Hi,
I’m Arabic native speaker and I have arrived at a great level in English. so now I want to learn a new language. Some friends suggested me Spanish but I need to know the power and advantages of this language to start. Thanks
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- Top 3 most spoken languages. (real world and internet)
- Official language in 20 countries. (But dialects will differ)
- A lot of learning resources. From books to shows.
- You’d finally understand the entire meaning of that annoying song everybody is obsessed with.
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Plus, once you know English, Spanish is a piece of cake considering most of English vocab was inspired by Latin and so is a lot of Spanish, therefore giving the two languages a lot of similar vocab. So there are a lot of similar words between the two that just makes knowing one easier to learn the other.
Not to mention Spanish culture ranges from Mexico and countries in North America to most of the countries in South America as well as the language’s country of origin - Spain- in Europe. Knowing Spanish gives you access to a massive cultures that spans multiple continents and hundreds of years of history.
Also, Spanish is often considered one of the most romantic/sexiest languages. It sounds very nice and is spoken pretty fast so it’s easy to use to communicate and feels good/sounds good to communicate in 
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I strongly disagree with your friends who suggest that you should learn Spanish. It has no unique benefits compared to any of the dozens of other languages that you could learn instead.
I would suggest Chinese as the most useful third language to study, based both on the number of native speakers, and also on the vast array of resources for learning it. In terms of utility, consider the fact that the power and influence of China in trade and international relations is growing rapidly, and the Chinese economy is also expanding rapidly, and is already much larger than the total of all Spanish speaking nations combined.
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That’s not correct.
The percentage of English words derived from Spanish is well under five percent. You may be confusing the fact that many Spanish words are derived from Latin, as are many English words, so those words have a common source and are very similar. But it is not correct to say that most English words were taken from, or inspired by Spanish.
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Depends - what do you want to do with the language, and how much time and effort are you able to invest?
I agree that Spanish could be quite useful for travel, business, and entertainment. Many words in Spanish and English are related, so you will progress much more quickly than if you study a completely different language such as Chinese.
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maybe not everybody thinks only about “(economic) utility”…
(btw, I thought French is the most romantic language 
. And back in my teens, people used to say that (European) Spanish has an unequalled majesty)
It is true in a practical sense, although it is not literally true. More than 70% of English words are cognates with Spanish.
It is not literally true because most of them came to English through French (salvation), some came through Latin (homogeneous) , some through Arabic (lemon), and only a small percentage came in through Spanish, as you said.
So most of what the person said was correct, and it is misleading to say that it isn’t.
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Since you already speak Arabic you might have fun with this course: https://www.memrise.com/course/907/spanish-words-of-arabic-origin/
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I disagree strongly. Any claim that is not “literally true” is false.
The statement that he made that “most of English vocab was taken from/inspired by Spanish” is simply false, which is easily verified by checking any linguistic text dealing with the subject.
If he had simply claimed that there are many words in common between the two languages, then I would agree with you, but that’s not what he actually claimed, so his claim, as written, is false.
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I understand what you whant to say… however @ashleopio formulated it in entirelly wrong way and as such it is only possible to describe it as untrue (focus on origin). … with further clarification what she could say instead. (so many similar words because…)
Okay, I mistyped because I was trying to actually get across reasons as to why the OP should learn Spanish. Get over it. Also, I’m a girl. I’ll edit my post so you all can get over it.
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That’s fine, but do note that most of the “we-all” were not particularly critical in the first place.
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As a spanish native speaker, I can tell you some things:
-English and spanish have a lot of similar words
-Spanish has some arab words too
-Spanish reading/writing is easier than english, sounds match better with the written characters. You write as you speak. No weird changes.
You can master the language faster than other ones like chinese.
Sorry if my english is not very good… I’m working hard to improve it!. 
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I’m going to disagree with that. To me it feels like Chinese is perhaps 10 or 15 times more difficult than Spanish (in actuality it might be a bit less), with the need of constant revision.
If you already know Arabic and English you should be able to read most Spanish texts in a year or less quite easily if you apply yourself. With Chinese you will spend a few years and then still your reading will be quite limited, slow and laborious, as an example.
Learning Spanish is a nice side project, learning Chinese is years of study with uncertain result.
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I agree that learning Spanish would be much faster and easier than learning Chinese, but I don’t think that should necessarily be the deciding factor. And the extra difficulty might even be considered a plus for people who enjoy doing challenging things just for the sake of it.
And if the OP is particularly interested in science and technology, for example, then I think that knowing Chinese could be the more rewarding choice, because there is a huge amount of scientific and technical literature, data sheets, patents, etc., that are only published in Chinese. There are also online markets with very attractive prices, and products not offered elsewhere, such as Taobao, that are really only accessible if you can communicate with the vendors in Chinese.
But, of course, none of those things may matter at all to the OP. So, in the end, the choice of what to study totally depends on the OP’s personal circumstances, interests, and learning objectives.
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@peter.r.skupad8 Whatever passes the time for you guys, I’m happy for you.
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