What languages are more prospective to study? (Какие языки перспективнее изучать?)

What languages are more prospective to study?
This question is asked by a lot of people before they begin to study this or that language.

I tried to answer this question in my article in Russian, here is the link:

But everyone can express his\her opinion in this topic even if you can’t read my Russian article.
Good luck with your target languages!

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Prospective learner?

‘more prospective to study’ - ‘more important to study, more profitable to study’

The language that yields the highest expected marginal revenue product specific to your situation and future ambitions.

So for example, I probably shouldn’t be studying japanese to maximize my marginal product as an aspiring financial economist in Sweden. German and chinese are probably more pertinent languages to master here.

If you mean prospective as in maximizing personal utility then whichever language you enjoy most would be the most prospective to study.

I mean prospecitve as in maximizing my ability to talk to my girlfriends friends and family. That’s why Russian is the most prospective to study for me.

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Indeed. How “prospective” a language is to any given person ought to be closely tied to personal preferences.

Not everyone equates prosperity solely with monetary gain.

“Prospective” learners should not expect that learning a foreign language will make them financially “prosperous”.

P.S.
The adjective “prospective” is attributive. It’s only used before a noun. In addition, the core meaning of the word is quite different from that of “profitable”.

“Prospective” means “related to the future”. Перспективный язык - promising language.

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yes, ‘prospective’ because expecting to be studied, the most promising l;anguage for you. It’s related to your future as you are to decide which language to study.

What I mean is that “prospective” and “перспективный” differ in meaning. The latter can be rendered into English as “promising”.

In all of this, Yulie’s point is important. “Prospective” means either going to happen or likely to happen in the future. It does not mean beneficial.

As to which language is the most beneficial or useful or profitable to study, this has to be dependent on each person’s situation, personal preferences etc. I would think that as a general rule English is still the most useful and thereafter we are looking at geographical factors, cultural interest factors, factors such as one’s personal friends and relatives, etc.

Generally speaking languages that are spoken in the greatest number of countries or that have the greatest number of speakers have to be near the top. Spanish, Chinese, French, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, but if you are into Japanese Anime, Korean drama, or planning to attend the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro , the answer could be different.

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Generally speaking, you are right. But at least ‘prospective’ is closer to my idea than ‘perspective’ because I meant ‘promising in the future’ , ‘more favourable in the future’ for you.
However, I believe that the words of the different languages are never covered for 100% by each other. Even the simpliest words like ‘good’ in English, ‘gut’ in German, ‘bon’ in French and ‘хороший’ in Russian are quite different in nuances, in the shade of meaning.
That’s why a congenial translation Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ by B. Pasternak is a bit different from the original. The same with his ‘Sonets’ translated by S.Marshak or Goethe’s poems translated by M.Lermomtov.
The different languages are like a man and a woman. Even if they talk about the same topic and with the same words they always mean a bit different. However, it makes the world more colourful, doesn’t it?
But it’s a topic of the other article, though.

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I think Japanese is one of the top 10 languages with the most speakers – although it is probably not widely distributed. I agree that the usefulness of a language depends on everybody’s situation. Earlier today, I was reading an article about interpreters in 19th and 20th century Taiwan who found it profitable to know both Hokkien Chinese and fairly obscure indigenous languages. Even though they spoke languages not known to most of the world, it was for that very reason that could profit from their knowledge.

Prospective - потенциальный, возможный. If something is prospective, it hasn’t happened yet. For example, prospective students are students who might attend a school in the future: They build new buildings, gyms, food courts, dorms, anything that they think provides drive up curb appeal to prospective students. Another example: Representative agencies could conduct background checks on prospective buyers to weed out violent people. “Prospective” has nothing to do with “promising”. That is why Yutaka and others didn’t get what you meant.

Well objectively the most dominant 3 are English, Mandarin and Spanish. English is most relevant right now as it’s the most internationally spoken language and has the second most speakers in the world. Mandarin by total amount of speakers is the most relevant. Now it also has the largest economy in the world. After those two, Spanish has to take the bronze metal. It is the most internationally spoken language after English and second in Native speakers after Mandarin. Those are the “Big 3” so to speak. But depending on your situation, French or Russian or Turkish or any language for that matter could be most important for you.

Just a small point, not on language, China does not have the world largest economy. That is still the US. List of countries by GDP (nominal) - Wikipedia
I also note that Germany recently signed an agreement with Brazil to promote the teaching of German in that country. I think many countries want to promote the use of their language abroad. They should all promote the use of LingQ!

I agree. I am personally pondering French or German as the next to tackle after Spanish. And excuse me for being vague. I should have said China is estimated to be fist in PPP.

“Mandarin by total amount of speakers is the most relevant.”

How so? In comparison to English, it has much fewer speakers, and is much more geographically confined.

Even within China, by the government’s own estimates, 30% of people cannot speak Mandarin, and of the remaining 70% only 10% of these speak relatively standard and flowing Mandarin. That’s just 7% of the population, or, around 100 million.

In comparison, English has over 2,000 million people that can speak relatively standard and flowing English, by some estimates.

http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s8316/201409/174957.html

And this is the English translation of my article “What language has more prospects to study”:

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I have read the lesson of Evgeny in English. And I have question myself:
Because one person learns a new language? We are not a good example. We have in LingQ some languages and may other resources. For us, it is not a vital decision what language to study. But for some people today and many in the history it was a crucial issue.
If you a labourer in the Andes and you only speak Quechua. Or if you are from the ancient Gaul and you only speak some kind of Celtic language you are a great problem. You need Spanish or Latin for work, commerce etc., you are in serious disadvantage opposite to people that speak Spanish or Latin.
In some areas for increasing you probability of finding good opportunities is necessary to learn a new language. However is very different from country to country and from person to person what language has more prospect to study. For some people is more important learn Russian for other is Arabic. It depends on your situation.