Which language should I "minor" in?

[phatj]

I'm going to college this fall and will be majoring in Biomedical Engineering (will also be pre-med). Anyway, I have to choose my "humanities" sequence... and whatever I choose for the sequence basically becomes an easy "minor".

I want to choose a language. My question is, which of the following languages would be most useful/helpful/convenient to learn?

Russian
Chinese
Japanese

Any advice or thoughts or experiences would be terrific.

 

[MoPHo]

im going for chinese. gonna try and major in business...but Japanese women tend to be hotter...

Also, since china is starting to develop and the beijing olympics in 2008, it might not hurt to have a minor in that...could prove pretty useful...and if they take over the world with their 1+ billion people they might keep you around...

 

[CheeWeenie]

Spanish. They are taking over the country, so you might as well study something that will allow you to fit in with them.

 

[psiu]

Russian. I took a year of it in high school and picked it up pretty quick. My handwriting was just as bad as in English.

It would help with other Cyrillic languages and Eastern European countries.

 

[Pathogen03]

Chinese. there are a whole lot of chinese people who need doctors.

 

[Manzelle]

Arabic.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Another vote for Spanish. Arabic sounds good as well. I'm not sure if I would go in thinking that Russian, Chinese, or Japanese will be an "easy" minor.

 

[Bryophyte]

Carefully consider *where* you might practice medicine before you choose. You will be in much higher demand if you speak a second language that is useful in the community you'll be serving. In some places, it would be Spanish, in others, Korean or whatever.

 

[Turkish]

German.

 

[phatj]

Manzelle: I actually wanted to minor in Arabic, but my university doesn't offer it!!!
Ugly: By easy minor, I meant easy in the sense that I am required to take that extra sequence anyway... I don't expect those languages to be easy to learn

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: XietyCOM
German.

 

[phatj]

Why do you suggest german?

 

[Juno]

Does your school have ASL (American Sign Language)?

 

[dopcombo]

I would suggest Chinese if you think you'll make it big and go global.
1.2 billion people definitely need lots of doctors.

At the very least, you'll understand it when I swear at you for cutting in line.

Wish I learnt another language in college. Knowing English and Chinese alone nowadays doesn't seem to be enough. Almost like I should learn another European language.

 

[jacob0401]

Chinese, will be very useful in the future...

 

[kage69]

From a business perspective, Chinese would seem to be the way to go. I did Japanese, as it's monotonal and easier to grasp (at least for me) than Cantonese or Mandarin.

Be warned though, learning kanji is a major pain in the ass.

 

[CanOWorms]

Klingon or Elvish would be extremely useful if you enter the engineering field

 

[phatj]

lol@canoworms