@Carmen

That's true. Many Germans tend to speak English when they notice a foreigner. But it doesn't matter if his English is better than his German. I think Germans like to speak English by all means.

Many foreigners are often disappointed by us since they actually want to speak German whilst we force them to speak English.

On the other hand ... Many of us might understand English quite well. But only a few can speak properly. (Except for employees in international companies. They might have better English skills.)

Sometimes I see foreigners speaking German instead of German with each other when I'm at the main station.

I agree with Evren_Okur. For you, it might be easy to learn Spanish because you already know French.

If you ever want to work in Germany or with German business partners, you should definitly try to learn German, too. (And be it just a few sentences.) We've got many French (and Latin) words in our language! ;)

Hi Carmen,

Your friends and family are correct about Spanish. It is more useful around the world than German. On the other hand, if you plan to live, study or work in Germany the choice is obvious.

If you plan to do business with German companies, don't worry, they are able to communicate in English. 

I would be glad to answer more questions if you have any.

Heinz

It depends on what you want to do. You can already speak Englisch, French and Chinese (and probably Malay). That's great.

Spanish is surely important if you want to work in Spanish speaking countries: South America and South Europe. For Northern European countries you'll need English. German would not be wrong since many people from the Netherlands speak German. German is similar to Dutch and Swedish.

And beside that, you can easily go to Austria and Switzerland (well, at least to the German and French speaking part).

Of course, I don't know what you want to work. If you are interested in a particular company, I'd recommend to look for their international relationships. Although English might be the business language, it's always a huge advantage to know the native language of your business partners.

Carmen:

I agree that it would be more practical to learn Spanish. 

Latin-America is a fast developing region.  You will be able to be a more successful business person if you know Spanish well. (And Portuguese!)

ONE EXCEPTION: If you were to study some scientific subject, it would a good idea to know how to at least READ German, for I hear that many scientific articles are written in German.  The Germans, as you know, are very intelligent people who have contributed a lot to scientific discoveries.

I think spanish and french are closer to each other than english and german. English contains approximately 60% of latin vocabulary with inclusion of the french whereas, german has more of the germanic words. In this respect, spanish might be easier  for you to learn than german. Also, the grammar of german is, i belive, more complicated than spanish. In my opinion if you learn a difficult langauge first, it will be in favour of you in future. Otherwise, spanish is spoken by lots of people all around the world. It might be also useful in short term need. However, best think to do would be learning both admitedly.

Good Luck ^_^