Help Me Choose a Language to Learn.

I live in the United States. I am fluent in English. I know nothing of any other language. I would love to know what the most useful language will be in the future. I'm going to be dual-enrolling soon at a local university, and I wanted to take a class which is unavailable to me.

Can you suggest a language? The only classes currently available to me through my high-school are Spanish and Latin.

Japanese has all those forms depending on politeness... at least as far as I know. I probably shouldn't speak about it at all.

If you want a language similar to English that's useful, I would recommand you Spanish, German, or French. German is very similar to English, and has many cognates. However, I find the prepositions strange. Although I don't think the different cases are hard, you might. French also has a great many cognates with English, more than you would think. Of course not every French word has an English cognate and not every English word has a French cognate, this is true of every language. Many people find French grammar to be strange or difficult, but given enough time and practice it becomes second nature. Spanish is similar to French, but with (in my opinion, at least) simpler grammar and easier pronunciation. However, it doesn't have as many cognates as French and German, but it still has quite a few because of all the latin words English has, and all the words from French that English has that are also found in Spanish.

The thing with all languages you'll learn, is that you'll only be learning one dialect. Quebecois will be unintelligible to you at first, and Mexican men speak... well, like Mexicans. They're a lot harder to understand than many other dialects of Spanish. I've not been learning German for long enough to know of any dialects that are hard to understand if you're learning the dialect that most people learn.