Which language should I learn?

If you're not sure which language to study, here are some factors to consider:

Availability

Are materials and other resources available for the language you want to learn? Are there classes in your area? For the popular languages, like French, Spanish and German, this shouldn't be a issue, but it may be difficult to find resources and/or classes for the lesser-studied languages.

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Usefulness

If you want to learn a language with a large number of speakers and which is spoken in many countries, the ones to choose in order of 'usefulness' are: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu.

This list is based on the number of speakers, the number and population of countries where the languages are spoken, the number of major fields using the languages internationally, the economic power of countries using the languages, and their socio-literary prestige.

For a breakdown of these factors see:
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

The languages with the most speakers are:

Language	L1 speakers	L2 speakers	Total speakers
Mandarin Chinese	850 million	180 million	1,030 million
English	340 million	510 million	840 million
Arabic	240 million	250 million	490 million
Spanish	400 million	90 million	490 million
Hindi	260 million	120 million	380 million
Russian	150 million	110 million	260 million
Portuguese	215 million	35 million	250 million
French	80 million	140 million	220 million
Bengali	190 million	20 million	210 million
Indonesian/Malay	60 million	140 million	200 million
Urdu	64 million	94 million	160 million
Japanese	130 million	11,500	130+ million
German	78 million	8 million	86 million
Javanese	84 million		84 million
Telugu	74 million	5 million	79 million
Tamil	69 million	8 million	77 million
Korean	77 million	-	77 million
Wu Chinese	77 million	-	77 million
Marathi	71 million	0.3 million	71.3 million
Turkish	71 million	0.3 million	71.3 million
Vietnamese	68 million	-	68 million

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Notes

L1 = first language, L2 = second language
Indonesian and Malay and closely related and mutually intelligible, though are considered separate languages.
While Hindi and Urdu are considered separate languages, their colloqiual forms are mutually intelligible. However they use different scripts and their formal forms are not so similiar.
There are many varieties of colloquial spoken Arabic which are not all mutually intelligible. There is also a variety of Arabic known as Modern Standard Arabic which is based on the Classical Arabic of the Quran and is used as the main written form and Arabic, and to some extent as a spoken lingua franca between Arabic speakers from different regions and countries.
Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the USA after English, with around 28 million speakers. The third most spoken language is Chinese - mainly Cantonese, with over 2 million speakers. Other languages with over a million speakers include French, German, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Italian. See: http://www.mla.org
There are around 600 million people learning English as a foreign language, 100 million learning French and 21 million learning Spanish. If these figures are added to the above totals, then there are 1.44 billion English speakers and learners, 320 million French speakers and learners, and 511 million Spanish speakers and learners [source]. There are maybe 1 million people learning Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language - in 2010 750,000 took the Chinese Proficiency Test [source].
The most popular languages to study in the USA are Spanish, French, American Sign Language (ASL), German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Latin and Russian [source].
In Europe the most studied foreign languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian [source].

Here's an illustration showing where the most spoken languages are spoken.

https://www.couponbox.com/language-map/embed.phpSource: Couponbox.com

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Difficulty

Each language presents you with a different set of challenges. Languages might have complex inflectional systems, complex writing systems, irregular spelling systems, and/or complex phonology. Generally the more a language differs from your L1 or other languages you know, the harder it is to learn.

For lesser-studied languages it can be hard to find language learning materials and courses. In some cases you might have to learn another language first, e.g. when learning indigenous languages of Latin America it helps if you know Spanish and/or Portuguese as most materials and courses are likely to be in those languages. Many languages are undocumented and have never been written, so training in field linguistics is needed in order to acquire them.

For English speakers the least difficult languages are probably: Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.

Arabic, Korean, Japanese and Chinese are often considered among the most challenging languages to learn for English speakers, and speakers of other European languages. Learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese is certainly challenging, and Chinese tones can be difficult to master. However, Chinese grammar is relatively straightforward, compared to European languages.

Other languages present you with even more challenges. For example, some indigenous languages of the Americas have extremely compex phonology and syntax, small speaker communities and limited materials and resources to help you learn them. Navajo, for example, has no regular verbs at all.

Some African languges use sounds, such as clicks, ejectives and ingressives that are difficult to pronunce and distinguish for each other. Xhosa, for example, has 64 different consonants, 18 of which are clicks. Even pronuncing the name of the language is a challenge.

The language with the most complex spelling system is probably Tibetan, which uses many letters that are not pronounced, and which indicate historical spellings.

Language Learning Difficulty for English speakers
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

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Languages in demand by employers

If you want to learn a language in order to improve your employment/promotion prospects then choose one that is in demand by employers. The list below gives you an idea of which languages are in demand and is based on job ads posted on recruitment sites. You can find links to the recruitment sites on the Careers using languages page.

Note: languages are shown more or less in order of popularity with employers.

Africa

English, French, Swahili, Arabic, Portuguese.

Americas

English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese.

Asia-Pacific

English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese.

Western Europe

English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish, Greek, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic.

UK

English, German, Arabic, French, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Mandarin Chinese.

Source: http://uk.businessinsider.com/adzuna-jobs-data-top-languages-for-the-highest-paid-jobs-in-britain-2016-9/

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From: https://takelessons.com/blog/what-language-should-i-learn-z14

Books on how to learn languages
Language courses, dictionaries, etc.

Links

MLA Language Map Data Center - information based on census data about which languages are spoken in the USA: http://www.mla.org/map_data

Most common languages spoken in the U.S.
http://www.immigrationdirect.com/languages-spoken-in-us.jsp

10 Best Languages to Learn Right Now (i.e. in 2010 in the USA)
http://www.toponlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/10-best-languages-to-learn-right-now/

BBC Voices - details of the languages spoken in the UK, with numbers of speakers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/

What is the best language to learn?
https://lingualift.com/blog/what-is-the-best-language-to-learn/

Most popular languages (2016)
http://en.bab.la/news/language-worldcup-2016

Language learning tips

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