This is really frustrating to me. "Learn German! It's the language of business in Europe!" Now when I'm in Germany, people speak English to me even when I say "auf Deutsch, bitte." Somewhere along the line, I must have picked up an accent in German, because some people even assume I'm from France and start speaking French to me. I'm B1 level in German (used to be B2, but it's slipping) and have no use for it outside of academic pursuits.
About the only language that is useful to me living in the northern US is French (being that my company does business in Quebec). Sometimes Spanish is helpful (we also do business in southern Florida). But the problems with learning these languages is it's not French you need to learn, it's Canadian French. It's not Spanish you need to learn, it's Mexican Spanish (/Cuban Spanish/Latin Spanish/Caribbean Spanish, however you want to classify it).
Good luck finding excellent self study (like memrise.com) classes in regional dialects.
>...it's not French you need to learn, it's Canadian French. It's not Spanish you need to learn, it's...
Is that level necessary? It's not as if a Qubequois would _not_ understand Standard French, or that a Cuban would not understand standard Spanish/Castillian. At least, I would hope it's not like that. It would be as if we'd need some translation to understand British English (coming from NAm). There is a bit getting used to an accent and some lexicon, but nothing that isn't overcome within a few interactions (with some exceptions).
It's not that they need to understand me (which I doubt they would have a problem with), it's that I need to be able to understand them. If I'm introductory in a language, all I'm really going to be doing is listening for keywords and piecing the meaning together with a small amount of grammar knowledge. That doesn't work when their words are different or sound different than what my brain is looking for.
Also, there are some people in the world who will pretend they don't understand you if you don't speak their language perfectly (looking at you, Finland!)
