Is learning Arabic viable?

So I'm going to university soon and am thinking about what I want my minor to be. So I originally wanted a political science minor with a physics major but since I cannot take Latin at my university I have to find a different foreign language class. If I get a job at General Dynamics (Tank Company in Michigan) from both my grandfather and his friend's (both were HIGH level managers) recommendation I may find myself doing a lot of business with the Saudi's as my grandfather did. If so with the populations of Arabic speaking countries growing on the rise would it be worth it to take Arabic as a minor to gain an advantage on the curve on the market in case an Arabic speaking country were to become a global leader.

You are all over the fucking place. Take a year off before going to uni and find out what you want to really do. Oil is on its way out, green energies are in.

You don't need Arabic to communicate with Saudis. Heck, even expats here who've lived for decades didn't find to need to learn it. In addition, the Arabic you'll be taught in an American university will make you sound like a retard (standard Arabic) or a scammer (Egyptian). Just stick to English m9.

>unless you can commit to learning gulf Arabic which is nearly impossible

I don't know anything about job opportunities but let me tell you about arabic
Arabic is a very hard language and it has a lot of words in its vocabulary. The alphabet is also hard and retarded. If you're really interested in the language, however, you can learn it.

Why not just take one class and see how you do?

No.

Chinese is where its at.

Learn Chinese instead.
Or Latin.

>gulf Arabic

It's the ugliest sounding language in the world...

But you're right... most educated Saudis got their degrees in the west and are fluent in English... worked in Riyadh for three years... bare spoke Arabic (only with Lebanese and Syrians who were there working too)...

Arabic: if you want to enlist in the military
French/German: if you want comfy finance job
Mandarin: literally anything else

+1 for Chinese, you'll have amazing opportunities to practise with all the Chinese students whi are everywhere. Whichever way you look at it, its going to be a useful language in the future. Just make sure you stick to learning and practising the letters, get over the initial hump and its not bad

Whether you think it's ugly or not is irrelevant. OP wants to learn it for practical purposes, and bastardized forms of Arabic will do more harm than good due to stereotypes.

Also imo nothing wrong with sounding like you're loaded. I actually speak Arabic much more in Europe than here (kek) and the fact that it's gulf Arabic gets me a lot of freebies and good service there. If I were OP, why would I learn any other form?

Learn Russian, Chinese or Japanese (in that order of preference)

+1 for Chinese

No point, nobody will use it in a few years.

anyone else learning mandarin here?

I've taken about 3 years worth of Mandarin during high school my only problem with it is the characters man do i fucking hate them. I don't mind the pinyin so much because i can make fucking sense of them but the damn characters i wanna fucking scream.

>speak in Bedawi, equivalent to American hillbilly
>calls Egyptian Arabic unappealing

Try learning Maghrebi Arabic, closer related to romantic languages than Eastern Arabic, cause berbers n shieeeet.

oh yeah should have mentioned too went to Beijing and Shanghai for 2 weeks with the school.

no......it will attract muslims to your country if you start to learn it

>Bedawi
>Gulf Arabic
Pick one.

Oh, and if I (and everybody that I know) hear Egyptian, we lose attention and focus on not losing our wallet. Sorry if you're one of the good Egyptians, but that country produces more scammers and thieves than its fair share.

i hate how all the vocab is tied to the characters, its like learning 2 languages

It's alright akhi.

Half Lybian, not native speaker, so not used to eastern Arabic. Sounds very similar to me.

I'll be sure to watch out for those Egyptians next time I visit.

its certainly relevant if you want to work in germany, france, uk or sweden.

Yeah, we get kids from Hai Dian or whatever the hell its called but its a private school in Beijing ($80k or so per year) I was talking to them plus my teacher dude it took them years to master certain characters with the strokes and just recognizing everything.