Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Texas > Houston
 [Register]
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.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 05-17-2013, 08:05 AM
 
70 posts, read 110,709 times
Reputation: 48

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rip808 View Post
A lot of energy companies offer Rosetta Stone for free, I am lucky that I can pick up any language for free. Just need to find the time to do it
Thanks a lot guys! These are great pointers and actionable information! This is certainly on my "to acquire" list.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 05-17-2013, 08:06 AM
 
70 posts, read 110,709 times
Reputation: 48
Quote:
Originally Posted by TFW46 View Post
Leisure Learning offers Conversational Spanish lessons:

Spanish Language Classes In Houston | Leisure Learning Unlimited
Excellent, thank you!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-17-2013, 08:09 AM
 
70 posts, read 110,709 times
Reputation: 48
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dopo View Post
I learned a lot of chinese with youtube, you should try doing the same thing



Survival mandarin lesson 3 - YouTube
This looks like a good online resource to begin the process. Does anyone know if Spanish is like some European languages that have declensions and cases, to nouns and verbs, as opposed to English language that does not?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-17-2013, 08:36 AM
cla
 
898 posts, read 3,294,198 times
Reputation: 568
Also, most local libraries offer online language courses. You must have a library card to access. Here are links to Ft Bend and Harris county online language courses

Welcome to Fort Bend County Libraries!

HCPL Remote Patron Authentication
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 08:06 AM
cla
 
898 posts, read 3,294,198 times
Reputation: 568
My daughter just told me about duolingo.com. I just started brushing up on my high school/college french and I think this site will help. There is currently and iphone app as well - android app coming soon.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 08:18 AM
 
3,549 posts, read 5,352,010 times
Reputation: 3769
Quote:
Originally Posted by DejaBlue View Post
Not so much international customers but more local/regional who either refuse to learn after 10 some years (by a decade somewhere you should be past the need for an interpreter and 1-3 people in the whole office/company should suffice for interpreters or whatever) and since we make it so easy to not learn.

Considering Houston and energy it should be bilingual whatever oil producing Middle Eastern country language not Spanish but
Just because we import oil from the middle east does not mean that we are involved in their actual production. I know tons of people in the oil field who have worked all over the world, except the middle east. We simply just very rarely work over there.

It's not even just the people that have been here that you have to know spanish. When I used to weld, it was often the reason. They would come over here to work and not know english. Some had been here a long time, others had not. I had a boss who had been here 27 years, could not speak english well at all.

Now that I no longer weld and am in management it hasn't changed. My current clients are all from Venezuela or Ecuador. The clients on my last project were from Mexico, and it's looking like my clients for my next project will be Mexico as well. A couple years ago we built an oil drilling platform for Spain. You can't expect them to learn English when they are only here temporarily.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 09:32 AM
 
Location: Oklahoma
857 posts, read 1,648,989 times
Reputation: 515
Quote:
Originally Posted by DejaBlue View Post
Not so much international customers but more local/regional who either refuse to learn after 10 some years (by a decade somewhere you should be past the need for an interpreter and 1-3 people in the whole office/company should suffice for interpreters or whatever) and since we make it so easy to not learn.

Considering Houston and energy it should be bilingual whatever oil producing Middle Eastern country language not Spanish but
Houston has a large Hispanic population.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 09:49 AM
 
3,549 posts, read 5,352,010 times
Reputation: 3769
I'm pretty amazed at the amount of people from Texas that know minimal to No spanish... With how many people speak it you would think it would be taught in schools or people would take some initiative to be able to interact with the large immigrant population. I am white and from a virtually all white town in Iowa. I could count the number of non-white kids in my entire high school on one hand. