What are the three most important languages to learn today?

Question

besides chinese

Answer 1

There is no way to name three languages that are right for everyone to learn.  Everything depends on who you are, where you live, and what you want to do with your languages.  

I have lived in California, Germany, and Turkey, so Spanish, German, and Turkish have been the most important languages in my life.  When I studied English Literature, the most important languages were Latin, Greek, and German, as these have had huge influence on the evolution of the English language (I would add Latin, but you only gave me three--it is so hard to choose between French and Latin, and so unfair to have to!)

Now, my interests are in spirituality and world religions.  Now I'm fascinated with Hebrew, Greek, Sanskrit, Persian, Chinese, Latin, Japanse--all languages that have significant bodies of philosophical/religious literature written in them.  When I was studying Western philosophy, Greek, Latin, French and German were the most important languages.  

If I were a businessman, I'd be looking at Chinese, English and Spanish--And having a hard time leaving out Hindi.  

Tell me who you are and what your interests and needs are, and I'll help you pick the languages.

Answer 2

English, Spanish and Chinese

Answer 3

english, french, spanish.

Answer 4

In general it depends on what's most important to you. You might need or be interested to learn a language because:

1. That's the language spoken where you live, work or where you're going to live or work.

2. That's the language spoken by the people with whom you (will) do business.

A key suggestion is to think ahead. Don't base your decisions about learning a new language only on your current needs. Think ahead and get help from older or more experienced people.

Now, considering languages for science, business, worldwide usage and especially their influence, this is your list of three (besides Chinese):

1. English

2. French

3. Spanish

(4. Russian)

Answer 5

Spanish, English and Japanese or Chinese.

Answer 6

Spanish, simply because of demographics and the growing importance of latin american markets and culture in international business and humanities.

French- the eternal language of diplomacy

and one of the main Indian languages for the same reasons you would learn Chinese.

Answer 7

The emergent economies are in the "BRIC" countries : Brazil, Russia, India and China. That means (Brazilian) Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, and maybe Hindi.

Answer 8

Spanish for sure. Japanese and French. Those would be my picks.

Answer 9

English (the internationally accepted language), Spanish and Portuguese (the keys to the Latin American market), and French (the key to the African market)

Answer 10

English, Spanish and Arabic