Everything else depends on where you want to go: >French for Francophone Europe, Quebec and West Africa >Spanish for the Iberian peninsula and Central/South America, also beneficial for Portugal and Brazil as you can kind of communicate >Russian for the former Soviet Union >any common form of Arabic for Arab/Levant countries of course
You can also consider German, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, although they're less internationally used than the above 5 languages, but they still unlock many experiences in their respective countries.
However, the best return you can get is to improve your English pronunciation and learn how to speak understandably, even as a native.
>Isn't Hindi pretty useless even in India?
It’s pretty useless in South India, but it goes a long way in northern India and Pakistan. English fluency is lower than most people expect on the Subcontinent. Outside of a relatively narrow stratum of educated, wealthier society, it’s not at all rare to meet people with little or even no English.
https://i.imgur.com/soSNLwQ.png
What are the top 3-5 languages to learn for travel?
There are no unarguable answers to this question. Personally, after English, I’ve gotten the most mileage from Spanish and Russian (not just in the former USSR, but also in more formerly Red countries than I would have expected—I’ve met people in Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, China, and former East Germany, among other places, who spoke Russian very fluently).
But learning the language of a country you like to spend time in, even if it’s only spoken in one place, is never a waste. It enriches experiences anywhere.
It's the highest IQ post in this thread. Mandarin is useful if you conduct business with China. For tourism, it's hard to think of a more useless language. There's nothing to see or do in China unless you want to do every country in the world, and even then you could do a couple days in Beijing without knowing the language and then GTFO. Taiwan? You can comfortably get by with English if you're a tourist or only staying short-term.
>Mandarin is useful if you conduct business in China
Its not very useful for business, as evinced by the fact that almost zero foreign business men learn Chinese.
>For tourism... There's nothing to see or do in China
moronic opinion
>could do a couple days in Beijing without knowing the language and then GTFO. Taiwan? You can comfortably get by with English if you're a tourist or only staying short-term.
You're just saying the same thing twice. Of course you can get by with English anywhere as a short term tourist. But Mandarin proficiency will make traveling in Taiwan and Mainland significantly easier, + can be helpful throughout Asia generally (except not really in Korea/Japan)
5 months ago
Anonymous
>moronic opinion
CCP post.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>CCP post
moron post.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I think the odd insistence that there's NOTHING to see or do in one of the largest countries on earth + fallback to "muh CCP" is much more indicative of shill posting
Can go to Japan and read a good bit of signs. Can go to Korea and speak with a huge majority of people.
You are a fricking moron, most likely butt hurt fr*nch homosexual.
English
Obviously, you will find english speakers everywhere.
Spanish
Opens up entire central and south america now you can read Portuguese too.
French
Opens up entire africa and wide parts of MENA middle to central Asia
Simple as.
>fr*nch again
France, Congo, Canada, Camron, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, and Haiti. Top 7 countries where fr*nch is spoken. Don't need it in Canada. So what's left. fr*nce, Belgium, and nig shitholes.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Belgium
Not worth going to either.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Every sign in Japan is written in English, so there's no point in learning to read. Just learn to speak everyday phrases to be respectful, were talking 20 hours of your time.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>i've only been to the tourist spots of tokyo
5 months ago
Anonymous
Sorry, I'm not going to spend months of rigourous dedicated study to read your language.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Not him but IMO no languages are worth learning for travel. When I travel short term there's no point in learning to incorrectly say a few things that the people would understand the English word anyway eg thank you, sorry, one
Alas this thread assumes language learning for travel is worthwhile, in which case anon is of course correct that ability to read characters would be beneficial in Japan
5 months ago
Anonymous
I've been in Japan for three weeks now, and can go to places that speak no English, and can't read one word and nothing would be improved if I could. There are hundreds of millions of people that are illiterate in the world that have jobs and homes. If you can save yourself time, by only learning to speak, do it.
5 months ago
Anonymous
you're talking in circle moron. you tried with a "GOTCHA" moment when trying to say mandarin wasn't worth learning and you failed. just stop.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Can go to Japan and read a good bit of signs.
