How do you make that decision? I have lived in Texas for a long time and have never learned Spanish. I might have when I lived in Arizona because the culture was more interesting, but not Texas. It would have been practical to learn Spanish - but I never did.
Instead I speak a little French, German, Danish and that's it - other than English of course!
Edited by: learn4ever
Just to name a few.
Just to name another few.
Just to add a few more.
More answers than I had expected - and, I realized, when I was reading the responses that some linguistic knowledge that I have was initially very practical. The first real Spanish I learned was in a restaurant so that I could understand when busboys asked me for the back door keys or needed to ask someone to clean the floor by a table. More recently, I was working in a school which had a sudden influx of Aramco employee children - and I needed to be able to say in Saudi Arabic, "Silence" or "Walk please".
English is supposedly the modern ligua franke or whatever. Other than that I'd say Spanish. Think of everywhere they colonized and butchered indios.
I went to emergency hospitol in Seville, Spain on a weekend. Only one doctor spoke a bit of English.
And why should they?
As a waiter in Dallas, I wanted an English chicano dictionary. But I realized, the vatos don't want us to know. They can talk about us right in our faces that way.
I learned other languages almost in the order listed by Post 1 ....and perhaps most folks do!.
Its amazing, the little surprizes. Due to Latin base.
Kinda kept me going, when I felt helpless at Spanish.
I am reading a book called "Dreaming in Hindi" in which the author refers a theory that there are two reasons people are highly motivated to learn a language - either for work or more interestingly, because they want to adopt another culture. Sometimes that means that they don't feel themselves in their own culture. That is what I am curious about.