Anthropology/Linguistics Double Major, German or Italian?

[Michelle Z]

I am double majoring in anthropology and linguistics. I am already studying Latin, but I am unsure "not-dead" language I should take. I pretty much have it narrowed down to either German or Italian, both countries having good opportunities related to my majors.
So my question is: does anyone have any experience with these fields in these countries? Which language do you think would open up the most opportunities?

Thanks!
Thanks for your answers, but I wasn't asking which would be easiest for me to learn. I've had four years of French, by the way, so I think either of them would be about the same level of difficulty for me. I was asking which would be better to learn from the standpoint of an anthropology/linguistics major.

[Dario]

I studied some 5 years latin, back in my teenage in Italy. And though i remember all the declinations by memory, i still have a lot of troubles with complements (and above all, suffixes) here in Germany.
There are a lot of similar terms, between Latin and Italian: at least in the first times, this is going to be a great help for you to study the un-dead language basing on the words you already know from the other (dead) one. You can understand the single words, and make up the meaning.

Im Deutsch, instead..well, you have to learn a brand new dictionary, and then apply some (a lot) of brand new rules (and believe me: knowing that accusative is expressing the object of a transitive statement won't be much of a help)

Hope this helped.

[starryluvly]

From a purely linguistic point of view:

I'm guessing that if English is your first language, then German would probably be the easiest for you to learn because of all the similarities between the two languages. Not just in terms of vocabulary (eg: German hund as compared to english Hound/dog) but language structure.

However, the fact that you're learning Latin should also facilitate you learning Italian. And similar to my reasoning for English and German, you might find it will provide you some clues when deciphering other romance languages such as French and Spanish.

[Holden® (Mr.ThumbzUP)]

It's a tough choice, but I'll go for Italian.

But if you want to add dilemma to your choices I suggest you also consider Spanish.

Good day!