Learning a foreign language is a wonderful experience in itself: it opens a door to a new culture and often to a whole different way of thinking. That said, many of you seem to be (rightfully) more pragmatic about it and want to master a language that will stand out on your resume.
When that’s your main goal, a few languages outweigh all others — which is exactly why I’ve written this post. I’ll show you the 10 best languages to learn for the future and give your career the boost you didn’t know it needed.
So let’s get down to business!
1. Chinese
While Chinese actually refers to a group of languages, here I’m talking about Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the Beijing dialect.
It shouldn’t shock anyone why Chinese deserves the top of our list: it’s the lingua franca of a nation of 1.4 billion people, about 80% of which speak it as either their first or second language. Standard Chinese is also one of six UN working languages, which attests to its importance on a global scale.
China isn’t your average country by any standard: it now has the largest and one of the most dynamic economies on Earth. Its GDP typically grows between 6 and 10% every year; even in 2020 (when all major economies faced a harsh recession), it increased by 2.3%.
And although the Chinese normally don’t expect you to speak their language when you’re doing business with them, you’ll understand their culture better and make things a lot easier if you do.
Chinese is notorious for having as many as 100,000 ideograms, but it only takes memorizing around 2,000 of them to be considered fluent.
2. German
Home to the 5th-largest economy on the planet — which is more impressive when you realize “only” 83 million people live there — Germany is truly the powerhouse of Europe. The country hosts 2/3 of the major trade fairs in the world and boasts the biggest trade surplus too.
German is infamous for its obscenely long words, three genders, and four cases (which determine the function of a word within a sentence). Yet it’s among the easiest languages to learn for an English speaker, right after Romance languages like Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
Besides Germany, the language is spoken in Austria, Switzerland, and in small communities in countries like Belgium, Italy, and Brazil. Overall, 95 million people speak German as a first language, and 85 million as a second language.
3. Arabic
Apart from being visually fascinating, Arabic is full of fun facts that make learning it a thrill. Its spelling omits short vowels and lacks capital letters — as well as any distinction between typed and handwritten letters, since they’re always joined together within a word.
Arabic is one of the working languages of the UN, which is fitting: it’s the official language of 24 countries, totaling 350 million native speakers and 270 million who speak it as a second language.
Where cash is concerned, there’s no shortage of opportunities involving Arabic either. That’s especially the case in the Persian Gulf, where countries like the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait have been channeling their enormous oil revenue into sectors like tourism, banking, and real estate to prepare for a post-oil economy.
Languages like Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi also use the Arabic writing system, so there you have another advantage of learning it.
4. Russian
Talk bad, talk nice about me, but just talk — this seems to be Russia’s unofficial motto since basically forever. Still, regardless of what you make of the country, its language is among the most relevant globally and should remain so in the near future.
Russia, which has the 11th-largest economy on Earth, built over the centuries a solid sphere of influence in eastern Europe and Central Asia — where Russian is widely spoken to this day.
That’s why it has official status in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan too (even though each of these countries has its own national language). Russian is one of the working languages in the United Nations and one of the mandatory languages at the International Space Station, alongside English.
If you want to gain access to a market of about 260 million speakers (among natives and those who have Russian as their second language), then by all means you should start decoding the Cyrillic alphabet asap.
As a bonus, learning languages like Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian will become a walk in the park after that.
5. Korean
Numbers aren’t really the reason why Korean ranks fifth on our list. Sure, South Korea is the 14th-biggest economy on the planet, and there are around 80 million native Korean speakers worldwide.
Yet about 25 million of them live in North Korea, which isn’t exactly open for business. Plus, languages spoken in countries with a larger economy and population could as well steal Korean’s place here. So why is it among the languages you should learn for the future after all?
The answer is pop culture. The so-called Korean wave got us to listen to Kpop, watch K-dramas, and even learn taekwondo in more extreme cases. The fact is Korean culture’s been all over the place for the last 10 to 20 years and seems to be here to stay.
Well beyond business opportunities, that means learning Korean can help you stay on top of the trends shaping global culture in this day and age.
True, Korean is among the most challenging languages for English speakers to learn. That said, its alphabet (called Hangul) was developed in the 15th century as a logical and relatively simple writing system with the specific purpose of promoting literacy across the country.
Hopefully that should be useful through your studies too — or at least keep you motivated, as mastering a different alphabet is typically one of the hardest parts of learning a language.
