Thanks Sunspace - sounds like an incredible network of friendly travellers. Wish all “nations” could be so kind and welcoming. Really speaks well of the Esperanto community (and ideology).
Well lets see, I’ve studied Latin, French and a little Italian and spanish. Out of those I say definitely Latin. I mean so many words in so many languages are based on Latin so it always comes it handy. Also if you’re like me and have no ability to understand a spoke foreign language Latin is a naturally.(Since the courses I took were all reading.) As for the other languages I’ve done I’ve got to go with Italian since I am Italian. French is of course completely useless regardless of what the jackoffs at my university claimed.(Oh wow, I’ve used it to say one sentence since I graduated 10 years ago. Ok, I admit I’m vindictive and stubborn so I’m not so pleased to have anything shoved down my throat.)
I too am partial to German, probably because it is the only other foreign language I know.
Spanish would be good in the US and in many parts of the world for practical reasons.
But if I were going to start now, I would pick Chinese or Arabic…both have huge benefits with regards to getting jobs and future economic growth. However, for us native speaking English folk, they are more than slightly difficult to learn.
I have mentioned in other similar posts that I had a Chinese teacher who spoke 7 languages fluently, and another couple of languages passably. She told me the first three languages are difficult, and then it gets easier. Her trick:
She started off speaking Taiwanese and learned English. Then she learned Japanese using English-Japanese books. Then she learned French using Japanese-French books…in other words, she always used her “newest” language to learn the next. That way, she improved both languages.
She had more job offers while we were in college than anybody I knew.
Klingon. You never know when you’ll find yourself on some p’tak planet and need directions.
Hebrew! It would be so sweet to rip Fundamentalist Christian’s arguments to shreds with knowledge of what the bible really says!
Examples, please? A great many Biblical scholars are thoroughly versed in Hebrew.
I’m not talking about “Biblical Scholars”, I’m talking about people like Fred Phelps or the beloved Jack T. Chick. 
I’m still working on English. 
You don’t quite mention why you want to be fluent in another tongue.
Is it for general international business needs ? If so, don’t bother. English is the defacto language. Although Spanish, French, German and Italian might come handy.
If you want to read literature in its original, I suggest among the following
- Italian
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Russian
select two. Given that you have grouding in Spanish, that’s 1.
Now, about the other languages
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Italian (Anthology). Most famous being Dante Alighieri (Commedia). Among contemporary authors, Umberto Eco.
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French. 2nd international language after English. Hugo, Rosseau, Voltaire, La Fontaine, Nerval, Balzac and many more.
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German. Here I’m at a loss. I mostly equate German involvement in culture with philosophy, science and music. Unless you’re interested in reading those manuscripts…
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Russian. One of the most expressive languages around. Normally, books are translated to Russian pretty early. Some of the very best literature. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol and others.
I would probably say French or Russian.
Just to help out: Goethe, Mann, Kafka, Hesse, Grass and of course quite a few less internationally known contemporary authors (for example, Stefan Heim, who in fact just passed away, can be very interesting.)
On second thought, I’d just like to add that reading serious literature in any foreign language is a much more daunting task than most people realize. You would first have to spend a year or three in a country where the language is spoken, otherwise it’s very tough going indeed!
German is closely related to the Scadanavian languages–Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch. One you know both English and German, the rest are easier to learn.
I would love to learn Icelandic, as it is one of the world’s pursit languages. Modern day Icelandics can read their books from the 1000’s. Try that with English.
It really depends on what you want to learn the language for - and you should be interested in the culture.
Assuming you´re just learning it for fun, you should maybe look around and find an interesting culture. There´s no way to get to know a culture quite as well as by knowing the language - and it´s not really possible to speak a language very well if you´re not interested in the background, the literature, the tribal rites, whatever.
If you like reading - which book would you like to be able to read in its original language? That was one of my main incentives for learning Spanish: I wanted to know how Eduardo Galeano really wrote. And it was worth it.
You also learn a lot by reading (though visiting the country and talking with people is better for fluency, of course), so you could pick a language with at least some interesting books or films available. Or travel to the country where it is spoken. There´s not really any point in learning a language if you never intend to practice it.
Of course, if you´re looking for obscure languages, that might be a bit harder, but it´s more fun… I learned Gaelic for a year or so when I was 16, because I really liked Ireland and went there on holiday twice. It was cool - but I never got really fluent. I can´t speak a word of it anymore, though, should have kept that up - but I still know how to pronounce things, and that´s impressive enough
When I was in Spain for a year most of my friends there were from Galicia (Atlantic coast, just above Portugal), and they have their own language. It´s closely related to Portuguese and Spanish, but it is considered a language in its own right. They´d speak Galician when talking to each other, and as it´s really close to Spanish, I started understanding it and grew to love it. I don´t speak it very well, as my active vocabulary is limited, but I read a lot, and it really makes a difference to read a book in the original Galician or in the Spanish translation - it just has a different feel to it. It´s a beautiful language and I like that region of Spain, so I´ve decided to learn it properly. So now I´ve started doing an online course to learn the grammar and improve it (that´s the problem with small languages - you´ll have trouble finding a teacher outside its native country).
