[♥]

Friend of mine has a teenaged kid going into high school and he has to take a language class.

Choices are Spanish, Latin, Chinese, and French.

French is out.

Some of you are high school age here. What do any of you recommend? He speaks Italian already. I think the kid should take Chinese, but maybe it's too difficult for him at this stage of the game, though he's great in math and is in honors classes.

Any opinions here?

[design219]

Chinese!

He will have a great career future with Chinese in his resume, if he takes it beyond one high school class.

(I'm not in high school)

[Doofy]

Spanish will be most useful over there in North Mexico.

[Captain Obvious]

I have taken all of them and speak (as much as latin can be spoken) all but Chinese. French has been worthless to me.

Take Latin if you plan on Law or Med school.
Take Chinese if you plan on having on MBA.
Spanish will be the most useful in day to day life otherwise.

[Mastrap]

Chinese (Mandarin I presume) or Spanish, no doubt.

[paul w]

Learn the language you not only want to learn but see yourself using. No matter how good a language student you are, it's a mostly wasted effort if you don't actually spend time using the language afterwards. For that, Spanish seems the most obvious, and should be the most immediately rewarding, considering the knowledge of Italian.

Chinese is indeed hard, and it takes some time to actually reap the benefits.

[Randman]

Mandarin is damn tough to learn. I'd say Spanish and let him try and pick up Mandarin later if he so wishes.

[Chuckit]

I like learning languages, but Spanish is so ****ing boring. I also can never find a use for it. There have been more situations where I've needed to know Chinese than where I've needed to know Spanish, as there's always some English-speaker around who also knows Spanish anyway.

[Nivag]

Chinese if they want to be valuable to a global company later in life, otherwise i'd say Spanish. Either will get you places if you want them to.

[Faust]

I'm old fashioned, hence would always choose Latin over any of the other languages you have listed as an option. But then again, I can say that because I know where my fields of interest lie in.
It's impossible to recommend anything as someone not knowing the kid, its ambitions, goals, social environment and so on.

Oh, and I am not a teenager. I have gone the classic route in terms of education, which includes Latin as a solid foundation for the humanities. I'm certain it's much cooler to do something like Chinese though.

[Chuckit]

I honestly fail to see how Latin is all that useful as an introduction to humanities. It seems kind of like a superstition.

[Peter]

Spanish.

[Faust]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

I honestly fail to see how Latin is all that useful as an introduction to humanities. It seems kind of like a superstition.

A superstition? Almost all studies related to humanities require Latin.

[shinji]

I took Spanish. Don't really remember too much of it

If Chinese had been offered, I would've rather taken that.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Faust 

A superstition? Almost all studies related to humanities require Latin.

Uh…yes? I wouldn't have been commenting on the practice if I weren't aware of it, would I?

[Faust]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Uh…yes? I wouldn't have been commenting on the practice if I weren't aware of it, would I?

I am sorry that I disagree with your point. Nothing wrong with that surely, is there?

[Kerrigan]

He will forget it all when he graduates, fyi.

[stwain2003]

With Spanish, he can make a LOT more money, at least in Mexifornia. Oops! Did I say that?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by stwain2003 

With Spanish, he can make a LOT more money, at least in Mexifornia. Oops! Did I say that?

What, threatening McDonalds employees?

[irunat2am]

I took 4 years of Spanish in high school, and one year in college. I love it. I'm going into law enforcement and it will definitely be a massive help. (Being bilingual helps you move up in the application process, plus you get extra pay..can't complain!)

Just have him pick the one that seems the most interesting to him. He can always change out after the first year if he doesn't like it.

[Kerrigan]

Let's be realistic about this. The language you pick in high school is going to be forgotten. Furthermore, during the course of these studies, it is improbable that he is going to gain fluency. So let's get rid of these pipe dreams about getting MBAs and working with Chinese executives, or using Latin to facilitate his entry into law school or med school. It won't happen.

Having taken Latin for 4 years in high school and 1 year in university (French ended up being my language of choice in uni) I can say that Latin will offer some benefits, if this student is interested in expanding his English vocabulary. The truth of the matter is that he will come out of Latin with a greater knowledge of English words derived from Latin. This won't help in law school, it won't do a damn thing in med school, but it will make him appear cleverer the next time he's hanging around with buffoons who don't know what the word "sanguine" means. Expanding his knowledge of English words and semantical concepts, through their connection with Latin, could give him greater confidence when he enters other fields of intellectual inquiry.

Of course it is also an indisputable fact that Latin is the second most boring language on the planet, after Classical Greek.

[Faust]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Of course it is also an indisputable fact that Latin is the second most boring language on the planet, after Classical Greek.

Not really. For you perhaps it is. For many it might be. I have always found it amazingly fascinating. Ancient Greek as well. For me there is no such thing as a "boring" language.