Learn Japanese and you can read all of them. >Can go to Korea and speak with a huge majority of people
Learn Korean and you can speak with everyone. >You are a fricking moron, most likely butt hurt fr*nch homosexual
France most likely created your country. French still the third most relevant language in the world for travellers btw (after English and Spanish).
5 months ago
Anonymous
Do you really not understand the point or are you just that obtuse. Chinese can be useful in all of Asia. Korean and Japanese far less so
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Chinese can be useful in all of Asia
Not as much as you suggest.
First of all, English is still more widely spoken as a second language, second there are differences in what Chinese dialect/language is spoken in the respective diaspora.
Japanese and Korean are less widespread, but surprisingly common due to the soft power of the two countries.
5 months ago
Anonymous
English is more useful for the most part but Chinese is indisputably 2nd place. Also the dialect issue is not really a problem anymore because 1) diaspora have for the most part all learned Mandarin 2) any non-Chinese population that has learned Chinese, has learned Mandarin (eg Laotians, Burmese, Thais etc)
Personal experience, there's been many times during travel in Asia, mainly SEA but also occasionally in Korea, that I got use out of Chinese with people who didnt speak English.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Chinese can be useful in all of Asia
Yes, it's """useful""" in some parts but the only place where it's more useful than the local language is China. In which case see
It's the highest IQ post in this thread. Mandarin is useful if you conduct business with China. For tourism, it's hard to think of a more useless language. There's nothing to see or do in China unless you want to do every country in the world, and even then you could do a couple days in Beijing without knowing the language and then GTFO. Taiwan? You can comfortably get by with English if you're a tourist or only staying short-term.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Yes its “””useful””” (dont actually dispute its useful, but add quotation marks to make clear dismissive, b***hy tone) but… >In which case see…
If you have some beef with China, Chinese people, or the CCP, idgaf, but the thread is ‘what are the top languages for travel’, to which a language spoken all across Asia, official language of three countries, is an indisputably correct answer. Also the suggestion that there is nothing to see or do in China is patently absurd (and going to Taiwan is fine but that doesn’t count in favor of Mandarin for some reason teehee)
5 months ago
Anonymous
How much are they paying you?
5 months ago
Anonymous
2 rmb/post (white piggu rate)
5 months ago
Anonymous
It's clear you're new to SighSee. Please feel free to leave. The only people who cry about China here are newbies like yourself.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I've been here longer than this board, and you've just proven that you are actually being paid to promote China. Now answer my question, how much?
5 months ago
Anonymous
If you had any familiarity with Chinese propaganda you'd know there's no real wumaos on SighSee (there are angry Zhangs here and there, not so much on SighSee though...) They have invariably bad English and don't really venture beyond extremely repetitive one-line slogans.
OTOH, speaking of repetitive & one-line slogans, the inevitable reference to 'kidnapped and sent to North Korea' that appears in every thread that mentions China, or the literal copy & paste 'filthy food' thread have me wondering about paid ANTI China shills
5 months ago
Anonymous
They're not paid, he's doing it for free.
If you want to get paid for shitting up threads you gotta move to India and focus on the big boy boards.
5 months ago
Anonymous
It's falun gong
5 months ago
Anonymous
Is falun gong in the room with us right now?
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, because their shills are everywhere. So be quiet I want to enjoy my CCP bowl of falun gong organ soup.
English
Mandarin
Spanish
Portuguese
Arabic
Maybe Russian but soon Russian will only be spoken in Russia. Russian was dropped in Kazakhstan and probably Ukraine will drop it too.
>Russian was dropped in Kazakhstan
And you wouldn't know in the big cities.
Somebody speaking only Russian and no Kazakh will get around better than somebody only speaking Kazakh and no Russian.
This may change in the future towards English/Chinese as a second language, but you still have decades of Russian as lingua franca to go through, especially since Russian is still an official language. >probably Ukraine will drop it too
Already did so, but that doesn't really matter for a foreigner unless they fully put their native population through the meat grinder.
