Should I study Latin or Chinese?

Great answer by Tim Harford to the question whether one should study Latin or Chinese, though he misses the fact that Latin (much more so than Italian...) could be a 'stepping stone' to learning a hell bunch of 'modern' languages, which I would not see as weakly dominated by learning Chinese. That being said, I think learning Chinese is not at all a bad enterprise, for both more and less pragmatic purposes.

BTW, since we talk about learning languages, you can also read Tim's answer translated in Italian (the question Tim answered was asked by a 15 year old Italian student, whom the translator believes to be imaginary, though typical of 15 year olds Italian students...).