Don’t sleep on Spanish if it’s being offered, it’s the 4th most spoken language on the planet and is heavily woven throughout the US.

I took it in high school but didn’t solidify it until adulthood, when we had Venezuelans marry into the family. And it’s a fantastic and fun language. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Do you only have those 2 choices?

For the future and education wise (Idk your age maybe you are young) I would choose mandarin.

But if you have to choose between the 2, french is more broad. Also once you learn one romance language (except for romanian) it’s usualy easier to learn the other.

Esperanto

I’d go with Python.

中文

Italian. Then you can watch the cartoon Pimpa from 1982 ❤️

I’d learn Mandarin but it’s very hard.

I learnt Spanish and use it every day, it is easy.

Flutter

Whichever interests you more. Flip a coin and when it’s in the air ask yourself which you’re hoping it lands on, pick that and ignore the result.

One will help you learn the other eventually though. It’s a very long process to learn a language though so take it one at a time.

Learning a language is easiest when you have opportunities to speak it. Which one are you more likely to use? A book might not be as effective as an app, like Duolingo or similar. Duolingo is free for a single language.

French phonetics is a bit more different from English, but both Italian and French are romance languages (based on Latin). Many English root words are Latin (also German, Greek, Dutch, and Indigenous languages). English also borrows loanwords from French and Italian, but pronunciations vary. I’d say both are relatively easy to learn as an English speaker (as is Spanish or Portuguese).

Grammatically, sentence structure is close to English. French introduces an extra word for negation which takes a little getting used to. “I cannot” becomes “Je ne peux pas” while Italian conjugates the verb to remove the subject “Non posso”.

One big difference with French is that there is a governing body that determines official French spelling and pronunciation. L’Académie Française was founded in the 17th century by the bad guy from the Three Musketeers, and is committed to maintaining linguistic purity. They tried for years to get French people to say “le courriel” instead of “email” but I don’t think anyone actually says that. Italy also has Accademia della Crusca, aka la Crusca, which had a similar function until the early 20th century when they were made more of an philology organization.

The benefit to both is that, once you understand spelling and diacritics, reading a word tells you precisely how to pronounce the word. The downside is that the languages have been basically stagnant for 350 years, so there are many strict, archaic phrases and sentence structures. English is notorious for homophones, homographs, and homonyms, which aren’t nearly as common in either French or Italian.

That said, reading from a book will never be the same as speaking with and listening to a native speaker. If you don’t have someone to practice with, there are online resources and probably local community options to find people who will help.

Do you live on the border to Quebec? Otherwise French is a rarity in Canada even though things are labeled in both languages. If you are in the USA, Spanish would seem the more useful language, in my opinion.

The most common languages I hear in Canada (nearer the 49th parallel), other than English are Hindi, Punjabi, and Mandarin

German.

I will not be taking follow up questions.

Don’t learn Italian as a way of learning French, just learn French. Language learning is very difficult, and the most useful language when it comes to learning French is English anyway.

I gave up on French because I couldn’t figure out the vowels (and because other languages were a priority), so it’s important to come up with a strategy for that.

I took some French classes and picked up some Italian by spending some time in Italy. I wouldn’t say either language is easier, but I’d say Italians are (at least back in my day) incredibly patient with non-Itlalian speakers flipping through a dictionary in order to talk to them. Anyway, French and Italian are related (both Romance languages) and speaking either one will make the other easier.

I find spoken Quebec French almost unintelligible even though I can somewhat understand French from France. Even French people have some trouble with Quebec French, especially as you go further east and the dialect gets stronger. It’s a bigger difference than the difference between regional accents in the US. But, written French is mostly the same between France and Quebec, so at least you’ll be able to read the signs.

I also once had the idea of improving my French by spending some time in Quebec, but then realized I’d end up speaking the Quebec dialect, which apparently is comparable to hillbilly English in how it sounds to French people.

Added: You don’t mention what part of the US you are in. I’m in California and the most useful language here other than English is probably Spanish, then maybe Chinese. If you want a Romance language, maybe consider Spanish? It is pretty close to Italian, enough that I once managed to confuse the two.

If you’re in the US, Spanish. It might actually be useful.