Which "world language" would you steer your child toward?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chinese and Arabic

No, not Chinese. It won't really have any utility unless you plan to go work in China or for a Chinese company.

Hindi might be better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:language teacher here. i'd steer my children to the language they were interested in. it does no good to force or steer to one you think might be practical (Spanish for local speaking, Chinese for computer science, for example), if they're not feeling it. it's a little bit like music or playing an instrument -- learning the language is going to take time so they'd better like the sound of it.

the good news is that once a person has mastered one language, they're often eager to try another. the key is not having them turned off early on.

That makes no sense. Computer science has its own language. Studying Mandarin for a few years in a K12 school is fairly useless IMO.

[Anonymous]

It is great to be able to speak Spanish for obvious reasons here in the US. Also, if you become fluent in Spanish, the other Romance languages are easier to learn. Japanese, Chinese, Farsi, etc... meh.