Should i learn russian or chinese

That is nonsense. Russian is many times easier than Mandarin. It is not so distant as some people think, there is a clear Indo-European feel about it.

Chinese on the other hand is "a whole nother ball game". And the pronunciation is a thousand times easier than Chinese because there are no tones. Apparently, there are only a handful of foreigners who have ever learnt Chinese to a native level and these people are celebrities! I'm saying this from an Indo-European perspective though, if you already know Asian languages then maybe you will find Chinese easier. You're that same guy who's been asking about German and Russian and French lately aren't you, that physicist guy.

Make up your mind already, geez! You could already know the basic grammar by now if you'd started those 2 weeks ago or whenever it was. Tue Jun 24, am GMT. I of course will tell you Russian. Russia is a beautiful country. Visit us sometime! Indeed, Chinese is hard, but it is rewarding. If you try, you will find it is not so difficult as others said. So just take a try. Having said that, many words are made up of common prefixes and combinations, so after a while you'll be able to rely more on context and guesswork.

Pronounciation isn't too hard - not too many sounds different from English - but you'll have to distinguish between "hard" and "soft" sounds, which have a major impact on grammar. Another issue is mobile stress, again with a grammatical aspect. I'll come to these in a moment. Personally I find spoken Russian quite hard to understand - words are elided into each other, a bit like French and unlike, say, German - although my German is very limited compared to Russian, I still find it easier to make out words and structure in spoken German.

Now for the grammar. No getting round it, it's a major bitch. Russian has probably the toughest grammar of any language I've learned. First off, there are a number of grammatical cases, like Latin. However nouns, adjectives and pronouns have quite a high degree of irregularity, so you spend a lot of time memorizing exceptions. Verbs of motion go, come, etc have a set of rules again. On top of this there is the aforementioned mobile stress.

For example, "house" in Russian is "dom" think "domestic". The genitive is "d'oma" "of the house" while "houses" is "dom'a". In other words the stress represented by ' moves forward in the plural. With some words, it moves back, or somewhere else. Same goes with verbs. There are patterns, but no hard and fast rules. This is probably the hardest part about learning Russian. Russians also distinguish "hard" and "soft" consonsants and vowels and again, grammatical endings are affected by this.

So much for the language, but is it worth learning? I'm not going to make an economic case - others are more qualified to do so - but I do believe that you should use the opportunity of college to learn at least a few things that aren't completely "practical" - you may not have the time or energy to learn them later and life is not always about practicalities maybe this is the wrong place to put forward that argument though.

If you learn Russian, first of all as a mental exercise the rigour will do you good! Secondly you may learn just enough to appreciate the wonders of Russian literature in the native language - Russian has a cadence and beauty of its own, especially the poetry of Pushkin or the prose of Dostoevsky and Tolstoi. Finally, it is a major world language, albeit of a dying empire, and a knowledge of Russian opens up the Slavic world - Polish, Ukrainian, Czech and so forth I can understand the gist at least of advertisments and newspaper headlines in Czech or Polish.

EDIT: one more point is on expectations. As someone else has pointed out in this thread, college isn't really the place to learn a language, especially in just a semester or two - at best that's a brief introduction. To really master the language you have to spend some time in the country, or at least some time among native speakers foreign girlfriend, exchange students, immigrant community, whatever.

So if you are just looking at a notch on your CV or a distraction from CS, that's fine, but don't expect any great progress in such a short time, especially with a "hard" language like Russian or Chinese. How about Portuguese? Brazil is a country that is up and coming just like Russia, China and India, making it a good market to get involved with as it offers growth prospects and market opportunities.

On top of that, it's a great country to visit and vacation in. This could be due to a lack of interest and motivation. In fact, you can earn up to , extra euros just in bonuses!

You may be surprised by this as most people would assume a more common language such as Spanish or Mandarin would allow them to be more prosperous. However, knowing German as a second language puts you in a special niche and thus is more economically valuable. Additionally, Germany is a European powerhouse and so yields higher financial benefits than other languages. How to learn it: Resources to Learn German. Japanese is one of the most useful languages to know for those who work in the automotive, communications, and financial sectors.

Japan is the 3rd biggest producer of automobiles and makes up one of the biggest producers of mobile technology. Japanese people love to travel. So, if you want to work in the tourism industry, Japanese is a great skill to have. How to learn it: Resources to Learn Japanese. Many Arab countries provide the West with vital resources like oil. It goes without saying that geopolitical events of recent years have also forced the Western world to become more familiar with the Arab world.

As noted in a comment made by Solal, written Arabic follows a standardized system common in the many places where it is spoken. However, the richness of Arabic is apparent in the different dialects or variations of the spoken language. A Moroccan may not necessarily understand a Lebanese person. Egyptian Arabic is a good dialect to learn. Arabic has been classified by the U.

State Department as one of the hardest languages to learn , along with Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, and Mandarin. In other words, you need to be super motivated! But knowing how to communicate in Arabic is a plus for U.

According to Wikipedia, Portuguese is the 5th most spoken language in the world although these statistics are always estimates. Portuguese is spoken not only in Portugal but also in the booming economy that is Brazil. People also speak Portuguese in several African countries like Angola, where natural resources abound. The 8th strongest economy, Brazil has experienced rapid growth and become a major trade partner with the U.

Its strongest exports are minerals, iron, steel, coffee, and grains. While Spanish has become the de facto language to learn for many, Portuguese is rising in importance.