[cjrivera]

Another vote for Latin...

[Chuckit]

Sanguine: "hopeful." Plus, point of interest, it also means "bloody".

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by Faust 

Not really. For you perhaps it is. For many it might be. I have always found it amazingly fascinating. Ancient Greek as well. For me there is no such thing as a "boring" language.

No, like I said it is an indisputable fact, the end. God wrote it down in stone and delivered copies to every headmaster and said "I have created a language dull beyond human comprehension, and I command you to force it on students until kingdom come." It's hard to argue with God on this matter.

[Faust]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

No, like I said it is an indisputable fact, the end. God wrote it down in stone and delivered copies to every headmaster and said "I have created a language dull beyond human comprehension, and I command you to force it on students until kingdom come." It's hard to argue with God on this matter.

Huh. Darn. I really never liked God much. I am not sure I want to switch.

[Andy8]

Chinese as he is still young enough to learn it.

It will be an asset to him when it comes time for business and travel in later life.

It is much harder for antiques like myself to learn at this late stage, but not impossible if you are focused enough. I can speak few foul language words only.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

No, like I said it is an indisputable fact, the end. God wrote it down in stone and delivered copies to every headmaster and said "I have created a language dull beyond human comprehension, and I command you to force it on students until kingdom come." It's hard to argue with God on this matter.

Ha! Thread degeneration time.

Did anyone mention that if he studies Spanish, he'll be able to read the words on his SUV parts more easily?

[imitchellg5]

Chinese or Spanish. I am taking a full four years of Spanish (I would do Chinese, but my school doesn't offer it).

[voodoo]

This is high-school we're talking about??

Pick whatever. It really won't matter at this stage.

V

[peeb]

Chinese. Then when the western economies collapse, he can sneak across the border and find work as a house cleaner or day-laborer in China.

[Mithras]

I took Latin for four years in high school, and two in college. It definitely was interesting and useful, but when I later learned Spanish, I realized what I'd been missing: languages are for communicating with people! Latin taught me language like it was math with a little poetry thrown in. I think learning Chinese or Spanish will have a much better chance of growing his world.

[irunat2am]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Let's be realistic about this. The language you pick in high school is going to be forgotten.

No.

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by irunat2am 

No.

Ohh how can I argue against such a persuasive rebuttal?

[design219]

Yes?

[irunat2am]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Ohh how can I argue against such a persuasive rebuttal?

I put a lot of thought into that one, as you can tell. I even took the time to translate it into spanish!

[talisker]

I'm sceptical that learning a language at school is particularly useful in terms of actually being able to go on and use the language in future. Although you can learn quite a lot, in my experience you can learn just as much in a four week immersion course in a country where the language is spoken. Also, if you don't actively use what you learnt at school, you forget it.

For that reason, if I was starting over again, I'd pick a language not based on it's future use to me, but on how interesting it would be to learn it. Most European languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, German etc), while they have their quirks, work in the same basic way. So I'd learn something like Japanese, just for the insight it would give me into different ways of thinking.

[Sherman Homan]

Latin builds such a great foundation for any of the Romance languages. To put it mildly, Chinese is probably going to be a very important part of international business over the next couple of thousand years.

[Oisín]

I’ll fifth (I think? I lost count) Latin, if he likes learning languages, that is. I took three years of Latin in high school, and while I do have trouble constructing proper sentences in Latin in my head by now, it gave me an immense knowledge and deep understanding of grammar and its fundamental principles, as well as of many words in modern languages (not only English, of course). Having a good grasp of grammatical principles and structures is indispensible and quite priceless when learning new languages—even languages completely unrelated to Latin, such as Chinese.

As Captain Obvious, I have taken all four languages and (to the extend one actually ‘speaks’ Latin) speak them all relatively fluently. While Latin has obviously never been much direct, practical use to me (one rarely finds situations where the need to communicate in Latin arises, though I have, one time, talked to someone with whom the only common language I shared was Latin—that was a slow and cumbersome conversation, but we managed), I consider it the most important of them all. Had I never studied Latin, I wouldn’t have found Spanish and Chinese so relatively easy (I started French three years before Latin, so it doesn’t really apply there).

Also, to disagree with what Paul, Randman, and the OP said, Chinese is not really that difficult to learn—to speak, anyway. And if he ever wants to learn it, he should start as early as possible. Sure, the writing’s a bit of a pain to wrap one’s head around, but the grammar and general language structure is fascinatingly simple, and it’s one of the easiest languages I know of in which to learn how to simply speak, without worrying too much about whether what you’re saying is strictly speaking grammatically and idiomatically correct. It’s also one of the easiest languages I know of in which to ‘talk around’ words (i.e., using different words to express the notion of the word you can’t think of or don’t know).