What languages do you have to know?

[Adone]

I'm in my first year of University and I'm studying Business and Economics. I'm not sure yet about what job I want to do later, but it will be either financial or marketing-related. I'd like to move and work in the States, possibly L.A. or Miami, because I love those places, but I'd love to travel a lot and move a lot.

Currently, I'm learning English, French and Russian as foreign languages. Which other ones should I have to learn in order to have greater opportunities?

 

[nic]

chinese

 

[PRMoon]

chinese

agreed. go with the money

 

[Charm]

Russian is becoming a good business languague. French is popular with ladies. Italian sounds really cool IMO.

 

[oakraiderz2]

Spanish for sure if you wanna go to Miami or Cali. It wont be that hard if you know french. Then you should just learn italian and portuguese as well.

 

[Le Parisien]

From experience, I'd say that it's better to master a few than to be "ok" with many.

Simply having some basic knowledge and minimal communication skills mean sh*t in a business setting, it's only useful when you are a visting tourist.

If you are already learning French and Russian, try to be at least fluent (meaning being able to conversate with native speakers at normal speed) in both of them before thinking about taking another language.

If you really ask me to choose, considering where the US is heading demographically speaking, Spanish would be your best pick.

Chinese is cool (I'm Chinese by the way ) and it will be really useful in a business setting. But it's a difficult language for westerners, if you are not ready to put a lot of energy into it for years, then it's better to just forget about it. And the only way to learn decent Chinese is to spend a few years in China, you can't just learn Chinese from a classroom.

 

[Le Parisien]

Spanish for sure if you wanna go to Miami or Cali. It wont be that hard if you know french.

Very true.

 

[Adone]

Spanish for sure if you wanna go to Miami or Cali. It wont be that hard if you know french. Then you should just learn italian and portuguese as well.

I'm Italian so I obviously know it. How can it and Portuguese be useful, though?

Actually, I'm pretty good in learning languages quick and I can already speak fluently in French (I studied it for 3 years during Junior High and I've now started studying it again in Uni) and a girl complimented me on my Russian (although I began studying it only 2 weeks ago). Beside this, my English is almost perfect and obviously so is my Italian.

What would be my best choice as a 4th language among Arab, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and German?

 

[Nighthawk]

Body language, baby.

 

[oakraiderz2]

I'm Italian so I obviously know it. How can it and Portuguese be useful, though?

Actually, I'm pretty good in learning languages quick and I can already speak fluently in French (I studied it for 3 years during Junior High and I've now started studying it again in Uni) and a girl complimented me on my Russian (although I began studying it only 2 weeks ago). Beside this, my English is almost perfect and obviously so is my Italian.

What would be my best choice as a 4th language among Arab, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and German?

I never said it would be useful, it would be easy though. Portuguese is a mixture of spanish and french so it wouldnt be too difficult. Chinese characters are hard. Japanese uses chinese characters and its hard too, i took it for 3 years in high school. I would say spanish and japanese. You speak italian so spanish will be cake. Japanese is cool though, i plan to learn it again later down the road.

 

[seanchai]

I don't know how many languages you'll need beyond those four (!). I'd say Chinese at some point in the future, or Arabic.

 

[wootapotky]

I can tell you now though that if you want to learn chinese you had better be committed to it because I have seen many many people fail miserably trying to learn it. Even going over to China to learn it can be difficult unless you are taking classes or studying it simultaneously.

 

[doctoroxygen]

You should probably learn Norwegian.

 

[ElChoclo]

Just learn this phrase in a number of languages;

"Excuse me, can you tell me where to find girls? I have money?'