>probably Ukraine will drop it too >Already did so, but that doesn't really matter for a foreigner unless they fully put their native population through the meat grinder.
True facts. It’s also still true that the biggest cities have nearly as many native Russian speakers as Ukrainian speakers; Odes(s)a is majority Russophone. It’s been a long time since I was in Ukraine, but everywhere I went, being an obviously non-Russian speaker of Russian was helpful and positive. Attitudes are obviously changing fast nowadays, but most adults in the country are still functionally bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian. Maybe not in Lviv; it’s fashioned itself into a sort of Ukrainian heartland since independence (despite originally being a Polish city).
Big 2 are English and Spanish. Really depends where you're going outside of that. French and Portuguese should be quite easy to learn if you learn Spanish. Arab, Mandarin, Japanese or Russian are hard as shit for an EFL but can be equally rewarding. No point in ranking those as quality>quantity when it comes to travel.
I speak English and Spanish fluently. I hate speaking Spanish. hispanics in the US are low class trash and I don't like working with or interacting with them. Because I do speak Spanish, I get stuck supervising them (babysitting them through menial tasks) at every job I've worked. I could go to Spain I guess but me caga su pinche manera de hablar. Same with Argentina. I've been all over Mexico, central america and the Caribbean, and am kinda over those countries. I should learn Russian if this
>Isn't Hindi pretty useless even in India?
It’s pretty useless in South India, but it goes a long way in northern India and Pakistan. English fluency is lower than most people expect on the Subcontinent. Outside of a relatively narrow stratum of educated, wealthier society, it’s not at all rare to meet people with little or even no English.
[...]
There are no unarguable answers to this question. Personally, after English, I’ve gotten the most mileage from Spanish and Russian (not just in the former USSR, but also in more formerly Red countries than I would have expected—I’ve met people in Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, China, and former East Germany, among other places, who spoke Russian very fluently).
But learning the language of a country you like to spend time in, even if it’s only spoken in one place, is never a waste. It enriches experiences anywhere.
I learned sign language and braille, just in case I ever go deaf or blind in the future. Sign language also lets me pretend to be deaf so scammers give up more easily.
English DeFacto World Language for myriad of sectors of our ever connecting global society. i'd say a decent portion of the world has it being taught in their respective classrooms, and if not...well they are way behind the curve.
intl aviation, medical, academia, diplomacy, and of course intl tourism.
imho, the other 2 would be Spanish, and Arabic repectively.
But I can see where Mandarin and Russian could be useful.
No need to learn German, as practically all Germans below say, the age of 35 can speak English.
French. Well it WAS the defacto language of diplomacy, and of the aristocracy/royalty. still some remnants of that today probably...but something tells me you wont be mingling with that crowd. ha.
>English >Spanish >Tough one, I'd say Mandarin though
A lot of people saying French but that's outdated imo. Citizens of the former french colonies generally speak excellent English. French is far less useful in Africa than Spanish is in South America, for instance.
Add French. People in France dont like it when you don't speak to them in FRench.
Old joke is that French people know English but wont talk to you in it while Italian people dont know English but still talk to you in it.
>English. That is a no-brainer. Even people in Italy speak it. >French. Covers France, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, and a couple African nations. >Spanish. Covers Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, and South America (except BRaziL).
Other two are your choice. Maybe Mandarin and Japanese.
English (free space)
Spanish for the Americas
Arabic for the middle east
French for Africa
Russian for Central Asia
There's not really a language other than English you will find useful in Asia for multiple countries other than Chinese, but if you can speak English you wont really need Chinese outside China.
Unless you're in a new region every other day it just depends on where you're going. Wanna hit South America? Portuguese or Spanish. Africa? Portuguese or French.
