What's a good language to learn for future job prospects?

[Sharkey]

Yeah, I understand. And I wasn't questioning your story. Hope it wasn't taken that way.

I was just saying that what I've heard lately is that it may not be so lucrative.

It's all good man. And your probably right about it if speaking currently. I saw some sources earlier on today stating that English teachers in Japan are only making two or three grand per month nowadays.

 

[Kick Strickland]

I don't know how people can only know a single language. That's always been baffling.

I agree. It's pretty stupid in this day and age to only speak 1 language. We're in the 21st century now. I imagine in the near future everyone will speak multiple languages. I was just reading about that hot chick on that show Castle. That woman speaks like 5 fucking languages fluently. And for some reason that made her even more insanely hot to me.

Arabic, Russian, anything from China, forget it. If you haven't been brought up in those countries and cultures don't think you can just just learn it. Even Spanish will be difficult for somebody that only speaks a single language.

Idk man I thrive on challenges. I do get what you're saying though, it may not be a realistic goal.

 

[2gps125]

Go to Oxford and major in Russian and Portuguese, as did Paul Lee. You can then run ABC Entertainment Group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lee_%28television_executive%29

Or major in Spanish and wind up running the entire CBS Network, like Les Moonves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Moonves

 

[Doughbelly]

Just basing it on what my friend said at the time. Obviously I wouldn't know for sure how much he made since it wasn't me who experienced it first hand, but I don't know why he would lie about that. He really was never the bullshitting type when I knew him and certainly wasn't the type to do so to try to impress people. We're also talking about something from 91 or 92, so it's entirely possible that the demand was much, much higher at that time. Not sure. This would have happened in the pre-internet age as well, so if he was making that kind of money maybe that had something to do with it. The world was a whole lot larger back then.

The English teaching market in Japan collapsed more than a decade ago.

The only way anyone can make six figures in Asia teaching English is to have own your own private English school and/or have specialized skills or experience in teaching standardized tests.

Don't sleep on French. There are a lot of former French colonies all over the world where French is the language of business, and a lot of them are growing very quickly, both economically and in population. It's also easy to learn as an English speaker.

Eh. I speak French because I was sent to language school by my employers because they wanted me to work in all of those French speaking former colonies and only then because I have multiple technical specialties.

I ended up working in La Francophonie off and on but here is the reality - very, very few English speakers will ever need to learn French. Many, if not most Francophone countries are switching to English because the writing is on the wall - English, not French is the future.

 

[5H3RD0G]

Robot programming language. :icon_chee

 

[Doughbelly]

As a monolingual English language speaker who has reached adulthood, you will see very little return on your investment in learning a new language.

Here is the link to the abstract and full text of a paper written by an MIT economist that examined, among other things, expected income gains of learning a foreign language:Links: Abstract Full Text

Most relevant chart here:

Notable is section (C) - your returns for knowing Spanish in state with significant numbers of Hispanics is negatively correlated with increasing number of Hispanics. Why? Because your lesser Spanish ability is in even lower demand when there are plenty of other Spanish speakers with higher English fluency than your Spanish.

As a native speaker of any language other than English, acquiring English boosts your earnings potential (not to mention prestige) by an enormous amount. The

If you've worked and lived abroad, you already know this at a gut level. Except in very limited circumstances, most employers are not interested in hiring an American who speaks the local language, whether it be Spanish or Russian or Arabic, at a low level of proficiency. And it will be low level proficiency compared to the local guy who speaks English. Unless you spoke that language as a child, you will almost certainly never have high level, business report or academic paper writing skills.

There are plenty of good reasons to learn additional languages, but if you speak English, economic gains aren't one of them.

 

[Kick Strickland]

As a monolingual English language speaker who has reached adulthood, you will see very little return on your investment in learning a new language.

Here is the link to the abstract and full text of a paper written by an MIT economist that examined, among other things, expected income gains of learning a foreign language:Links: Abstract Full Text

Most relevant chart here:

Spoiler

Notable is section (C) - your returns for knowing Spanish in state with significant numbers of Hispanics is negatively correlated with increasing number of Hispanics. Why? Because your lesser Spanish ability is in even lower demand when there are plenty of other Spanish speakers with higher English fluency than your Spanish.

As a native speaker of any language other than English, acquiring English boosts your earnings potential (not to mention prestige) by an enormous amount. The

If you've worked and lived abroad, you already know this at a gut level. Except in very limited circumstances, most employers are not interested in hiring an American who speaks the local language, whether it be Spanish or Russian or Arabic, at a low level of proficiency. And it will be low level proficiency compared to the local guy who speaks English. Unless you spoke that language as a child, you will almost certainly never have high level, business report or academic paper writing skills.

There are plenty of good reasons to learn additional languages, but if you speak English, economic gains aren't one of them.

Wow dude. I would've thought it'd be higher than what that chart showed. But yeah, relevant info that I needed to know. hmm

 

[Thai Otoshi]

I study languages just for kicks.

I'm 'Murican, but my area doesn't have a particularly high Spanish speaking population, so I never was all that interested in learning that, though I am learning Portuguese (which is similar enough to Spanish that I'll be able to mostly understand a Spanish speaker). I'm also learning Dutch too, just for the hell of it.

