Not sure what other board to post my /tr/avelers, but I am at

Well the difficulty of a language is determined mostly by the proximity to the languages you already know but and also dependant on your motivation to study it.

If you try to learn a language that you hate then there is a very high chance that won't end up learning it at all.

Language learning requires a lot of motivation and commitment(in fact motivation itself is very fleeting, so good habit formation skills and discipline are better) If you pick a language based on utility over another instead of interest you might end up learning neither language in the end.

Pick the language that you have the biggest interest in because it's more probable that you'll actually end up learning it. Exterior motivations like economical considerations are very weak in motivating you than those that come from within, like an intellectual interest, cultural affinity or linguistic curiousity, if your goal is to actually master it, that is.

As a language learner myself, I have to admit that languages themselves have a very low ROI for the time spent that you could use for any other skill(except for the English language). So a language only becomes useful to you if you make the conscious decision to make to useful to you.

For example you are going to learn Spanish because you have decided to go to a Spanish-speaking country for a semester abroad or you are studying the language and then goto work for the branch of a Chinese/German/French/Japanese/Russia (petro)chem company. Though, I doubt that ancient Greek would be particulaly useful to you if you don't like spending your time reading ancient texts, it might deepen your knowledge of modern Greek, though.

Though we don't really know whether your Chinese teacher would be more lax with the course requirements than your French teacher would be.

>>1263952
Now considering your particular situtation but disregarding your personal interest for a moment, ancient Greek, French, Spanish seem to be the easier languages out of the bunch considering the languages that you already have extensive knowledge in (German and English share the same language family but it is still considered to be a bit harder than French and Spanish by the Foreign Servic Institute).

>>1263952
Thank you for writing this out! This actually helped a lot.

>language only becomes useful to you if you make the conscious decision to make to useful to you

I like that.

Like you said, I will try to make it come from within.

>>1263981
Addtionally, of course you can study a language for purely economical reasons, job prospects or just for the absolute number of its speakers in the beginning but what is advised in order to be successful with that is that you search for an aspect related to the language, its affiliated people or their culture hat increases your interest.

Simple example: You are studying Spanish because you hear it's relatively easy good to have it on an American CV then you go on to explore and find out that you find Spanish-language music very appealing or maybe there is a community of Spanish-speakers in your neighborhood that you can make friends with.

Also, you won't master a language from studying 2 hours a week in front of a blackboard in a classroom enviroment. You are supposed to spend at least 1 hour a day or a little bit.

I mean, go ahead study Japanese if you are into anime and shit but due to your time constraints and the related and frustrating lack of progress with this difficult language over a long time might burn you out quickly and kill off your initial motivation you've had.

You see, there are just too many variables at play here. You have to decide for yourself in the end.

If you don't have to commit right away you could just dip into the few languages you are considering and get you feet wet Instead of deciding 'I will learn this language from now on'. A few weeks lost on the 'wrong' language isn't much time considering you will have to commit for a few years at least to master it.