10 Best Foreign Languages To Learn for Jobs: Most Employable Languages?

10 Best Foreign Languages To Learn for Jobs:

Having a second language or a foreign language has often been considered advantageous in the job-seeking process. However, which is the best foreign language to learn for jobs? Is it Spanish, French, German, or even Mandarin or Arabic as businesses expand wider and deeper into foreign territories? You don’t have to guess the foreign language careers in high demand as there are several surveys that have ranked languages according to how influential they are on the world stage.

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Foreign language careers in high demand:

The linguist George Weber in his article on “Top Languages; The World’s Most Influential Languages” has managed to develop a formula for assessing the best foreign languages to learn for jobs. This formula took into account six factors. These were:

1. Number of primary speakers: max. 4 points
2. Number of secondary speakers: max. 6 points
3. Economic power of countries using the language: max. 8 points
4. Number of major areas of human acitivity in which the language is important: max. 8 points
5. Number and population of countries using the language: max. 7 points
6. Socio-literary prestige of the language: max. 4 points (plus an additional point for being an official UN language)

Based on his formula, the 10 best foreign languages to learn for jobs in the  world are in rank order:

1. English. Scoring 37 points. 
This is no surprise really as it spoken by so many people and is the national language of America, the global economic superpower.

2.French. Scoring 23 points. 
This is another good foreign language to learn for jobs which will enable you to make especially strong connections with England, Spain, and Italy.

3.Spanish. Scoring 20 points.
Spanish is hot on the tails of France and due to the increasing economic power of Spanish speaking countries since this study was done, Spanish is likely to have leapfrogged French as a foreign language career in high demand.

4.Russian. Scoring 16 points. With the rise of the BRIC nations over the recent decade its likely that Russia has consolidated its position in the top 10 since this original study was made. If you want a career in energy and oil, speaking Russian might be a good foreign language career in high demand.

5.Arabic. Scoring 14 points. The arab speaking nations still remain a powerful force in the oil and energy arena, making this another highly influential language, particularly if you are looking at a career in the energy sector.

6.Chinese. Scoring 13 points. With China now being the second largest economy in the world and expected to surpass the US in the next 20 years, Mandarin, is a key global language.

7.German. Scoring 12 points. With Germany now comfortably being the largest economy in Europe, it’s becoming an important global economic power, making German a key global language.

8.Japanese. Scoring 10 points. The Japanese economy is in decline now and is now back at 2005 levels, but it still the 3rd largest economy in the world and so Japanese remains a key language.

9.Portuguese (Brazilian) Scoring 10 points. With Brazil having moved from being the 10th largest economy in the world to the 6th largest economy in 10 years, Brazilian (Portuguese) is becoming an important world language.

10.Hindi/Urdu. Scoring 9 points. India has just recently made its way into the economic powerhouse top 10 and is now becoming a very influential global language.

Obviously, a few things have changed since this article was written in 1995, that is China has risen from relative obscurity to be the 2^nd biggest economy in the world, and Brazil has also risen sharply to be the fifth largest economy. India has also put on a spurt, rising from lower ranks to be the 10^th largest economy, and could be the 5^th largest economy by 2020. Russia has also seen some growth. So, it is likely that the BRIC languages will have risen in importance.

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So which is the best foreign language for jobs?

Well, this is a difficult question as it can depend on which areas of the world you plan to work on or with which multinationals you choose to work with. While Mandarin is today’s largest language by number of speakers, ‘it has not yet caught up with English or Spanish in terms of its usage in international communication‘, according to the QS World University Rankings.

But, Cantonese Chinese, Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential which means it may be a sound investment for the future accords the QS World University Rankings research team.

Jane Simpson, who is the head of languages at Australia National University, highlights Chinese and Spanish as the best foreign language for jobs, but believes that Russian, Hindi, Arabic and Indonesian are languages that are strategically important for Australia.

Experts tend to agree there is no easy answer to which foreign languages careers in high deamnd. The most spoken language is a useful starting point, which, from a business and international communication context, is English. The second language is more complicated but Mandarin and Portuguese seem to be top languages that would enable you to tap into the emerging BRIC nations of China and Brazil.

I can’t pretend to suggest which languages you should learn to raise your level of employability; that choice is entirely up to you. I just wanted to introduce you to the idea that the language (s) you speak will determine your employability now and in the future – and to provide some initial thoughts to stimulate your own thinking and planning into what will be the right language choices for you to maximise your long term employability and career prospects.

Book online language lessons at anytime to suit your schedule and at lesson time, you can logon and connect with your online language tutor using Preply’s video platform.

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For a more recent study into influential languages, please see the following study by the The Global Language Network which is a collaborative initiative between: MIT, Harvard, Northeasten and Aix-Marseille Universitie. They have produced their own rankings concerning the global influence or centrality of specific languages based on number of language speakers and the number of translations between a language and language hubs. This was a massive big data project requiring them to crunch through 2.2 million book translations from UNESCO’s Index Translationum project, 382 million Wikipedia edits and 550 million tweets.

The 10 Top Most Central Languages were:

Language, (centrality score)

1.English (0.898)

2.French (0.269)

3.German (0.263)

4.Italian (0.093

5.Russian (0.085)

6.Spanish (0.085)

7.Japanese (0.04)

8.Dutch (0.039)

9.Latin(0.034)

10. Swedish ((0.03)

The World Economic Forum have developed their own Power Language Index and based on this they have proposed their top ten list of power languages.

Power Language Index

Power Language List Top 10

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