[pfedor]

Learning another language requires so much time and effort that it is almost always an effort misplaced unless the language is English.

Learning a language is a few years of hard work. I have a friend who is an assistant professor in Germany and he's toying with an idea of learning German, but he mentioned to me that he was wondering whether learning a programming language, say C++, wouldn't be a better use of his time. To which my answer was: By expanding the amount of effort required to learn to speak German, you wouldn't be able to just learn C++; the comparable thing would be to go from knowing nothing about programming, to knowing enough to be able to land a job as a Software Engineer in any company in the Silicon Valley.

[loewenskind]

What a useless point of view. English wont always be the dominant language. What will people like you do then?

Is everything a waste of time unless you can directly make money from it? Learning a language teaches you so many things. Things about your language, gives you insight into other cultures, etc., etc.

[pfedor]

You have only this many five-years projects left to complete in this life. If you really prefer learning a foreign language to learning quantum mechanics, or computer programming, or how to play a piano, by all means don't let me stop you.

[loewenskind]

You can do more than one at the same time. You can even learn more than one language at the same time so long as they're not too close to each other.