6. Portuguese
Don’t blame me for including my own mother tongue among the languages of the future. While some readers may find it controversial, Portuguese is featured on most lists like this one throughout the web.
Despite being notorious for its dramatic boom and bust cycles, Brazil’s economy consistently ranks sixth to 10th globally. Portugal, in turn, is one of the most livable countries in the world.
Also, due to Lisbon’s pioneering colonial expansion starting in the late 15th century, Portuguese is now spoken across four continents and is the official language of nine nations (among which Angola and Mozambique). It’s the first or second language of about 275 million speakers worldwide.
And although you can’t really speak of a Brazilian wave along the lines of the Korean one, my home country’s dance music (aka Brazilian funk) and TV shows have been increasingly popular abroad.
Portuguese has a complex grammar like all Romance languages, but it’s one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers: it should take you around 600 hours’ worth of studying to master it. What’s more, it’s filled with beautiful and funny expressions!
7. Hindi
You speak Hindi on the reg when you use words like “shampoo”, “pajamas”, and “thug”, besides the more obvious “yoga” and “guru”.
Its alphabet (Devanagari) may look different from everything else, yet it’s actually shared by over 100 languages across the Indian subcontinent. Plus, every letter in Devanagari stands for a unique sound, which should make learning Hindi a tad easier.
The lingua franca of India is spoken by 320 million people as a first language and 270 million as a second language. Apart from that, it’s mutually intelligible with Urdu, Pakistan’s national language (which however uses the Arabic writing system).
India itself needs no introduction: the largest democracy on the planet owns the fifth-biggest economy, which grows by more than 5% in most years.
8. Spanish
While Spanish will definitely be one of the most useful languages in the future, it doesn’t rank higher here because it’s been extremely important for centuries already.
The language with the second-largest number of native speakers — almost 500 million — has official status in 20 nations, among which Spain (sixth economy in Europe), Mexico, and Argentina (second and third in Latin America).
Learning Spanish can be tricky, but you’ll be aided by the fact that letters are pronounced consistently and diacritics reveal the stress of the majority of words.
Also, like the universe, Spanish is expanding. It’s expected to become the first language of half the US population within 50 years. So hurry up or you’ll fall behind!
9. Indonesian
Indonesia is another emerging market whose national language is growing in popularity by the day. Indonesian is spoken by around 300 million folks and can serve as a gateway to the Malay languages that are used in countries like Malaysia and Brunei.
In fact, Indonesian is among the youngest languages out there: it was standardized in the 1920s and has since grown increasingly different from the variants spoken in the rest of Southeast Asia.
Because it uses the Latin alphabet, Indonesian is the easiest Asian language for an English speaker to learn: it should take you approximately 900 hours of dedication to become fluent.
Indonesia has the fourth-largest population and the seventh-biggest economy on the planet. It’s a fast-growing nation with business and job opportunities galore!
10. French
Up until the early 20th century, most folks would learn French as a second language, not English. French was the language of politics, diplomacy, and high culture.
Pretty much because the French keep acting like they own the copyright on the definitions of beautiful and fashionable, their language still holds a lot of prestige.
Besides, France has the 10th-largest economy on Earth and boasts an enormous presence abroad through its powerful multinationals and institutions that promote its culture and language like Alliance Française.
On top of that, French counts about 320 million speakers (between first and second language) across 29 countries, including Belgium, parts of Switzerland, and most of central and western Africa.
Plus, French is an official language in the UN and in many international organizations like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Olympic Committee.
And in case you feel a bit antsy about learning French, bear in mind almost 30% of English words derive from it!
Final thoughts
Keeping an eye on world news is always a great thing if you want to know which the best languages to learn for the future are when it comes to business and job opportunities.
Yet these languages typically have a couple of distinguishing elements. First, they either are present on multiple continents (e.g. Spanish and Arabic) or boast hundreds of millions of native speakers across the planet (Russian and Indonesian).
What’s more, they’re spoken in some of the world’s leading economies (French and German) and emerging markets (Chinese and Hindi). A few, like Korean and Portuguese, are also tied to cultures that have recently surged in popularity on the global stage.
Now let me know in the comments which of these you feel like becoming fluent in over the next five years or so!
10 Best Languages to Learn for the Future.
Your article her is a BIG mistake about languages around the world for the future.