Neither really serves a true practical purpose, as my hospital has on site interpreter mobile stations. Pick the patient's language, and boom, a Skype video call is started.

If you're interested in a language for job prospects, I would first look at what your field is, and where you plan on living, before deciding what language to learn.

 

[Doughbelly]

Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese. Russian or one of the Slavic dialects would also be good imo.

Chinese is a safe bet for business. Russian is a safe bet if you want some sort of job in the government. If you're doing some sort of work that involves socializing with various people in America then Spanish is a safe bet.

If you learn both Chinese and Russian you'd be in high demand for several different organizations.

Just to give you an idea of what I was referring to when I mentioned government jobs, here's a link to an analyst position from the CIA.

The languages they're seeking are :Arabic, Chinese/Mandarin, Dari, Estonian, Hebrew, Korean, Pashtu, Persian/Farsi, Portuguese and Spanish, Russian, Somali/Hausa, Swahili/Amharic, Thai, Turkish, Urdu/Hindi and Vietnamese.

Couple things. I speak three languages on that list, one with native level proficiency and the other two at a very low level.

The Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Service Institute have 3 to five categories for difficulty of language acquisition for native English speakers. Traditionally, the most difficult category consisted of four languages - Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese), Japanese and Korean. Currently, both the FSI and DLI have revised Pashto to Cat IV or its equivalent. These languages require double the instruction time of the next step down, which usually includes Russian, Farsi, Swahili, Dari, Hebrew, Hindi, etc. The course period is between 64 to 88 weeks of instruction as a full-time language student. That is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for roughly a year and a half, give or take. That's to bring you to a level of proficiency acceptable to send you to your target country to finish your immersive language training. And the overwhelming majority of students in the Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese language programs are what are called heritage students, which are students who have already have some level of proficiency or knowledge in their background. These students will go to work with their military or government counterparts and (unless they're special operations or working in some far flung remote corner) find that the people they're working with have better English than their Arabic/Chinese/Korean/Japanese.

Likewise, but to a lesser extent with Russian or Pashto or Dari or Farsi.

You are not going to just "pick up" Chinese in any meaningful way by just taking a few courses in your off time or even by enrolling in the full four year sequence of college classes. Think about it. Let's say you are a particularly studious and dedicated student and spend 6 hours in addition to the 4 hours of lecture every week. 18 week semester * two semesters * 4 years is barely half of what you'd get at DLI or FSI and that's considered barely adequate.

When Three Letter Agencies say they want speakers of these languages, they're saying they want people of that ethnic background and/or were educated there. Not some guy who took a couple classes in college.

 

[Doughbelly]

I study languages just for kicks.

I'm 'Murican, but my area doesn't have a particularly high Spanish speaking population, so I never was all that interested in learning that, though I am learning Portuguese (which is similar enough to Spanish that I'll be able to mostly understand a Spanish speaker). I'm also learning Dutch too, just for the hell of it.

Neither really serves a true practical purpose, as my hospital has on site interpreter mobile stations. Pick the patient's language, and boom, a Skype video call is started.

If you're interested in a language for job prospects, I would first look at what your field is, and where you plan on living, before deciding what language to learn.

I thought it you were working on Dutch?

I tried continuing to learn Swahili in what was then my rudimentary French. That was a total shit show.

 

[Thai Otoshi]

I thought it you were working on Dutch?

I tried continuing to learn Swahili in what was then my rudimentary French. That was a total shit show.

I'm intermediate level in Dutch, but I'm just a beginner in Portuguese.

"Os cachorros est

 

[korean blood]

Chinese, Japanese, or Spanish

 

[YoungBoyd]

BTW, I would recommend using Duolingo.com for anyone looking to learn a language. It's effective and easy to use, plus, it's free!

Nvm. Just not on frontpage. Thx for the recommendation.

 

[Cayenne]

Nice! Italian is another one I hadn't considered, and I would love to go to Italy. Being able to spit game at Italian chicks would also be a plus, although my game is not dependent on talking if ya know what I'm sayin But for real thanks man I'll check that link out.

Italian is a beautiful language, it's like a prettier version of Spanish and it's a little closer to French in how some words are spelled. Not too complicated to learn either, although I had a leg up because I already speak a romance language. I don't know how useful or lucrative it is to know, but it sure as fuck is beautiful.

At the end of the day I think you should learn a language that you care about. I can't imagine someone putting hundreds of hours into learning a language they don't even like.

 

[YoungBoyd]

I'm intermediate level in Dutch, but I'm just a beginner in Portuguese.

"Os cachorros est

 

[Thai Otoshi]

Just out of curiosity. Why would you learn dutch? Unless you are german, you should have went with german. I can kind of read some dutch being intermediate level in german.

I know several Nederlands-speakers IRL, the white side of my family is at least part Dutch, and I've already tried German and didn't like it.

 

[ultraninjastar]

My Wife got a few jobs because she speaks Spanish. Also she graduated high school at 16 and got a college degree by 18 so that helped her too.

 

[Kick Strickland]

I study languages just for kicks.

You do it just for me? That's so nice thank u!

Spoiler

 

[ArtemV]

Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, French.. basically any of the most popular languages.

 

[gannima]

As many others have said Mandarin is a great one to know and for me at least was easier to pick up than spanish. Though memorizing the characters can be a bitch.