[makesyourjrock]

Hey my university requires a couple semesters of a foreign language and I plan on a career of chemistry research. Does anyone have any input for what languages might be valuable?
Thanks

[curiouscat]

German.

[Arkcon]

German.

Unless that's your native language, in which case that hardly counts as "foreign."  Heh.  Seriously 'tho, this requirement is outdated.  Maybe in the 1960's, many important documents weren't yet translated, particularly from German.  However, a few decades of requiring students to "take a foreign language for a science degree" has resulted in every scientific paper, no matter how trivial, being translated almost immediately from every language into every other.  So default to German, or take an easier one, or ask your academic adviser and do what they say, or take an obscure one to challenge yourself, or take an ethnically appropriate one -- do you have a Russian or Japanese great-grandmother?  No matter what, it will hardly matter in the future.

[curiouscat]

German.

Unless that's your native language, in which case that hardly counts as "foreign."  Heh. 

English then.

Seriously 'tho, this requirement is outdated. 

Agree. Most US PhD programs I know got rid of it in the 90's.

Maybe in the 1960's, many important documents weren't yet translated, particularly from German.  However, a few decades of requiring students to "take a foreign language for a science degree" has resulted in every scientific paper, no matter how trivial, being translated almost immediately from every language into every other.

True for new papers. But I still keep coming across older potentially useful papers that I get stuck on. In German, Russian, Japanese, French in roughly that order of occurrence.

Older stuff is as yet untranslated and Google etc. translates scientific documents quite atrociously. A good technical translator can easily bill $50-per-page translated.

[curiouscat]

An alternative new-age strategy might be to learn Chinese or Spanish since that's where you'll possibly end up visiting for new plant setup, design etc.

[magician4]

I would recommend Latin, so you can talk science with every Catholic priest thereafter, whereever you are, and maybe even convince the pope
a worthy endeavour! 

bring the good news to the folks!

regards

Ingo

[billnotgatez]

From the Internet

Here's a listing of the ten most popular languages spoken worldwide, along with the approximate number of primary or first language speakers for that language.

1. Mandarin Chinese - 882 million
2. Spanish - 325 million
3. English - 312-380 million
4. Arabic - 206-422 million
5. Hindi - 181 million
6. Portuguese - 178 million
7. Bengali - 173 million
8. Russian - 146 million
9. Japanese - 128 million
10. German - 96 million