Which is the most useful language to learn?

I have been asked many times before which is the most useful language to learn (apart from English, of course) and I have always ducked out of answering that question properly. I would always say that it doesn't matter which languages are useful to learn, without a keen interest and proper motivation, you're unlikely to get very far in a language if you're simply learning it because it is deemed to be 'useful'. But let's put that issue aside and look at some of the practical considerations when it comes to learning a foreign language, if you are say a young person looking to pick up a foreign language to enhance your employment prospects, okay? Here are the following factors for you to consider:

Which languages should you learn?

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English?

It is far more useful to learn a language of a country where the people simply don't know how to speak English. There is a huge variation amongst the countries of the world in terms of their English-speaking abilities. In places like Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Sweden: practically everyone speaks English very well. Whereas in places like Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Tunisia, very few people speak any English at all. So if you studied Danish for example, then well, you can walk into a business meeting with a bunch of Danes and find out that their English is much better than your Danish, so you end up speaking English anyway and you will rarely ever get to use your Danish as it is extremely unlikely that you will come across a Dane who doesn't already speak English fluently. Hence Denmark will score very low in this category whilst Russia is going to score rather high.

I am however, going to draw a distinction between France and Sweden. In France, people can generally speak English but they would much rather you made the effort to speak French and any efforts to speak French would be greatly rewarded. If you tried to speak Swedish in Sweden however, you will almost automatically be told, "it's okay, we can speak in English." That is because the Swedes do not expect non-Swedish people to speak any Swedish and will gladly switch to English when they realize you are not Swedish. The mindset is totally different: so in the case of Sweden and Denmark, they are going to score very low in this category whilst France is going to score very high.

2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally?

I have to include this category as I am assuming that you are considering which language would be most useful for you in terms of making your CV look more attractive to prospective employers - if you want to learn a language like Wolof (spoken by about 4.2 million people in West Africa) for the academic challenge of mastering an African language, then by all means go ahead. But the countries where Wolof is spoken (Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania) are very poor and have very little impact economically when it comes to global trade & finance. So unless you are prepared to move to Senegal, Gambia or Mauritania - your knowledge of Wolof is not going to be useful if you live in Singapore, New York or London. In any case, the formal language of commerce in these countries tends not to be Wolof in any case: in Senegal it is French, in Gambia it is English and in Mauritania, they use Arabic and French.

Hence in this category, we're talking about the languages of countries (to the exclusion of English-speaking ones) which are significant when it comes to international trade and commerce. Bearing in mind that we're finding the languages that would most help you get the best jobs, the more important these countries are, the more likely you will be able to find work using the language of that country. Thus Wolof does score very low in this category.

Parts of the face in Wolof

3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn?

Let's be practical here: in life, you should always pick your battles. There is no point in choosing a language that you think is useful but then spend the next 5 years trying to study it and getting absolutely no where. Some languages are easier than others for those of us who speak English as a first language. French and Spanish are extremely approachable for English speakers, whilst Arabic and Chinese are the most difficult. This varies from person to person, but to be practical here: our time is limited, let's pick a language that we know we can learn without much difficulty.

4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV?

Again, this depends on the context of your job! Wolof (as discussed above) is not generally considered a particularly useful language - heck, before I came across the music of Youssou N'Dour, I didn't know what Wolof was. Most employers won't know what Wolof is unless they have had some reason to learn about West Africa, but hey, if you're working for a hedge funds company looking for trade finance opportunities in Africa, then Wolof may suddenly become important and useful because you can not only use it when on the ground in West Africa, but it demonstrates to the employer that you are already keenly familiar with the local culture since you already do speak the language.

Likewise, a language that I leave out of my CV most of the time is Hokkien - which I do speak fluently (albeit being rather rusty after spending all of my adult life in Europe). Most employers either don't know what it is or even if they do, consider it a language that is not particularly useful However, when I was dealing with the BBC a few years ago on a contract for a documentary shot in Taiwan, I put it on my CV and called it "Southern Min dialect (Taiwanese)" because I knew that it had suddenly become extremely useful in that context and would put me ahead of other prospective candidates who spoke only Mandarin but no Hokkien. But for this exercise, I am going to stick to the main languages of the world which most gatekeepers are going to recognize and consider useful.

