CS Degree - Need Help Choosing Foreign Language

[rkulp]

I am signing up for classes next semester and have put off taking foreign language becuase it is something that dose not really interest me. Anyways, what would be the best foreign language to take with my degree in an employers prospective?

[Ying_Yang]

I'd say Mandarín, and second spanish

PD: I took english, but since english is your main... :P

[BestJewSinceJC]

Definitely not Mandarin. It is considered one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, so if you want to study computer science and not foreign languages, take something easier. And I should add that I have never heard of it having any advantage as far as cmsc degrees go.

[JenniLei]

I was born in UK, but was taught mandarin. I graduated with computer science and now working as a software engineer, many clients are located around the world and quite a few in China. I have been sent there multiple times to do the client meetings and designs for new systems.
Agreed that your studying Computer Science and technical skills is what you want from it, I was taught programming/theories on my degree but I didnt really "learn" how to do it properly till I started working. All computer scientists learn how to program and having something distinctively different to everyone else provides an advantage in interviews especially a language that is difficult yet is one of the most spoken languages in the world.
Having China growing in economy, I would hate to not speak the language of the country that will do a large percentage of the worlds business.

[donaldw]

I took Spanish and French in high school, then German and Latin in college.

I think that German, Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese would probably be helpful for a programming career with the romance languages probably being easier to learn.

[sekou]

Maybe you should consider in which country you would like to pursue your graduate studies. That is, if you are considering graduate studies.

[mrnutty]

Take spanish. Its more popular so you can make more contacts.

[BestJewSinceJC]

I was born in UK, but was taught mandarin. I graduated with computer science and now working as a software engineer, many clients are located around the world and quite a few in China. I have been sent there multiple times to do the client meetings and designs for new systems.
Agreed that your studying Computer Science and technical skills is what you want from it, I was taught programming/theories on my degree but I didnt really "learn" how to do it properly till I started working. All computer scientists learn how to program and having something distinctively different to everyone else provides an advantage in interviews especially a language that is difficult yet is one of the most spoken languages in the world.
Having China growing in economy, I would hate to not speak the language of the country that will do a large percentage of the worlds business.

English is still the international business language and will probably remain so for many years to come. The advantage of learning Mandarin hardly compares to the disadvantage of being overloaded with schoolwork that isn't related to your major. It'd be different if the OP has an easy course load, or is an extremely good student. But I'm assuming he/she is an average cmsc student, who therefore has a difficult course load. Anyway, back to the advantage of learning Mandarin. Almost all English speaking programmers will never have ample opportunity to speak Mandarin in a business setting. So, again, learning another language has its merits... it makes you a more intelligent person, it's cool to be multilingual, and you can communicate with more people (many times who appreciate the fact that you know their language). But the advantage you're talking about doesn't apply to almost anyone.

[jbennet]

German?

[Rashakil Fol]

Take Japanese and then you can get really freaking tired of all the otakus in your class.

[lewashby]

Looking at the current world I'd of to go with one of these.

Chines - China is growing with a booming economy
Japanese - Japan has the second largest economy in the world

Polish - The U.S. THINKS that it has a vested interest in Poland and will probably continue to use Poland as our Easter European foot.

Dutch - This is kind of a second though, but considering Holland is the birthplace of both the Python programming language as well as Linux, it might be something to consider.

Arabic - I U.S. will continue to have an interest in people who can speak Arabic for many ears, and for obvious reasons.

Spanish or Portuguese - Which ever Brazil Speaks, Brazil's economy is up and coming.

[EvolutionFallen]

I'm CS and I've taken 2 semesters of Japanese and 3 of Mandarin Chinese. If you're thinking of either of these two, maybe I can help you decide.

In my opinion, Japanese is far easier to pronounce. Mandarin has 5 tones of speech you need to get used to hearing and enunciating. Getting your tones wrong can lead to mistakes such as calling your mother a horse (mā​ vs mǎ​).

On the other hand, I found Chinese to be much easier when it comes to actually learning the rules of the language. There's not much conjugation involved. Neither Japanese nor Chinese conjugate for masculine vs. feminine or singular vs. plural, but Japanese has conjugation for tenses and a lot of other things. In Mandarin, on the other hand, past tense for example is usually denoted just by adding the syllable "le" to your sentence.

As far as reading/writing goes, once you learn hiragana and katakana, Japanese's two 46-character phonetic alphabets, you can read pretty much anything in Japanese if someone takes out the kanji for you. These two alphabets are identical in pronunciation -- the difference is that katakana is used for foreign words (like names of other countries) and a couple of other purposes. Hanzi (Chinese characters) and kanji (Japanese adaptation of Chinese characters) are a bit more complex, but once you start recognizing the basic strokes and characters that make up more complex characters, it gets much easier.

I found both languages to be really fun learning.

[Rashakil Fol]

Look, you just need an easy language class. Take French or Spanish, they're not that hard.