If I lived in the States, I´d probably be learning Hopi or Navajo or something - so if you´re interested in them, it might be a good idea.
Of course, its cool to be able to say “oh, and by the way, I speak <insert obscure language here>”, but if you´re not interested in anything but it´s exoticness, chances are you´ll never be fluent.
Can be fun, too, of course… I have this friend who studies comparative linguistics. He speaks three or four foreign languages (including Esperanto), but he´s studied the grammar of about 50 languages or can at least explain you roughly how the grammar works. Give him a text and nine times out of ten he can identify the language, analyze the sentence structure, identify verbs and nouns and deduce the infinitive of a verb or the basic uninflected form of a noun - but there are very few words he actually knows the meaning of.
And he isn´t doing this for showing off; languages and their structure just happen to be the single most interesting thing for him… 
Well, and in case you decide you want to learn a “bigger” language - depends on where you want to travel, of course… but German isn´t a bad idea, it´s not that easy to learn but not as tough as Japanese would be. You can learn to speak it fluently if you really want to, and the basic grammar, while different from English, isn´t that hard to grasp (I wouldn´t recommend Finnish, from the grammar point of view…). Plus, English speakers have a really cute accent when they speak German…
It is difficult, though, and I know many people who speak excellent German without the trace of an accent and have lived in a German-speaking country for over twenty years and still make the occasional grammar mistake.
Or you could go for a Scandinavian language - Swedish, Danish or Norwegian. (or Icelandic, if you want to get obscure again… as Annie says, it´s still very close to the old Scandinavian the other languages evolved from.) Probably easier to learn than German, but related. And they sound nice. And Scandinavia is a great place to visit. And if you speak one of them, you can at least manage basic communication in the other Scandinavian countries - the pronounciation differs, the grammar differ slightly, but many words are extremely similar, so you can at least read the signs and people will try and understand you. (This doesn´t hold true for Icelandic, as they don´t accept words of foreign origin in their language - so you´re fine with words like bread and beer, but as soon as it comes to telephones and buses, you´d have to learn totally new words.)
Italian and Portuguese might be “dangerous”, depends on how well you know Spanish. You might start mixing them up and end up speaking Spanish worse as well. Same goes for French, but not quite, as the differences are greater, from what I know. Beautiful language, though…
Okay, I´ll stop ranting - as I said: just go and pick a culture or a place you like and try and learn their language.
And let us know which one you picked.
I’ve got to disagree with you on that. Learning to read is MUCH easier than speaking any foreign language.(Since you can look up stuff in a dictionary and I’ve never actually seen a book that mumbles.) Seriously though after all that useless French at university I was never any good at speak or understanding spoken frog but I could actually read it.(I will admit I actually like the Maigret mystery.)
Of course one advantage about Italian(if you study that) is that the language is spelt the way it sounds from what I hear.(Kind of like Spanish)
Welsh rocks!!
Welsh DOES rock.
I love the language, as I have visited Wales a number of times. I am Irish,and can speak some of my own native lingo, so there is some link there. I’d love to be able to speak to my Welsh friends in their own mother tongue, I love the way the language just dances from their mouths.
I also love Welsh girls, so being able to impress one of them by whispering sweet nothings in her own language is a genuine goal for me…maybe some day…
German- it’s a great language to swear and get angry in! And there are also all the long words that give you a sense of pride when you’ve mastered them.
How about Quenya, Tolkein’s invented language of the high elves? Not quite as geeky as Klingon, and a bit obscure, but still a good time!
Elen sila lumenn’omentielvo!
Dutch is not a Scandinavian language. Nor is The Netherlands a Scandinavian country.
I did, however, find it easier to learn German after I learned Danish. Unfortunately both have been mostly lost to the graveyard of memory.
I’m learning German right now, and I love it. But I remember being 6 years old and really really wanting to know German, so it’s been a semi-lifelong wish. Honestly, the grammar isn’t that bad, but I had intensive grammar classes for English growing up, so I have a good grasp on grammar concepts anyway (I remember hearing that most people only really learn English grammar after learning about grammar for another language; not the case with me); and I actually like grammar anyway.
I can’t wait to read works in original German. It also has a “practical” aspect to it as well (given to people who don’t understand that “because I want to” is a valid answer to “why are you learning that language?”); I live a colloquial 3 feet from the world headquarters of Daimler-Chrysler where I might get employment after graduation, and my fields of study often have German as the second-most used language right after English.
Although I can’t fall back on those excuses when I start learning all the languages I’d like to learn. Icelandic, Old English, Latin, French (to continue what I’ve already learned), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew and Russian. Languages are fun, Blalron, you can always take an intro course of a few different ones to get a basic feel for them and see if you’re interested in them.
I shoulda been a linguist.