Subtract any you speak natively bc you wouldn't need to learn them
>English >Spanish >Russian >Arabic >French
Secondary because they have many speakers, many travelers from their country, are similar to languages above enough to pick up, or similar to other languages
English
Everything else depends on where you want to go:
>French for Francophone Europe, Quebec and West Africa
>Spanish for the Iberian peninsula and Central/South America, also beneficial for Portugal and Brazil as you can kind of communicate
>Russian for the former Soviet Union
>any common form of Arabic for Arab/Levant countries of course
You can also consider German, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, although they're less internationally used than the above 5 languages, but they still unlock many experiences in their respective countries.
However, the best return you can get is to improve your English pronunciation and learn how to speak understandably, even as a native.
english french and spanish will cover most of western europe/latin america/africa
in asia/levant it's mostly arabic hindi and chinese.
there's no do-it-all langauge though. english may come closest in the developed world.
Isn't Hindi pretty useless even in India?
>Isn't Hindi pretty useless even in India?
It’s pretty useless in South India, but it goes a long way in northern India and Pakistan. English fluency is lower than most people expect on the Subcontinent. Outside of a relatively narrow stratum of educated, wealthier society, it’s not at all rare to meet people with little or even no English.
There are no unarguable answers to this question. Personally, after English, I’ve gotten the most mileage from Spanish and Russian (not just in the former USSR, but also in more formerly Red countries than I would have expected—I’ve met people in Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, China, and former East Germany, among other places, who spoke Russian very fluently).
But learning the language of a country you like to spend time in, even if it’s only spoken in one place, is never a waste. It enriches experiences anywhere.
>french
yeah no. unless you plan on going to nig infested shitholes.
You realistically need:
>english
>spanish
>mandarin
>don't learn french bro it's for nigs
>suggests learning mandarin
fricking lmao
do we tell him?
nigs and chinks aren't the same thing, anon
another low iq post. this place is becoming reddit lite
It's the highest IQ post in this thread. Mandarin is useful if you conduct business with China. For tourism, it's hard to think of a more useless language. There's nothing to see or do in China unless you want to do every country in the world, and even then you could do a couple days in Beijing without knowing the language and then GTFO. Taiwan? You can comfortably get by with English if you're a tourist or only staying short-term.
>Mandarin is useful if you conduct business in China
Its not very useful for business, as evinced by the fact that almost zero foreign business men learn Chinese.
>For tourism... There's nothing to see or do in China
moronic opinion
>could do a couple days in Beijing without knowing the language and then GTFO. Taiwan? You can comfortably get by with English if you're a tourist or only staying short-term.
You're just saying the same thing twice. Of course you can get by with English anywhere as a short term tourist. But Mandarin proficiency will make traveling in Taiwan and Mainland significantly easier, + can be helpful throughout Asia generally (except not really in Korea/Japan)
>moronic opinion
CCP post.
>CCP post
moron post.
I think the odd insistence that there's NOTHING to see or do in one of the largest countries on earth + fallback to "muh CCP" is much more indicative of shill posting
Can go to Japan and read a good bit of signs. Can go to Korea and speak with a huge majority of people.
You are a fricking moron, most likely butt hurt fr*nch homosexual.
>fr*nch again
France, Congo, Canada, Camron, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, and Haiti. Top 7 countries where fr*nch is spoken. Don't need it in Canada. So what's left. fr*nce, Belgium, and nig shitholes.
>Belgium
Not worth going to either.
Every sign in Japan is written in English, so there's no point in learning to read. Just learn to speak everyday phrases to be respectful, were talking 20 hours of your time.
>i've only been to the tourist spots of tokyo
Sorry, I'm not going to spend months of rigourous dedicated study to read your language.
Not him but IMO no languages are worth learning for travel. When I travel short term there's no point in learning to incorrectly say a few things that the people would understand the English word anyway eg thank you, sorry, one
Alas this thread assumes language learning for travel is worthwhile, in which case anon is of course correct that ability to read characters would be beneficial in Japan
I've been in Japan for three weeks now, and can go to places that speak no English, and can't read one word and nothing would be improved if I could. There are hundreds of millions of people that are illiterate in the world that have jobs and homes. If you can save yourself time, by only learning to speak, do it.
you're talking in circle moron. you tried with a "GOTCHA" moment when trying to say mandarin wasn't worth learning and you failed. just stop.
