Mandarin, because Russia fucking sucks.
Russian. Opens up a really cool world, Russia and almost all of Eastern Europe.
I speak a bit and read a bit of Mandarin as I live in Taiwan.
I remember seeing The Shadow in 1994 ( long before I ever came to Taiwan) and there’s a scene where Lamont Cranston orders food in Mandarin and his date says “You speak Chinese?!?” and he says “Only Mandarin.”
I thought that was so cool. Now I’m good enough at it that I can see how poor his pronunciation was in the movie when I watched it again recently.
Seeing as how China is the worlds business super power, having the ability to speak Mandarin fluently would open doors you didn’t even know existed.
And chicks dig it big time. Well, that and French. I can speak French but poorly and the kind of women it attracts are not the kind I like anyway.
I’d take cantonese over russian any day, then I could watch (and understand) all the early Jackie Chan films like Armour of God, in which he almost died when a stunt went wrong.