>>9093042There truly is no real reason to learn anything besides English, unless you plan to live in specific regions of the world, in which case Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin are honorable mentions.
As an American who speaks English obviously and decent Spanish, I've traveled the world quite a bit (India for 5.5 months, China for 6-7 months, general SE Asia Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore/Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos for 4.5 months, and Spain for about 3 weeks, and I didn't need anything besides English whatsoever. Using Spanish in Spain simply made it easier to make friends and get with a girl.
I used to be serious about learning at least one more language, but there's honestly zero point unless you genuinely enjoy language learning or are particularly above average at doing so.
Why learn a new language unless it's actually spoken across many different countries in the same region (e.g. Spanish), or unless you plan to live in the same country in the same region for longer than about one year?
As soon as I realized that a solid 30-40% the people I encountered in, say Thailand, didn't even speak Thai because they were actually trafficked in laborers from Burma or Cambodia, I totally gave up on learning new languages entirely.
Apart from basic stuff like saying hello, goodbye, thank you, you're beautiful, I'd like a beer/various food, etc., it's just not worth it when chances are you'll end up hopping to another nearby country in a few weeks or months, and said new country speaks an entirely new language.
In terms of "Chinese," why bother learning Mandarin when a large portion of that country doesn't even speak it?
