Should I learn Arabic or Latin? Which one is more useful and why?

Great question! Latin is more useful if you're going into the medical field as all the words are a hybrid of Latin and Greek. However, by learning Latin, you will have a better chance of becoming fluent in the Romance languages (as they stem from Latin) and Germanic languages and Cyrillic languages (due to the complexity of their grammar).

Arabic, in my opinion, would definitely be the best choice. However, you'll find out that you'll be taught standard Arabic which is 60% useful. Arabic is one of the most complex languages because the different dialects are arguable totally different languages (Egyptian Arabic is the most commonly understood, Gulf Arabic, the hardest). Standard Arabic is only useful to those who know it (which only people born in Arab countries and very, very, very few immigrant Arabic speakers). But still, it's useful nonetheless.

Arabic Latin

I would say it depends what you want. If you want to study something that might be useful, Arabic wins hands down. However, if you want to study a language for its own sake, for the academic challenge as well as the basic enjoyment of linguistic structure, Latin is a brilliant language. It is by far the purest language grammatically, as the literature avoids all hint of dialect; what we read is not a spoken language, and therefore does not suffer grammatical inaccuracy for the sake of the ease of the speaker. For those who say it will help in the medical field, I would suggest this is something of an exaggeration; most medical terminology is pseudo-Latin, made up in the past hundred years or so rather than following the ancient language. It may well improve your vocabulary, but beyond that Latin is only worth while if you enjoy it. I suppose at the same time you're unlikely to learn enough Arabic to make it actually useful, so even that would be more of an academic exercise. In terms of variety it would probably be quite interesting, though I can't comment on the literature beyond that it would take something genuinely impressive to compete with the likes of Virgil. After intensive study of Latin I am probably quite biased in this respect, but there you go.

I think Arabic is more useful to you ,it's a living language spoken by at least 400 million people as a first language and more than a billion Muslim should know some Arabic ,besides it's useful in the business world and has a rich culture attached to it ,also it's the origin of may languages people think that there's no relation between them and Arabic ,also many languages borrowed the Arabic script with minor changes such as old Turkish,Kurdish Urdu.and Farsi

Hi!

I suggest you learn Arabic, because people actually speak it. I think that Latin is spoken by almost no one these days, its what they call "a dead language". I think that you should take Arabic this year and try it out. You already took Latin and have your opinions on it, but you haven't taken Arabic. You should take it and see which one you like better.

In my opinion, Arabic is the better language to learn.

( By the way, I haven't taken any of these, I am learning Spanish ) :)

Hope I helped and good luck! :)

EDIT: @otaku: Muslim schools usually teach Quranic Arabic, not like everyday Arabic.

i think you should take Latin. you already have a little experience in it and it looks like learning some terms will be useful. also, knowing Latin will make learning several other languages earlier, as you'll know all the root words.

i had a Muslim friend who was required to take Arabic at her school from 3rd to 8th grade, and she really hated it. but that's just her opinion, i honestly wouldn't know for sure. >_>

Arabic. Because what's the use of learning a language nobody speaks?

i would go for arabic to be more useful in todays life