Which language to pick up in uni alongside International Studies: Japanese/ French/ Spanish/ German/ Italian?
It depends on what you want to do for your career. Generally speaking French is the international language of diplomacy but not a huge amount of people speak it. Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the world. Spain, Latin America, South America and much of the United States speaks Spanish. Lots of Europeans speak it as a second language as well. I would opt for Spanish or perfecting your French. Unless to plan to work exclusively in Asia. Then Japanese would be fine. Good Luck!
It depends on what you’re looking for when studying a language. As you said learning Mandarin would be easier seeing as you already speak Cantonese fluently, so that would therefore be the easiest option. On the other hand, many students are now taking up Japanese as the jobs and pay there is booming; knowing how to speak Japanese would aid you massively in terms of finding a long term job abroad. If you’re looking for another language to consider, my recommendation would be Hindi or another form of Indian language. There are some extremely impressive universities over in India as it is the best place to get an education these days. Knowing how to speak the national language would be crucial for getting into such places. Another suggestion is Korean, another increasingly popular choice for the same reason Japanese is now popular. The advantage of this is it is a fairly new trend so it would be less competitive than Japanese. Hope I helped.
