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french absolutely i am from europe tho, but still - its such an awesome language for business, politics, diplomacy, etc. beautiful language, used worldwide, must have in aristocracy circles
japanese is very nice and i would love to learn about the culture, but i dont think it can be compared with french really... maybe if we were talking about french vs german.. only if you plan to move to jpn
Neither, I'd say either German if in EU, Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese if in the US/Canada.
Easy decision. Japanese is only useful in Japan whereas French is spoken in over 40 countries and could prove useful in future if Africa comes into play..
Remember to take into account the fact that Japanese will take you 10x longer to master. Not because the speaking is difficult, but because of the reading/writing.
Trust me, if you are fluent in Chinese, Japanese is a piece of cake.
Neither, better start networking or learn other useful skills.
Do you live on the west coast? Japanese then. East coast? French then.
Ultimately the best language to learn would be the one of the countries in which you'd like to work or visit. For me, I'd go with french, hands down. Speaking French opens up a lot of Europe whereas Japanese is more limited. I'd also recommend Spanish given its widespread use, although I wouldn't go with German. German is a great language, but it seems everyone who speaks German also speaks damn good English so you don't open up as many lines of communication by adding German to your list.
Japanese is difficult to learn and impossible to master. If you're already an adult and plan on learning it from scratch now you're unlikely ever to be able to utilize it in a business context... not unless you're willing to do like 2 full years immersion in Japan or some wild shit. If your Chinese isn't perfect I'd recommend brushing up there - that's a useful language to master if you're already good.
The only thing I am thinking about learning Japanese is that many big real estate players have presence in Japan.
Same situation as OP - fluent in both English and Chinese. Anyone knows good source to learn Japanese?
From my understanding, there's differences between Japanese spoken casually and Japanese spoken in a professional setting. If you're looking to use it for the latter, it might be difficult to pick up. That is something a friend who has learned Japanese in college, is fluent, and teaches English in Japan tells me. And if I remember correctly, the way things are phrased also differ based on your 'standing'. I kinda doubt people would hold it against you, not being Japanese, but just an FYI.
Also, the sentence structure is quite different. "I eat apples" becomes "apples I eat" or "I like him because he's handsome" probably "because he's handsome I like him".
Well, Japanese borrows some characters from Chinese characters so that could be helpful for you, but I think French is much easier to learn for sentence structure reasons (and I guess for people who don't already have knowledge of kanji because it uses the alphabet, accents aside). Also, as someone mentioned above, Japanese is useful in Japan (and I guess if you like Japanese stuff like manga/anime/dramas/music, etc) but French is quite widely used.
Japanese is very hard to learn in terms of using in a professional context. I work in pan Asia investments and speak Chinese and English, and a lot of the Chinese and other guys at my firm try to learn Japanese and can get around but cannot use it in a professional context. When we go to japan to look at deals, we always work via our Japanese colleagues, etc.... That said japan is fucking awesome and I love it there and go for the weekend every chance I can get just to party so if you can learn a bit of Japanese just to help hit on girls and order delicious food (the girls will like you anyways though) than that's another reason to learn.
Japanese sounds cool.
Thanks for the input. I like both Japanese and French culture, and wouldn't mind working in either or these countries, however what i'm concerned with is whether the learning the language would serve any purpose in opening up opportunities in the country itself. From the comments, it seems that French is a more widely used language and can be used more easily in different contexts as compared to Japanese.
French people do not speak English, or very poorly. Any derivatives or structuring desk will be littered with French people in the US and Europe. In the UK, you cannot do structured products if you are not French, and you will be the lone wolf on your desk if you can't speak it.
Someone mentioned German over French, I don't agree at all. If you learn either of those languages it's most likely to do business in Europe. French is much more widely used than German, also the Germans conduct business in English much more effectively.
From working in the city of London for many years I can clearly tell you French is the way to go.
Japanese is to work specifically with Japan, so you are limiting yourself in your opportunities.
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