5. How many people in the world speak that language?

This is just simple mathematics: the more people speak the language, the more chances you have of meeting someone who can speak that language. But wait, this has to be qualified. Take Mandarin for example: currently, over a billion people speak Mandarin in the world. However, most of them are in China and are living in poverty. So really, only the Chinese middle class who have a disposable income on par with any developed Western country would have a significant economic impact - so that brings that figure down to around 300 million (that is still nearly the population of the United States). That is still a significant figure of course, but one that is much smaller than 1 billion.

Likewise, up to 422 million people (mostly in India) speak Hindi - but Hindi is hardly ever learnt by foreign speakers because the language of business in India is English. Not everyone in India speaks Hindi hence the business lingua franca defaults to English. Furthermore, of the 422 million Hindi speakers in India, only a small portion of them have spending power that is on par with a developed country - thus despite the fact that Hindi is the fourth most spoken language in the world, you will be hard pressed to find a non-Indian person outside India who actually speaks it.

6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages?

This is an important consideration: some languages have a certain degree of mutual intelligibility with other languages, whilst others are "language isolates" which means that even if you become fluent in that language, it is not going to help you understand another language. Examples of language isolates include Basque, Korean, Albanian and Greek. For example, because I speak French and Spanish, I can figure out Italian quite easily (especially reading) despite the fact that I have never ever studied Italian in my life. However, even if there are other languages within the same family, you cannot assume mutual intelligibility. Despite the fact that I am fluent in Welsh, other Celtic languages like Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Irish make little sense to me and I can just about figure out a little bit of Cornish. Heck, English may be a Germanic language but there is virtually no mutual intelligibility between English and German at all!

With these criteria in mind, let's explore some of the options for your foreign language studies! Obviously, I cannot cover all the languages in the world, so I shall limit myself to the top 12 most useful languages and I will include one that I totally adore but is generally considered not useful. I have selected some music from these languages to put you in the mood to decide if you like the sound of these languages!

1st place: Le Français, score 51/60

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 6
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 8
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 10
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 8
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 9
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 10

Oh yes, you may accuse me of being biased as French is my second language but it comes up top in this survey. French people really do appreciate it when foreigners make an effort to speak French and will be extra friendly if you do speak it very well. There are certain sectors like fashion, cosmetics, perfumes, finance, motoring, luxury food & drink where the French do exceptionally well in. Most of all French is probably the easiest foreign language for an English speaker to learn and it does enjoy a certain amount of prestige. On top of that, there are 340 million speakers, it is the second most taught second language in the world (after English) and a good command of French will give you easy access to other Romance languages like Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese.

2nd place: Pусский, score 50/60

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 9
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 7
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 6
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 9
5. How many Russian speakers are there in the world? 9
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 10

Only very well-educated Russians speak any English and combine this is a booming economy, this creates great opportunities for anyone who is able to speak Russian fluently as a foreign language. It is written in the Cyrillic alphabet but once you get past that, it is reasonably easy to learn with a surprisingly high number of loanwords from French and even English. Mastering Russian to a high standard will definitely put a sparkle on your CV and given that are 260 speakers of Russian in the world, it is definitely a very good choice of a foreign language. A good understanding of Russian will give you easy access to other Slavic languages like Ukrainian, Belorussian and Bulgarian.

3rd place: El Español, score 47

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 6
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 4
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 10
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 8
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 9
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 10

Coming in third place is Spanish - another very popular choice. Spain is very widely spoken in Latin America and is the de facto second language in America today. Whilst Spanish people in Spain speak some English, your average Peruvian or Ecuadorian will speak very little English. Spain is still deep in recession whilst most Latin American countries are relatively poor, so their global economic impact is limited - nonetheless, give them a few decades of growth and that market will become increasingly important. However, Spanish is one of the easiest language to learn for English speakers and is deemed reasonably useful by most employers.  A good command of Spanish will give you easy access to other Romance languages like French, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese.

4th place: Português, score 46

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English?  5

2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 7

3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 9

4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 9

5. How many people in the world speak that language? 8

6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 8

Coming in closely behind Spanish is Portuguese for much the same reasons: Portugal may be a relatively small European country deep in recession at the moment, but Portuguese is the official language in Brazil which is one of the world's biggest and most exciting emerging markets with great potential for growth. So it is really for Brazil that you're learning Portuguese rather than Portugal per se. It is reasonably easy to learn and given that it is unusual than Spanish, it is likely to have more of a wow factor on your CV. 250 million people speak Portuguese (with 202 million in Brazil alone). A good command of Portuguese will give you easy access to other Romance languages like French, Italian, Catalan and Spanish.

