Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
German is the second language of the physical sciences, and French is just fun. As previously noted, not everyone wants to be a businessperson.
Yep. I took Spanish in high school because I live in Southern California. Later on, I decided to learn Mandarin just for the fun of it. Not everyone wants to learn a language for the same reason as another person.
I took Latin in high school for my foreign language requirement. Believe it or not, even though it's a "dead" language, it helped me more than the Spanish I took in junior high. I know my kids' school doesn't even offer Latin or Mandarin, but does offer Spanish, German, French, and Sign Language for foreign language.
Let's face it, two years of any foreign language isn't enough to master it anyway. I would guess it could take years for an English speaker to learn Mandarin with all the different tones meaning different things.
In elementary school, we had Spanish lessons once or twice each week. Once you started middle school, the instruction became more rigorous with class lasting 55 minutes each day. I chose French as a 12-year old because I suspected that the prettiest girls would be in French class (I was correct).
At my middle school and high school, we offered Spanish, French, German, Latin and (I think) Mandarin. The vast majority of students took Spanish with French in second place. Because taking a foreign language was mandatory for graduation, a lot of average to below-average students populated the Spanish classes. As such, the level of instruction they received was much less intense than in French class. By high school (I made it up to AP French 4), we were fully immersed and rarely used English in class unless there was a difficult concept that required serious explanation. In fact, our professor would take points off of our overall grade if we used English in class without permission.
Most of the kids took Spanish just to fulfill the language requirement. The teachers understood this, and so I don't think those students learned much. If you compared language mastery of the students in the different classes, those taking Spanish were definitely at the bottom. We could have intense discussions (such as when 9/11 occurred) in French while my Spanish-taking peers could barely communicate in their language of choice.
Spanish certainly has it's merits in the United States, particularly in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and parts of Florida. However, it's not seen as a language of business. English, Mandarin, Arabic, German and French would probably take you much further on a global scale than Spanish. In the United States, Spanish is more important for food service, construction, tellers at banks etc. It hasn't quite penetrated to the upper echelons of the white collar world.
However, plenty of jobs where I live advertise "bilingual preferred." Oddly enough, I know plenty of bilingual people (speaking Ibo, Vietnamese, Hindi and Farsi) yet that's usually not what is meant when a company asks for bilingual. I feel sympathy for African and Asian immigrants because they're typically expected to know English with no safety net.
Don't feel too much sympathy for them, those people already know English before they come to this country. The African and Asian immigrants are usually highly educated.
ok I get Chinese is hard, but so is german. In the business world, both the latter will be more important than german or French in terms of business. Sure in the ideal world, you know every language out there.
Well that depends on where you want to work. French is a widely spoken language and some organizations list french as a principal language (NATO comes to mind). As for German, it is spoken by the biggest economy in mainland Europe and can also be useful depending on your field and location preference. I've worked in both Belgium and Germany and while many speak English, language skills can also be extremely helpful.
When I was at school in the 60s French German and Spanish were the languages taught, I always thought as these countries were closest to the UK and we might visit them one day.. In the fifties Latin was still taught in my school cant think why anyone would want to learn a dead language.. waste of time..
When I was at school in the 60s French German and Spanish were the languages taught, I always thought as these countries were closest to the UK and we might visit them one day.. In the fifties Latin was still taught in my school cant think why anyone would want to learn a dead language.. waste of time..
Latin is an excellent language to help prepare you for the English vocabulary on the SAT and ACT. Many of our words have latin roots and having taken 4 years of latin meant that if I did not know the definition of a word, I could often guess it from its roots. Greek can also help. That said one can also take an etymology course, but not many are offered.
Latin is an excellent language to help prepare you for the English vocabulary on the SAT and ACT.
It would be great if more public schools offered Latin. In the county where I live only the local Catholic school offers Latin.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
why do students take german or french vs spanish and chinese?
