Which 2 languages would be most useful to learn at uni?

Spanish is easy? I have never heard that uttered by anyone who didn't speak atrocious Spanish. It's a really useful language. I've studied Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese and the Spanish comes in useful all the time.

You know, I've read some of your posts and I really like you, haha, you totally share my opinions

Spanish is easy. That is, if you compare it to stuff like Mandarin, Russian, Arabic. If you tell me it's harder than Japanese, I really won't believe you . And tbh, it's easier than French, might be harder than Italian, not sure, but that's about it.

I have never heard anyone who spoke it well say it was easy. It's easy to pick up, but becoming totally fluent is surprisingly difficult. I find it more difficult than French.

I don't. But then again, French isn't exactly a problem for me, I guess . More seriously, I have lots of friends who told me it was easier than French, and I don't think there's as much difference between the Spanish you learn and the one you speak as there is a difference between the French you learn and the one you speak. I guess it depends on where your strength are, but you're seriously the first person I ever hear saying that Spanish was harder than French. It's pronounced as it's written, the grammar is pretty logical and it's probably more straightforward than French, but that's my opinion, after all, and fair enough if yours differ.

I still believe you'd get a much better level in another language such as Russian or Arabic as you'd have in Mandarin after the same amount of work, tbh.

Anyway, the point is, it's not a competition to see which language is the most difficult. Difficult doesn't equal useful. One of my friends mocked me for choosing French and Spanish, telling me they were Mickey Mouse languages and that Arabic and Russian were much more useful. He now has a first class degree in Arabic and Russian that he can't use, because he can't actually speak them fluently. What's the point in that? The graduate of Romance languages is much more likely to actually speak the languages and be able to use them at work.

Arabic is very hard, yet very useful, and seeing as I'm an Arabic speaker who has started to learn Spanish, grammar in Arabic in Spanish is very similar.

This is definitely an issue for students studying difficult languages at university - they often aren't fluent by the time they graduate. But is that really the point of all 'language' degrees? I study Chinese at university, and it's not even classified as a language degree by the Chinese department; it might be better classified as "area" or "cultural" studies, with a heavy language component. Through the course I have touched on other disciplines (either as separate courses or as part of the Chinese courses) such as history, literature, linguistics, philosophy and religion. These could all be taken as respectable degrees in their own right, without a language element. This is not because they impart a particular skill (like law, medicine or engineering), but rather because they teach you how to think logically and effectively, and also help develop all the 'soft skills' such as discipline, people skills, and so on.

The same could be said of many language degrees, but just with the added bonus of being able to speak another language. If someone's only goal really was just to learn a particular language, it would be far faster and cheaper to enrol on a language course in a country that speaks it. The main problem with that, though, is that simply being able to speak a language will seldom qualify one for a job: they want to see that you've taken an academic course because it proves you can do all the things I mentioned above. The other option is to study an academic subject at university here, and then go for pure language study in another country, getting the best of both worlds.

Indeed. I feel that my degree was extremely well rounded, including history, literature, politics, philosophy, linguistics and obviously two languages. I have no idea why language degrees aren't more respected.

Having said that, most people study languages because they want a job where they can use them. A lot of people pick Russian or Chinese, thinking it will be useful for business or translation, completely ignorant of the fact that the level attained by most students in final year is a long, long way off being fluent. Someone who studies Spanish, Italian or French would be quite capable of doing their job in that language or translating out of that language - you cannot say the same of your average student of Arabic or Japanese. When people go on about how much harder those languages are, they conveniently forget that the level expected is nowhere near as high. What is the point in doing a degree in a language you can't really speak, unless you don't intend to actually use it?

Indeed. I feel that my degree was extremely well rounded, including history, literature, politics, philosophy, linguistics and obviously two languages. I have no idea why language degrees aren't more respected.

Having said that, most people study languages because they want a job where they can use them. A lot of people pick Russian or Chinese, thinking it will be useful for business or translation, completely ignorant of the fact that the level attained by most students in final year is a long, long way off being fluent. Someone who studies Spanish, Italian or French would be quite capable of doing their job in that language or translating out of that language - you cannot say the same of your average student of Arabic or Japanese. When people go on about how much harder those languages are, they conveniently forget that the level expected is nowhere near as high. What is the point in doing a degree in a language you can't really speak, unless you don't intend to actually use it?

I don't think you can look at someone's language proficiency in such a black and white way as being either "fluent" or "not fluent".

You can start to really use the language you're learning well before you're actually fluent in it! Like I said earlier, many of my friends have already started using Chinese in professional environments, and we haven't even graduated yet. This may not be the case for easier languages, because there are so many people already fluent in them; but for the more difficult languages, the pool of people is much smaller, and there really are very few people with "good" Chinese, let alone fluent. Also, as Anatheme said above, most people are aware that it takes much more than a degree to become fluent in some languages.

Do tell sir. How is the grammar similar? I'm a native spanish speaker and i started learning arabic last year but i haven't really noticed any notable similarities. Not yet at least.

Fluent doesn't mean 'native level'. Fluent means being able to carry on a conversation without constant hesitation and mistakes. If your friends are using Chinese in a professional environment, they are fluent. From what I can see, most people who take Asian languages are far from fluent by the time they finish their degree. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think a lot of people do overestimate how good they're going to be at the end. I know a few people who got really disheartened when they realised they couldn't use the language without another ten years work. My friend with the First in Russian and Arabic is a very smart guy, but he still can't understand 'real' spoken Russian or Arabic (from the TV, for example) which makes them pretty useless in terms of getting a job. So I just don't understand some of the language snobbery that goes on - why does finishing up your degree with pre-intermediate level Chinese make you smarter and better than someone finishing with advanced level Spanish? Who is going to be able to actually use their skill upon graduating?

I agree that being 'fluent' doesn't mean native-level; but they (nor I) am fluent yet. We still struggle to watch certain Chinese TV programmes (without subtitles) too, yet we can still have a conversation in Chinese about just pretty much anything.

That's my point: You don't have to be fluent in order to put your language to good use, especially if it's a difficult one. There are far less Westerners that can speak good Chinese than, say, French. It might at first appear that Chinese is now so popular that every other person can speak it, but in reality the vast majority of people never study it past the elementary level, because progress is so slow.

I never learned it for the same reason I never learned Swedish or Dutch, I figured that I'd never be as good at those languages as they were at English, whereas I hardly ever meet a Spaniard who speaks English as well as I speak Spanish.