Can anyone suggest a second language (other than English) that would be helpful to learn for a traveling sales position across multiple European countries?

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Depends on your region. But German/French are the only answers really
German for DACH (+ Luxembourg I believe?)
French for France/Wallonia/Switzerland

Spanish potentially. But that’s only Spain.

Don’t forget that in a lot of big European cities especially the northern part of Europe, everyone speaks English almost

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French or German or Spanish

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Depends on the industry you work in and what you want to do with that language

Work only, in automotive ? German but they mostly speak good English
German is used in Germany Austria and Northern Switzerland (+Luxembourg)

Intend to do some tourism ?
Then probably a Roman language (French Italian Spanish) as people usually go in these countries for tourism.
These 3 languages are not the same but have the same Latin roots.

Also these counties are not very good at speaking English so local language is a plus.

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French

French!

German for Europe, French only for France, Spanish for future career in the US or LATAM.
OTOH if you learn French, other roman languages become easy to add on top (Spanish, Italian). German is less useful as gateway but helps in Nordic languages.
Long term you may also consider Russian, there will be a lot of work after the war to rebuild Ukraine and whatever is left of Russian economy.

I would say French first and would be useful in several industries. The second would depend a bit on what type of work you do… automotive I would say German, pharma or construction I would say Spanish

I thought I read somewhere once that in these words or another that French is used by the proletariat and German is the common-man/bourgeoisie tongue

German, 100%. DACH > Belgium + France in terms of opportunities in the majority of industries. As much as I love France and its amazing francophones, in terms of the immediate value it’s true that German is more handy.

This being said, I think the right answer is “both German and French, and Spanish+Italian just for the sake of enjoying the ride” hehe

German is always high in demand and easier to find jobs with than Spanish, Italian or French

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