I mean, it really depends on what you want to use it for, doesn't it? It has to be a language that you genuinely care about; otherwise it just becomes an academic exercise that you likely won't follow through.

Is it just for ease of travel, or do you want to be able to read and consume media from a given country? If you don't have a cultural affinity for a place that speaks a language, I wouldn't bother with it.

I would argue that this is almost *always* more important. Indeed, without the former, you won't get to the latter.

Taking a guess at your 1st language, I imagine the fact that German and English are both very close cousins helps tremendously.

All depends on where you're from (in Malaysia), and which neighbourhood (in Singapore)! For Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh are very Cantonese (the former is what might give you that impression) while Penang is very Hokkein and Cameron Highlands is Hainan. I'm not sure what Chinese dialects prevail in other big cities in Malaysia (there are, apparently, small towns that are predominantly Hakka).

When I was a child in Singapore (been decades for me) certain old neighborhoods in old Singapore (largely gone all redeveloped and inhabitants moved to HDB flats) were reputed to inhabited by speakers of certain dialects. Before people started to mandarinize names, it was very easy to discern a Chinese person's dialectical ancestry by the anglicised spelling of their names. I certainly remember people with Cantonese names though, as you say, Hokkein and TeoChew are more prevalent.

Lots of interesting comments!

Upon further consideration, I've refined my list to either Mandarin Chinese or French. Some candidates have been scratched off, though that doesn't preclude learning a few phrases and words. I cannot see myself struggling to learn Dutch when English is widely spoken in the Netherlands and Dutch is not spoken very much in Indonesia. My experience in the Netherlands is lots of people speak at least some English but a few don't. I was lost in a small town and the man working in a convenience store/gas station did not speak English. However, a customer knew a enough to give directions.

As far as travel use, however, I don't see Mandarin Chinese as useful except in Taiwan. I don't plan on visiting the mainland any time soon.

Like many, I took four years of language (Spanish in my case) in high school. I enjoyed it well enough but never felt i was much past "the boy kicks the ball" type grammar.

Fast forward, and I realize that at about middle age, I don't have a compelling need to learn a language. But in a half dozen visits - purely for pleasure - to the Netherlands, I realized that I absolutely loved the sound of Dutch. So I started learning it on my own. And it has grown on me since. I took an intensive course earlier this year and now I've got several interviews planned in the Netherlands. I realize I've learned more in about 11 months of self-study than I did in four years of high school foreign language course.

tl;dr: learn a language you LIKE to hear, read, and speak!

I’m going to diverge slightly from the original question/requirement here. English is my mother tongue and I can easily get around in French but, (and here we deviate), by far the most useful thing I have learnt is Greek!!!

Let me explain. I learnt Ancient Greek at school and I can remember quite literally zero! The big bonus here is that I do remember the alphabet and whilst it is somewhat useful in Greece for holidays it has a lot of the same/similar characters to Cyrillic. Many of the others are the same as the Roman alphabet and that leaves one just having to know about 4/5 other characters.

We deal a lot with Russian clients at work and when I was first in Moscow a number of years ago, (not actually that many years - about 13), almost everything was in Cyrillic. Without the Greek alphabet we would have been stuck on the metro system. Station names were all in Cyrillic so getting off at the correct stop needs concentration.

Rather a large amount of Russian is the same as English I.e. address, contract and passport are all the same but in Cyrillic. OK, so for the pedants one may drop the odd second character, and c becomes k as C in Cyrillic is actually S but you get the gist.

We go to Cyprus quite a lot on holiday so the Greek alphabet helps here too but in short, (clearly the above is not a short explanation), I vote for Greek, or more accurately the Greek alphabet which can be learnt pretty well in about 10 minutes.

My 2 cents.

Mandarin will give you access to many of the business elite in SE Asia.

FWIW, the younger Chinese generations in Malaysia are learning Mandarin at school. Not sure how long the other dialects will last.

I think Cantonese is definitely here to stay, but you got me thinking about Shanghainese as an example of Chinese dialects that are no longer widely used. I learned enough to get by when I first came over here in the 90s because a lot of locals (especially older people) still spoke it then. Fast forward two generations, and I rarely hear it, let alone use it.

Hard to say. While the number of Cantonese speakers in greater China is large (10s of millions), it is said to be fragile and could disappear in a generation. I can't find where I read about it (something about languages disappearing)

I honestly don't know what the degree of fluency Chinese speakers in China and others parts of Asia have for their regional/ancestral dialect, especially among the young. I believe that Singapore has managed to destroy (or discourage) non-mandarin dialects by eliminating public broadcast of non-mandarin Chinese programming. The children who go to Chinese schools in Malaysia (from my casual observation driving around the country) speak Mandarin.

Even where I am there are astonishing 2 (wholly) Chinese language channels on and all the non-H.K. ones are in mandarin. Part of the reason is that Mandarin speakers now outnumber Cantonese speakers in the country. I see that in Chinese-operated shops where I (and others) have to communicate in English where previously, Cantonese was used.

It's one of the outcomes we won't know for a couple of decades.

I think Cantonese will continue to be the language of HK, but I suspect in a decade or two, in the rest of China and SE Asia, it'll be all Mandarin. I just hope the HK people will continue to insist their children learn and speak their mother tongue.

Speaking of French, it is interesting to observe that French is the primary second language that children learn in at least 4 corners of the hexagon, and possibly all 6.

As you probably know, one of the many Chinese words for Mandarin is 普通话, which = common language. I think this term was coined during the 1950s around the same time simplified Chinese characters were introduced in Mainland China. Both of these measures were designed to facilitate communication between people from different regions, and also improve the literacy rate (i.e. simple characters might not be pretty, but they are easy to learn).

Switching topics to the US/Canada, when I was a kid, differences in regional accents were much more pronounced than they are these days.

As useful as many East/South Asian languages might be, I think most sound best on mute. Korean (at least those in the south) might be the �whiniest� one I�ve encountered. In the north, there�s more pride in speaking it...

OTOH, cursing in Cantonese is a blast, and I partially have Stephen Chow to thank.

It's the best! So many colorful phrases that just go on.