>Can go to Japan and read a good bit of signs.
Learn Japanese and you can read all of them.
>Can go to Korea and speak with a huge majority of people
Learn Korean and you can speak with everyone.
>You are a fricking moron, most likely butt hurt fr*nch homosexual
France most likely created your country. French still the third most relevant language in the world for travellers btw (after English and Spanish).
Do you really not understand the point or are you just that obtuse. Chinese can be useful in all of Asia. Korean and Japanese far less so
>Chinese can be useful in all of Asia
Not as much as you suggest.
First of all, English is still more widely spoken as a second language, second there are differences in what Chinese dialect/language is spoken in the respective diaspora.
Japanese and Korean are less widespread, but surprisingly common due to the soft power of the two countries.
English is more useful for the most part but Chinese is indisputably 2nd place. Also the dialect issue is not really a problem anymore because 1) diaspora have for the most part all learned Mandarin 2) any non-Chinese population that has learned Chinese, has learned Mandarin (eg Laotians, Burmese, Thais etc)
Personal experience, there's been many times during travel in Asia, mainly SEA but also occasionally in Korea, that I got use out of Chinese with people who didnt speak English.
>Chinese can be useful in all of Asia
Yes, it's """useful""" in some parts but the only place where it's more useful than the local language is China. In which case see
>Yes its “””useful””” (dont actually dispute its useful, but add quotation marks to make clear dismissive, b***hy tone) but…
>In which case see…
If you have some beef with China, Chinese people, or the CCP, idgaf, but the thread is ‘what are the top languages for travel’, to which a language spoken all across Asia, official language of three countries, is an indisputably correct answer. Also the suggestion that there is nothing to see or do in China is patently absurd (and going to Taiwan is fine but that doesn’t count in favor of Mandarin for some reason teehee)
How much are they paying you?
2 rmb/post (white piggu rate)
It's clear you're new to SighSee. Please feel free to leave. The only people who cry about China here are newbies like yourself.
I've been here longer than this board, and you've just proven that you are actually being paid to promote China. Now answer my question, how much?
If you had any familiarity with Chinese propaganda you'd know there's no real wumaos on SighSee (there are angry Zhangs here and there, not so much on SighSee though...) They have invariably bad English and don't really venture beyond extremely repetitive one-line slogans.
OTOH, speaking of repetitive & one-line slogans, the inevitable reference to 'kidnapped and sent to North Korea' that appears in every thread that mentions China, or the literal copy & paste 'filthy food' thread have me wondering about paid ANTI China shills
They're not paid, he's doing it for free.
If you want to get paid for shitting up threads you gotta move to India and focus on the big boy boards.
It's falun gong
Is falun gong in the room with us right now?
Yes, because their shills are everywhere. So be quiet I want to enjoy my CCP bowl of falun gong organ soup.
Go back
fwiw Mandarin is a close 2nd in usefulness to English in SEA, and is probably more useful outside of major cities/tourist spots
English
Obviously, you will find english speakers everywhere.
Spanish
Opens up entire central and south america now you can read Portuguese too.
French
Opens up entire africa and wide parts of MENA middle to central Asia
Simple as.
I think I'll just make those smelly Frenchies speak English, or they can frick off out of my face.
English
Mandarin
Spanish
Portuguese
Arabic
Maybe Russian but soon Russian will only be spoken in Russia. Russian was dropped in Kazakhstan and probably Ukraine will drop it too.
>Russian was dropped in Kazakhstan
And you wouldn't know in the big cities.
Somebody speaking only Russian and no Kazakh will get around better than somebody only speaking Kazakh and no Russian.
This may change in the future towards English/Chinese as a second language, but you still have decades of Russian as lingua franca to go through, especially since Russian is still an official language.
