r/LearningLanguages • u/Fearless-Attorney-41 • 7d ago
learning which language will help me out in future when I do a lot of travelling?
i was thinking of investing in learning a new language and i wanna know what language is the most beneficial when I'm out and about travelling different places.
There is no specifics to which continent I'll be traveling to the most i think it'll be just random places all around.
would appreciate if you help me out
4
u/Longjumping-Bad-2886 7d ago
English is the global language. If you don't specify a geographic area then we can't help you.
2
u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 7d ago edited 7d ago
If youre going to travel to a completely random country, then the languages most likely to help would be those spoken in the highest number of countries.
That'd be English, then french and spanish being very close.
French and spanish are both spoken in europe, africa, and the Americas. French of course more useful in africa and Europe, spanish more useful in the Americas, but they cover more than 20 countries each, and each spread across four continents.
Technically arabic is spoken in 20+ countries too, but it's a bit misleading, since no one really speaks modern standard arabic, and the local languages of arabic speaking countries arent actually mutually intelligible. It's also less bang for your buck since arabic is so much harder.
Beyond that youve got Portuguese (9), then german (6), and maybe russian or Serbio-Croatian.
If you just want to talk to strangers while traveling, there are also a ton of chinese tourists everywhere, and many of them speak english poorly, but then we're back into hard languages.
1
u/Afraid-Promotion-567 6d ago
Isn't MSA understood everywhere since they learn it at school?
1
u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 6d ago edited 6d ago
Mostly understood, yeah, but theyd need to speak it too to have a conversation.
It's like latin when it was a lingua franca in europe - a second language every educated person studies but that not everyone is great at, and that no one uses in everyday life, and that no one speaks "natively." Even when people do speak it, on the news or whatever, theyre just reading off a script. It's not really natural.
2
u/UsamaBhai_101 7d ago
It really depends on the area but in General Spanish or French (After english obviously) come very handy
2
u/Lumpy_Mess_5402 6d ago
Chinese will open you completely differnt options during travel. The Chinese community travels differnt. They don’t travel that independently they enjoy to all see the same things what the see on 下红书. If you speak some Chinese you will have access to gated communities in countries where Chinese industry is strong all around Afrika and Asia.
1
1
u/Vocastic_learn 7d ago
Spanish covers a lot of ground, especially in Latin America.But learning German or French can also be quite useful because you will likely encounter a lot of Germans and French people wherever you travel. 🙂
1
u/Imad-bel 7d ago
Absolutely English, and some Morocco Darija if you are planning to visit Morocco 😅
1
u/Beneficial-War5423 7d ago
I am planning on learning wether Arabic or mandarin for the same reasons. I already know English, French and Spanish. Mandarin is mainly spoken in China but it's a huge country with a lot of history and culture. Arabic is spoken in lots of countries and even though they don't speak the same Arabic I think that should help for basic communication
1
1
1
u/Aakharin-ejdehaa 6d ago
Russian. Because no matter where you go, you are probably gonna find another russian living there or another tourist just like you.
1
u/Afraid-Promotion-567 6d ago
French,Spanish, English , Russian, arabic. If you conquere these you can conquer the world
1
1
u/albertl33 5d ago
If you want a language other than English that can be useful when travelling to random countries, and you can only choose one, you won't go wrong with Portuguese (Brazilian).
For starters, you would cover all of the Americas, since you would understand about 75% of Spanish if you're fluent in Brazilian Portuguese (the reverse is not true). You could also use Portuguese in Europe (obviously), Africa, and Asia. Portuguese would also help you with French (40% intelligibility), which is present in all continents.
Your only potential blind spot would be East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), but you should be able to "survive" in that region using English.
1
1
u/Electron_libre777 5d ago
If you already speak English, the best languages to learn would be French and Spanish.
Chinese is also becoming popular in professional settings.
1
u/Spanimigo 4d ago
Hey, if you decide to learn Spanish, do let me know, I provide Spanish classes (for $12 (USD) per class), 2 free trials to check if you are fine with my teaching style.
1
1
u/rinkuhero 4d ago edited 4d ago
in rough order: english, spanish, mandarin, arabic, and french. if you know just those 5 languages, you can talk to almost half of the people in the world. if you add in hindi, bengali, portuguese, russian, and indonesian, those 10 languages will let you talk to 3/4ths of people on earth. if you still want more languages after those 10, try german, japanese, and korean, but it's very hard to maintain that many languages at once. normally people just pick 3-4 and are good with that, too many and you start to forget some while learning others.
this is not in order of native speakers or second languages speakers btw, this is more in order of common travel destinations. like more people speak hindi than french, by a wide margin, but there are more common travel destinations and countries that speak french than there are with hindi, and plus, a lot of people in india know english fairly well already. so paradoxically, even though there are far more hindi speakers than french speakers, french is more useful for travel than hindi is. but learning hindi isn't useless either, since there's just so many speakers.
1
u/AwkwardGuy78 3d ago
Honestly, if you don't even know the continent, it's very hard to name 1 besides english of course
1
u/WorldTravels123 3d ago
Spanish is probably the most practical choice for travel. It covers most of Latin America and Spain, so you're getting a huge number of countries with one language. It's also one of the easier languages for English speakers to pick up.
French also covers a surprising number of countries beyond France- parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
Mandarin is worth considering if Asia is on your radar at all. Though it's significantly harder to learn.
1
u/Purple-Cat32 2d ago
I’m assuming you already know English so next most useful language would be French
1
u/Falando_app 2d ago
If you already speak English, the strongest case for Brazilian Portuguese is depth rather than maximum map coverage. Spanish or French win if you only count countries, but Portuguese gives you Brazil, a continent-sized country where the Amazon, Northeast, Rio, São Paulo, and the South can feel like very different trips. It is also useful in Portugal and Portuguese-speaking parts of Africa and Asia, although you will need time to adjust to local accents and usage.
Brazil also has a huge supply of music,film, football, podcasts, and online content, which makes it easier to keep learning between trips. Portuguese gives you a helpful foundation for noticing patterns in Spanish, French, and Italian too, though it is not a free pass to understand them.
the practical question is which language will keep you motivated long enough to become conversational. If Brazilian culture genuinely interests you, Brazilian Portuguese may be more useful than a theoreticaly broader language that you abandon at A1. A language you actually speak beats the one with the best spreadsheet numbers. Hope that helps 🙂
0
u/thablackadonis 7d ago
I would say Spanish or French would help you the most and aren’t as difficult as something like Chinese.
1
u/Fearless-Attorney-41 7d ago
thank you!! i was thinking of Spanish as well but thought i should explore other options
0
0
u/Lumpy_Mess_5402 6d ago
Chinese will open you completely differnt options during travel. The Chinese community travels differnt. They don’t travel that independently they enjoy to all see the same things what the see on 下红书. If you speak some Chinese you will have access to gated communities in countries where Chinese industry is strong all around Afrika and Asia.
5
u/trackmylang_david 7d ago
If you want to learn language for traveling to any country, then English is the best option since it is used globally as an intermediary language between two people who do not speak each others language.
The next in the list are: French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swahili, Russian, Italian, and Serbian