edited February 5, 2014 by Mole