Italian is probably the language with the best ratio efforts/value for me. For the efforts I put into it (minimal, especially compared to anything I'd have to invest into learning Korean or even German to the same level), I got tons of value. Tons of opportunity to use it and to profit from it in some way.
Xenops wrote:So if I look at the FIGS languages, or the JACK ones (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean--someone else came up with acronym), I am led to think that Italian has the least amount of modern economic power.
Perhaps, but that is not just bad, from language learning point of view. The Italian job market crisis and economical situation is driving so many people abroad, that you get tons of practice opportunities almost anywhere in Europe! And Italians are not always automatically switching to another language, which is another huge advantage.
So, I've got a lot of opportunities to speak Italian, mostly for fun. But a few times at work too. Contrary to most languages you've just listed, the natives are well spread in my region, don't automatically switch, and they are also well spread in the society. This simply cannot be said about the French natives, who don't really move out (but they have several countries of their own, so that doesn't matter as much) and extremely often switch to English, it cannot be said about the Korean natives mostly staying back at home far away, or about the Arabic natives, who (no offense meant) are mostly staying in the lower spheres of the society and also building their own parallel world, where they don't really need you to speak Arabic too.
The presence of Italians in such numbers leads even to potential professional uses of the language, it depends on what do you want to do with the language and situation. And don't forget that in spite of various economical issues, Italy is still a rather rich EU country with lots of inhabitants, one of the best countries for tourism on the planet (which plays a huge role in the popularity of the language), and much more accessible as a business partner than many of the countries far away.
Most of the others have greater media production as well (I'm thinking cinema and TV shows). So I have to wonder: why is Italian so popular to learn?
Oh, do they? It depends on your tastes and your criteria of quality. For example, Italian has excellent popular music and really in the language, and definitely more of it than for example German. And I think the same is true about the cinema and tv. It's cinema is more accessible to many european minds and hearts than the Korean one, which in spite of its excellence (that I keep hearing about) is usually just for a circle of fans (the current success on Netflix is an exception, which may or may not set a new trend). Italian is presenting all its culture much more than for example China, which parrots empty phrases about rich and varied culture, but really underperforms in presenting it (and presents a heavily filtered version of it).
I read the rather harsh quote somewhere (if someone knows the reference, I would be grateful ):
Italy has a glorious past, a mediocre present and no future.
It has a glorious past, a solid present in Europe, and the future within my probable lifetime is not going anywhere.
My paraphrase. Because many (most?) people learn a language because of opportunities or economic gain, why is Italian so popular? Yes, it has lots of culture--is that enough? Yes, it sounds pretty--is that enough? Because it's there? Well, so is Spanish.
You are seriously underestimating both the economical and personal opportunities of Italian in Europe. In Europe, it wins over Spanish in most aspects. Spain is not that much economically stronger than Italy, the Spaniards are a bit less spread than the Italians, Spain is for many common uses simply more distant than Italy. And the importance of the Latin America for europeans, that is a matter of opinion.
In the US or Canada, it is really different. Italian is definitely losing the comparison to Spanish, and it's just a language for the Italian culture fans or people wanting to travel to the extremely beautiful country.
In most other regions, such as India (as a forum member recently showed in a very interesting thread) or most african countries, neither of them matters.
....
TL,DR: In Europe, Italian is heavily underrated, and Spanish overrated, I'd say they should be much more equal on the language learning market. In the rest of the world, Italian is just for culture fans or tourists (and there is nothing bad about that!).