Quote Originally Posted by Augustus Lucifer View Post
Job

Chinese / Japanese - A lot of American industry is moving to China or is already there, and a lot of it also exists in Japan. If you're looking to enter the field of business, the next best language to English will probably be Chinese for the future, followed by Japanese.

Arabic - It's no secret that we don't exactly have an abundance of people here in America who know about the people we're fighting, much less can understand them. Middle East relations will be tense for many years to come, so the need for interpreters in the government and in private functions will remain high.

Spanish - By and large the largest demographic of non-native English speakers on the West Coast of the US is Hispanic people. It could help you get a job managing places where workers speak Spanish, and may also have its casual conversation usages.

Other - Dutch, Italian, and Russian are probably the big three others you could learn for various applications. The next tier would be Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Finnish, etc.), Balkan languages (Romanian, Greek, etc.), or other East Asian languages (Korean, Vietnamese, etc.). The last tier of Afrikaan and other African languages, or other less widely used ones, won't serve you particularly well unless you have an eclectic job path.
Serbian would be better choice than Greek. Greek is spoken by around 11 million people, Serbian by more than 20 million.

Actually, from a business point of view, learning those small eastern European languages could open up some opportunities. As more and more western companies start to appear here, they always send some of their people, for the know-how, training purposes, communication etc... Although there aren't many of those opportunities, virtually nobody in the west speaks those languages so there's almost no competition for the job. Of course, you'd have to be willing to travel and work abroad. So, languages like Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian could offer some unique job opportunities.