5th place: العربية, score 42

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English?  7
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 10
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 2
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 10
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 9
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 4

Arabic is definitely an interesting choice of language to learn but here's the issue: there are about 420 million speakers of Arabic in the world and whilst there are plenty of Algerians, Mauritanians, Egyptians, Palestinians, Iraqis etc who speak Arabic as a first language and can't speak English - but are they the kind of people who are likely to get involved in global trade? No. You would be dealing with the Arabs with money - ie. the Arabs with oil in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain and these people have a very robust education system and actually do speak English pretty well. The world is going to depend on their oil (until it runs out - which won't be in your lifetime) and until then there is always business to be done with rich Arabs. Arabic, however, is notoriously difficult to learn though it is for that reason that you will probably impress most HR managers if you do speak it fluently having conquered that intellectual challenge! However, apart from being able to understands the different regional variants of Arabic, there is limited mutual intelligibility with other languages though you may be able to understand some words from Hebrew and Aramaic (though the written script is different).

6th place: Deutsch, score 41

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English?  3
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 10
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 6
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 9
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 8
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 5

German is very widely spoken in Europe by over 120 million people but the vast majority of them speak English fluently too (with the sole exception of those from the former East Germany). The economies of Austria, Switzerland and Germany are very robust and important globally though most of the business community there are willing and able to speak English with you. It is not too difficult to learn and it does enjoy some prestige as a language. German however, does not have much mutual intelligibility with other Germanic languages like English, Danish or Swedish.

7th place: Italiano, score 40

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 5
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 5
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 9
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 8
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 4
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 9

Italian is an interesting example - the ability of average Italians to speak English is worse than your average Northern European and whilst they are hit hard by the current recession, they are still dominant in certain sectors, so if you want to work for say an Italian fashion company, it would make sense to learn the language of the management. As a Romance language, it is easy and approachable and it does enjoy a certain prestige factor. 85 million people speak Italian and it will give you access to other Romance languages like French, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese. 

8th place: 华语 (普通话), score 39 (rest of the world) / 29 (Singapore) 

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English?  8
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 10
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 0
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 10 (rest of the world) / 0 (Singapore)
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 10
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 1

Chinese is the second most spoken language in the world (including second language speakers) - yes it is the most spoken language in the world by native speakers (with a billion speakers), but by the time you include second language speakers, English just edges ahead given the popularity of English. Younger Chinese people have been learning English since the 1990s, but the general standard is still shockingly low even amongst graduates due to the lack of good English teachers in China. The Chinese economy is booming, no doubt about that - a very good reason to learn Chinese but be warned, it is undoubtedly, by far, the most difficult language in the world to learn because of the complex writing system. Likewise, a knowledge of Mandarin may help you learn other Chinese dialects - but it will not really help you if you wish to tackle other Asian languages like Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese which are not from the same language family. Yes there are some loan words but their grammar structures are totally different.

Now in the rest of the world, if you are not Chinese but speak Chinese, employers are going to sit up and take notice. It is going to impress - but I feel I have to put a disclaimer here given that about 55% of my readers are from Singapore: this is NOT the case in Singapore. In Singapore, 75% of the population are Chinese and you have over 1 million China-born migrants living in Singapore today - the ability to speak Chinese fluently is no a rare commodity in this context. A manager is probably going to think, "yeah yeah you are Chinese and speak Chinese, big fat hair deal, so what? Most of my staff speak Chinese as well. Do you speak any other languages apart from Chinese?" Thus in this context, Singaporean employers are NOT going to be impressed by your Chinese skills, unlike say his counterpart in Europe or America.  Thus if you are Chinese-Singaporean, you need a third and fourth language: English and Chinese is simply not enough. Please note that Chinese is NOT considered a foreign language in Singapore.

9th place: 日本語, score 38

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 10
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 10
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 3
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 9
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 6
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 0

(Yes I know I am showing my age by digging up old mid-1990s J-pop but that is still my all time favourite J-pop song ever. Jonathan Kang, you are responsible for this!) The standard of English in Japan is still very low and most Japanese people will be very appreciative if you do make an effort to speak their language. The Japanese economy is still fairly robust and if you do want to work for a Japanese company, it would make absolute sense to master the language of the bosses. It is however notoriously difficult to learn and for that reason, will probably impress most recruiters. There are about 130 million Japanese speakers in the world and it is a language isolate - thus a flat zero in the last category. 

