Acquiring new skills might be challenging, yet, it is always extremely rewarding. In fact, adding a new skill to your collection is priceless as it more than often provides vast new opportunities. This matter especially concerns language skills. There’s a saying that you live a whole new life for every language that you speak. This saying is quite true as learning a new language is a unique skill to obtain. It eliminates language barriers allowing you to speak to lots of new people around the world, it enhances career opportunities, and, most importantly, it allows you to look at familiar things from a totally different perspective. Let’s take a look at why it is important to learn languages and what are the most important languages to learn.

Why Learn a New Language?

It’s no wonder that in today’s highly globalized and digitized world, language skills are valued so highly. Some of the best business translation services report a strong increase in their demand in 2020. In addition to that, today, learning a new language certainly will bring you at least some return. The world is becoming closer and denser, hence the opportunities provided by learning languages are limitless. Yet, why should you learn a new language exactly?

• Career opportunities. Speaking more than one language is highly valued today because of the rise and rapid growth of international businesses and because it shows that you aim for more. A person who mastered another language appears as someone who not only accepts challenges but also deals with them successfully. In addition, the world develops very quickly outside of your country. Today, some of the most important and most popular languages to learn are those of European and Asian origins. In any case, you will certainly have a career growth in terms of your role and compensation.
• Travel. Going around the world, whether for work or fun is always a great thing to think about. If you speak fluently in a language other than your native one, traveling will become even more fun and more convenient. Whether you’ll need to find locations around the city or impress local speakers with your skills, learning a language before you go to a certain country is always important.
• Communication. As you travel around the world and get higher in your career, you will meet new people who will more often speak a language different from yours. By mastering an additional language will allow you to communicate more efficiently at your work and make lots of new friends.

Most Useful Languages to Learn - How They Were Determined

There’s a lot of factors that influence the demand for a certain language and, hence, its usefulness. As the modern globalized world develops at an extremely fast pace everywhere, some of the most useful languages to learn have become those, which countries accumulated the greatest business potential. As it was mentioned earlier, such languages are of the European and Asian origins. Yet, before we specify those languages, let’s take a closer look at what makes the language really useful.

• Number of speakers. Indeed, the more native speakers of a certain language there are, the more widespread it becomes and, thus, its demand increases. You might find learning a new language useful to that matter in order to speak to your neighbor, who might be a native Chinese or Spanish speaker, for example. Alternatively, your company might cooperate closely with German businesses, so you might want to learn this language for the sake of career opportunities.
• Geographic region. Even if you don’t plan to leave your country and go to another one, the other country will come to you, one way or another. If you live in the U.S., for example, you will likely meet French, Spanish, or Portuguese native speakers quite often as the major countries in the Americas speak those languages. The same thing applies to the European continent. The world has become too globalized for you to speak only one or even two languages.
• Usability of the language. Before you go on learning a certain language, you should consider how is the language used around the world and how you plan to use it yourself. This is perhaps the only factor that is dynamic and that can be defined by you. Depending on whether you just want to travel around the world or would like to grow professionally, the top languages to learn might vary for you.
• Career opportunities. The languages closely related to or associated with the biggest businesses in the world tend to become more important and useful to learn. That is so because the major companies tend to take over a great share of the market, meaning that working with such companies is a great opportunity for career growth and earning level.

So, the reasons to learn certain languages become twice as important considering the factors that define the demand for those languages. When you know that the specific language is predominantly spoken in the business niche you’re aiming for, you should probably start learning it. But, what are some of the best languages to learn today?

Top 10 Languages to Master in 2020

#10. Japanese

Despite being isolated economically, politically, and technologically for centuries, Japan has managed to overcome that and become one of the top countries in all aspects since the latter half of the 20th century. If you think of making a great career in translation, go ahead with Japanese as the language is quite easy and fun to learn and the Japanese translator services do offer fair compensation. Aside from that, the Japanese is now the language of global tech, IT, and video games. With 125 million native speakers and 126 million total speakers, the official language of Japan demonstrates a perfect balance and is considered to be one of the most simple to learn from the languages of Asia.

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#9. German

Germany has perhaps been dominating the economy of Europe for the past 20 years and has been doing it very well. Today, Germany is associated with an extremely high quality of the products, innovative business approaches, and technological advancements. If you’re interested in learning this language, prepare for extreme thoroughness to detail. In case, if you’d like to travel to Germany, using certified German translation services would be a great idea. With around 100 million native speakers and totaling at 132 million, German is worthy to learn for being the major language of European business.

