Most useful language?

Which is most and least useful out of the following:
French
German
Russian
Mandarin
Japanese
Arabic
Useful in terms of business, more people speaking it, which is likely to be used more in the future etc etc
Thanks🌻🌻

Reply 1

Mekkiii

Mandarin
French
German
Japanese
Russian
Arabic

Reply 2

lostintrnslation

that's a bit of a broad question really. for example, if you decide to move to france, french is obviously going to be more useful to you. and if you're asking this bc you want to choose one to learn, you need to look way beyond how 'useful' it is. you'd have a hard time learning a language that you're not actually interested in bc you're only learning it bc it has a v high number of native speakers.
the languages you've listed are all major and 'useful' languages. french is the only language spoken in every continent (except antarctica obviously). german is a massive language for business and very sought after by employers if you're going in to business. russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world and is the most spoken language that uses the cyrillic alphabet. mandarin is the most spoken language in the world and you'd make a lot of money if you were to become a translator of mandarin bc it is an extremely difficult language to learn. japanese is the 9th most spoken language in the world, i imagine that it would also make you quite a lot of money bc it's a very difficult language that not many non-natives can speak fluently (not like english or spanish that have a lot of fluent non-native speakers). arabic is the 5th most spoken language in the world, but you'd have to be careful which dialect you learn.
in the future, i'd say that mandarin and arabic would be the most generally useful but it really does depend on what you want to do. any one of these languages will be useful to you when you start learning them bc they will become a part of your life. i speak french and german and they are useful to me bc they help me to connect with others - i have german speaking friends, for example. german is more useful to me bc i want to move to a german speaking country one day.

Reply 3

FLM3026

Original post by aieshacaitlin

It depends on what you want to do in terms of career. Now, by what you said with regards to business, if you're considering conducting business in Europe in particular, I'd recommend German because it's considered the most spoken language in Europe as we speak.

If you're considering a career in the armed forces and/or secret service, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin and/or Japanese would be of immense use to you because M16 (SIS) look favorably upon applicants who speak such languages, especially if you're applying to become a language specialist in Russian, Arabic or Mandarin.

In fact, Arabic interpreters are of high demand and low supply in the west so if you write on your CV that you speak such a language, employers will chase after you with considerably large salary offers!

But whatever language you choose to learn, you'll reap the same benefits from all of them in terms of mental health and confidence, provided that you put the hard work and effort in. AND make sure you learn the language because you also enjoy it, not solely because it's a useful language because that'll make you less motivated to learn said language!

I know you didn't specify this language on your list but Spanish is an incredibly useful language to learn in terms of career enhancement, the number of people who speak it and that it's one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers! And if you're considering working in America, I'd definitely recommend Spanish!

FLM3026