>probably Ukraine will drop it too
Already did so, but that doesn't really matter for a foreigner unless they fully put their native population through the meat grinder.
>probably Ukraine will drop it too
>Already did so, but that doesn't really matter for a foreigner unless they fully put their native population through the meat grinder.
True facts. It’s also still true that the biggest cities have nearly as many native Russian speakers as Ukrainian speakers; Odes(s)a is majority Russophone. It’s been a long time since I was in Ukraine, but everywhere I went, being an obviously non-Russian speaker of Russian was helpful and positive. Attitudes are obviously changing fast nowadays, but most adults in the country are still functionally bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian. Maybe not in Lviv; it’s fashioned itself into a sort of Ukrainian heartland since independence (despite originally being a Polish city).
English
Spanish
French
Mandarin
Arabic
Big 2 are English and Spanish. Really depends where you're going outside of that. French and Portuguese should be quite easy to learn if you learn Spanish. Arab, Mandarin, Japanese or Russian are hard as shit for an EFL but can be equally rewarding. No point in ranking those as quality>quantity when it comes to travel.
I speak English and Spanish fluently. I hate speaking Spanish. hispanics in the US are low class trash and I don't like working with or interacting with them. Because I do speak Spanish, I get stuck supervising them (babysitting them through menial tasks) at every job I've worked. I could go to Spain I guess but me caga su pinche manera de hablar. Same with Argentina. I've been all over Mexico, central america and the Caribbean, and am kinda over those countries. I should learn Russian if this
is true.
I learned sign language and braille, just in case I ever go deaf or blind in the future. Sign language also lets me pretend to be deaf so scammers give up more easily.
Tagalog, thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Khmer
English DeFacto World Language for myriad of sectors of our ever connecting global society. i'd say a decent portion of the world has it being taught in their respective classrooms, and if not...well they are way behind the curve.
intl aviation, medical, academia, diplomacy, and of course intl tourism.
imho, the other 2 would be Spanish, and Arabic repectively.
But I can see where Mandarin and Russian could be useful.
No need to learn German, as practically all Germans below say, the age of 35 can speak English.
French. Well it WAS the defacto language of diplomacy, and of the aristocracy/royalty. still some remnants of that today probably...but something tells me you wont be mingling with that crowd. ha.
>No need to learn German
Even if I wanted to, I don't think I would be able to speak it without smirking at some point. Pic related.
(1/2)
(2/2)
>We('re) search(ing) thee!
What is wrong with this?
>English
>Spanish
>Tough one, I'd say Mandarin though
A lot of people saying French but that's outdated imo. Citizens of the former french colonies generally speak excellent English. French is far less useful in Africa than Spanish is in South America, for instance.
English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Mandarin
The big four are
English
Spanish
Russian
Arabic
In that order
You could add Mandarin as the fifth but it's useless outside China
Mandarin is useful throughout all of Asia
Add French. People in France dont like it when you don't speak to them in FRench.
Old joke is that French people know English but wont talk to you in it while Italian people dont know English but still talk to you in it.
>English. That is a no-brainer. Even people in Italy speak it.
>French. Covers France, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, and a couple African nations.
>Spanish. Covers Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, and South America (except BRaziL).
Other two are your choice. Maybe Mandarin and Japanese.
English (free space)
Spanish for the Americas
Arabic for the middle east
French for Africa
Russian for Central Asia
There's not really a language other than English you will find useful in Asia for multiple countries other than Chinese, but if you can speak English you wont really need Chinese outside China.
Unless you're in a new region every other day it just depends on where you're going. Wanna hit South America? Portuguese or Spanish. Africa? Portuguese or French.
>Africa
Angola and Mozambique, and even there its native languages used mostly, Portugese is useless everywhere else.
English and Spanish
Subtract any you speak natively bc you wouldn't need to learn them
>English
>Spanish
>Russian
>Arabic
>French
Secondary because they have many speakers, many travelers from their country, are similar to languages above enough to pick up, or similar to other languages
>Korean
>Portuguese
>Turkish
>Farsi