#8. Portuguese

Although the Spanish language seems to be more popular and widespread (and reasonably so), Portuguese still tops the list of important and the most demanded languages to learn. Being quite close and very similar to Spanish as well as accounting for 222 million native and 252 total speakers, Portuguese is totally a language worthy to learn today. Don’t forget that this is the official language of Brazil, one of the most rapidly developing economies in the world.

#7. Russian

While being quite challenging to learn overall and spoken almost exclusively in Russia, the language still makes it to the list because of the number of speakers and overall importance to the world. Being recognized as one of the official languages of the United Nations, Russian accounts for 154 million native speakers worldwide, totaling over 258 speakers. Aside from Russian, the language is also spoken in Eastern European countries, such as Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine, as well as is moderately spread throughout the southern part of Asia, including China.

#6. Arabic

Being one of the most extraordinary languages in the world, the Arabic language is known for being very diverse, surprisingly widespread, and somewhat unbalanced in terms of speakers. As such, about 310 million people in the world speak this language in all variations as their native one, while there are about 274 total speakers for standard Arabic. It is almost impossible to count how many total speakers there really are, yet the language in its different variations is recognized as official in 22 countries of the world.

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#5. French

Being one of the most geographically widespread languages, along with English and Spanish, French is certainly one of the most used languages in the world and is very useful to learn. Being widely considered as the language of love and romance, French has also been the language of diplomacy for centuries. With 77 million native speakers and over 277 total speakers, French remains one of the most popular European languages worldwide. Outside France, it is also a second official language of Canada, which is one of the most developed economies of the world and simply a great country to live in or travel to. So, in case, if you’d like to live or work in Canada, you’ll have to submit the required documents to French translation agency as well. European and Canadian French are very similar, so, the European service can do a great job.

#4. Hindi

Despite being one of many official languages of India, the second most populated country in the world, Hindi is rather moderately spread both geographically and in terms of speakers. As one of the oldest languages of human civilization, Hindi takes its place on this list rather decently. The language is often referred to as being quite easy and fun to learn. The numbers show it indeed, as, with about 260 million Hindi native speakers, there are about 637 million speakers of the language. So, there’s quite a lot of room for considering this language.

#3. English

Often being regarded as the language of globalization, English is a very important language in the world today. English is most often associated with such things as diplomacy and international affairs, computer science, and career development. In many countries of the world, English is often learned as the second language and is recognized as an official language in 55 countries. Yet, with over 1 billion total speakers, English accounts for only about half of that amount in terms of native speakers, reaching fewer than 500 million. Yet, if you think taking up some of the most demanded and well-paid careers, such as computer science and international business, English might be the most important language for you to learn.

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#2. Spanish

While Spanish is not spoken as much as English, it was placed higher on this list due to being the language of some of the most rapidly rising economies and one of the languages spoken on every continent of our planet. Associated largely with historic explorers and colonizers, Spanish now accounts for about 450 million native speakers, including Spain and South America, as well as for 637 million total speakers. The language also remains to be one of the most popular languages in the United States, with professional English to Spanish translation services being available almost everywhere. Today, Spanish experiences a strong rise, hence, it can even be sometimes considered similarly important to the headliner of our list.

#1. Mandarin

Chinese One of the official languages of the most rapidly developing economy, one of the most spoken languages there is, and the one with the greatest amount of native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is extremely important to learn in today’s globalized world. With nearly 918 million native speakers and over 1 billion of total speakers, this variation of Chinese will definitely remain the leader among languages to learn. So, if you’d like to have some serious career opportunities in the future, Mandarin Chinese is the language for you. Yet, if you already learned it, consider starting a career as an interpreter, because such specialists are in high demand among the Chinese business translation services. Don’t miss out on such a great opportunity!

Learning Most Important Language Gives You the Key

And learning languages gives you many keys. Studying a new language is perhaps the most refreshing and most enjoyable process there is. It allows you to look at the world differently, experience new things, and get pleasure while looking back at the results. Yet, most importantly, learning languages is one of the most dynamic processes that provide you with a lot of freedom as you define what are the best languages to learn for you. Finally, considering the prospects, learning a language is something that you should certainly start doing as soon as possible.