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Spanish. An immersion program is available in our public school and we got in.

I'd say Spanish too. From a music perspective it makes a lot of terms much easier to understand.

Since you live in Europe, why not French? It's an official language in at least 4 European countries, and it's also a widely spoken language in Africa.

My kids already speak 3 European languages. I would love for them to learn either Mandarin, Russian or Arabic.

I would also think about ease of access to resources. Its very easy to get spanish work books, stories from the library, movies, etc in spanish. Russian probably not so much. If you wanted later on an immersion school or even a tutor again, spanish would be much easier.

I think this totally depends on your lifestyle, where you live and where you may travel. I was put into a French immersion school and while it may have helped me in non-obvious ways, it has been pretty useless as a 2nd language. I live in an area with no French speakers, I rarely visit French-speaking countries, and as a result, I haven't retained much of the language at all. In contrast, there are many people in my life and who live in our city who speak Spanish and I feel like that would have been a more useful language to learn.

Many people think Mandarin will be important, and to some extent I agree, but I also feel that unless you are actually going to be traveling to China often, you will not need it.

Just to look at this from a different perspective, I have several friends from Europe and they haven't really even bothered teaching their kids their native languages because they don't intend to return to Europe and they never use their languages here in the US.

Edited to add one more thing: I tend to be more wary of immersion programs in particular because I went through one personally and saw that for some kids, the immersion might have produced more harm than good. I'm talking about 3rd graders who could only read French and not English. By high school, my elementary school cohort was basically either at the top of the class or the bottom. I can never know for certain, but I believe that some of those kids may have been better served by being in a normal English speaking school.

@catlady: But with globalization, and more and more firms employing people from other parts of the world, you don't have to travel to use the language. I regularly have contact with people in different parts of the world and we have never visited in person. Granted, none of them are in China, but I think that's next.

Additionally, my husband is European and his first language is not a commonly used one, it's even less common than French. We are still teaching our son the language because it's his heritage and he has family there that he will need to converse with. I am in the process of learning it as an adult and I am actually quite good at it, even though I don't speak it regularly, so I do agree, you have to have opportunities to consistently use it, otherwise you do lose it. Even just hearing it helps me retain.

DD is learning Spanish. I'm a Spanish professor and we're moving to South America for a few months next year, so she doesn't have much choice in the matter!

I've seen from my students how having Spanish makes any major more employable. It doesn't just prep you to be a teacher or a translator - my students work in health care, banking, business, government, etc.

@SugarplumsMom: I speak French, and while Spanish is probably more useful in the U.S. from a practical standpoint, anywhere in Europe or even Asia I think French is more useful. I've met French speakers all over the world, even in Beijing where someone at a restaurant who spoke Mandarin and French helped me to order.

@Pancakes: Yes, you are right, understanding French has been really nice for enjoying arts and literature. I should take back what I said about it being useless. I lost fluency years and years ago though, so I find it stressful to speak it, and I don't go out of my way to find French speakers. Ironically I have probably used it most often to help out French tourists who can't speak English well.

Out of those choices Spanish, but we plan to get T involved with ASL since here it qualifies as a foreign language as required to graduate from HS. My cousins son has done it and greatly enjoyed it and found it to be very applicable as a teen.

My family is in the US and LO is learning Spanish and Ukrainian alongside English.

He's learning Ukrainian for family reasons. Ukrainian has very few speakers so It is unlikely to be directly useful for things besides talking with his Baba and cousins. But, speaking it from infancy will definitely give him a leg up if he studies Russian or another Slavic language in the future.

Spanish is just a must for our area. A large percentage of folks near us speak Spanish as their preferred or only proficient language. A lot of healthcare and service jobs require being bilingual in Spanish or have preferential hiring for Spanish-language skills.

If he takes an additional language as a middle/high schooler I'll leave it up to him, but I would encourage him to consider ASL, Arabic, Mandarin, or Amharic over learning another Germanic, Romance, or Slavic language.

@travellingbee: can you tell me more about the concerns you have seen? DD is starting a Spanish immersion program for K in the fall. It is not a full immersion program and I liked the rationale but I would like to hear more about your experience.

OP, I would vote Spanish. But we live in a state where there is a large Spanish speaking population, and DH and are both fluent and use it for work (but we are gringos). I can see if being beneficial in a very concrete sense vs Mandarin which seems more theoretically beneficial in our situation.

Since you are in Europe, I would say French.

I actually took French myself from junior high to college and was conversational though not quite fluent. Like @catlady: I didn't have a lot of opportunity to use it, so the ability has kind of atrophied. I love French and I'm glad I learned it, but I would find Spanish more useful at this point.

But in your case I think French would be a lot more useful in Europe. I think languages like Mandarin and Arabic, while useful, may not be common enough for your DD to keep up her skills after schooling is done.

I went to French immersion through Junior high school and was also conversational in German for many years. I live in Canada where French is an official language so my DS will be in French immersion starting in the fall (Kindergarten). I haven't really used either second language on a purposeful basis in years but I am always surprised how with a little exposure my skills come back! I am actually looking forward to DS starting school in the fall so I have someone to help and practice with! I think with a second language immersion program there is more onus on the parents to keep working on their first language literacy, so we will be doing lots of English reading and writing practice with DS so he doesn't fall behind in the area.

Skipped the comments but I realized that I will need to learn Spanish (as an adult!) if I want to transfer my PT job into a FT job closer to home. So I hope that I can somehow get my kids to learn some, too. My dd's preschool already does some lessons in both Spanish/English, but I don't think her public school will, so I'm not sure how to approach this yet.

Mandarin for us! My 4 year old takes Saturday mandarin classes and just finished a week of mandarin immersion camp. The reason we are having her learn this is because I am Chinese (Taiwanese) and I really want her to know her heritage/language. Like @Snowjewelz though I've found it really hard to teach/speak to her in mandarin. My parents emigrated here when I was 1, I grew up speaking English and basically repressing my Asian side "to assimilate". (Things were different back then!) Even my mom tends to speak to my kids in English even though I ask her to speak mandarin.

We live in SoCal so mandarin is useful!

I wonder if something like Spanish or French is more likely to stick in the long-run, just because for an English speaker who's parents don't speak Mandarin at home, it's so much less of an investment to master and maintain than Mandarin...

I'm a French teacher so I think people expect me to say French but really I think any language is great to learn. Even if you end up not really using the language as an adult it doesn't mean it was a waste. The process of learning another language and getting exposure to another culture is really what's important. I don't think you could even begin to predict what kind of career your child would do in the future and therefore what language might be most useful in that context nor do I think that's a useful way of framing the decision. Maybe you can expose your child to some cultural aspects of the different choices and see what would interest him/her most.