10th place: 한국말, score 35

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 10
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 10
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 1
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 9
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 5
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 0

Now I am actually learning Korean at the moment so it is interesting to put Korean into this test - the standard of English in Korean is painfully low. It has a booming economy and I am totally into K-culture - that gives me the motivation to learn it despite the fact that it is painfully difficult. Ouch. I thought I was good at languages but I have met my match with Korean. Nonetheless, it would probably impress most recruiters and 77 million people worldwide do speak it (but 25 million of those are in North Korea). The problem with Korean though, is that is is a classic language isolate - it is not related to any language (though it contains some loanwords from English and Chinese.)

11th place: Bahasa Indonesia, score 34

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 8
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 4
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 8
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 3
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 9
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 2

For this exercise, I will focus only on Bahasa Indonesia as Malaysia and Indonesia are vastly different countries despite their languages are mutually intelligible and effectively the same language, The standard of English in Indonesia is still painfully low, even amongst the urban elite in the big cities and once you get into the countryside, forget about even trying. Indonesia is a big emerging market that may be dominant in a few decades, but when their time will come is anyone's guess. It is however, a reasonably approachable and easy language to learn actually but given Indonesia's lack of economic prowess today, it is not a language that will make many recruiters sit up and tack notice. Given that there are about 268 million speakers of the language in South East Asia (if you include Malay and all regional dialects), it is either ranked 4th or 5th in terms of the most spoken language in the world. However, a good grasp of Bahasa Indonesia will probably only enable you to understand regional dialects but it wouldn't give you access to any other regional languages like Thai, Cambodian or Tagalog. 

12th place: Türkçe, score 33

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 6
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 5
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 5
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 5
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 5
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 7

The level of English spoken in Turkey varies - those involved in the tourist trade speak it well but if they usually learn it on the job rather than in school. Turkey is an up and coming emerging market that may be dominant in a few decades but not just yet. The language is fairly complex but at least it is written with a roman script and depending on your job, it is not something that most recruiters would expect to see on a CV. Approximately 71 million people speak Turkish today and it will give you a springboard to other Turkic languages like Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Tartar. (Another question is just how useful those languages are for a young person looking to boost his CV... but we shall leave that for another day.)

And last but not least, Cymraeg: score 6

1. Are the people in that country unable or unwilling speak English? 0
2. Are they rich enough to have an economic impact globally? 2
3. Is the language reasonably easy to learn? 2
4. Are employers going to be impressed if they see it on your CV? 1
5. How many people in the world speak that language? 0
6. Will this language be a springboard to other languages? 1

And just for a laugh, because I speak Welsh fluently, I thought I'd subject it to the same test. 100% of Welsh people speak English and they never expect non-Welsh people to know any Welsh at all, so they will automatically switch to English for you if you are not Welsh-speaking. Wales is relatively small and doesn't even have much of an economic impact regionally. It was extremely difficult to learn as it is an ancient language wrestled from the jaws of extinction and when I tell people that I speak Welsh fluently, I am always greeted with a very puzzled and quizzical, "why?" Most Welsh people don't speak Welsh, an estimated 20% have some knowledge of Welsh and the percentage who speak it fluently is tiny - so we're talking about 50,000 to 70,000 or so fluent Welsh speakers today. My my, what an exclusive club. And despite being fluent in Welsh, I can't understand other Celtic languages like Scottish Gaelic, Manx or Irish at all and can just about figure out some Cornish - which incidentally, is spoken by about 557 people today. Great.

So in terms of it being a useful second language for someone outside Wales, well, it's pretty much as useless as it can get but I totally enjoy studying and speaking Welsh! In my case, as I am marketing myself as a language consultant/specialist - the more languages I can speak, the better so being able to speak Welsh in my case has proven to be reasonably useful despite the fact that I have never lived in Wales. Welsh has brought me much joy and fun over the years. I am proud of the fact that I managed to tackle such a difficult language and learn it to a very high level.

So amongst the 13 languages I have listed here: I am fluent in French, Spanish, Mandarin and Welsh. I can speak German, Italian and Indonesian pretty decently. I have basic Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Arabic and Turkish.  I see Italian as the lowest lying fruit as I know that with my knowledge of French and Spanish, I could improve my Italian really quickly if I put in some effort - however, I am currently working hard on my Korean and damn it is so bloody difficult! So that's it from me on this topic. Please let me know what languages you are learning or wish to learn by leaving a comment below and let's share our language learning experiences. Many thanks for reading!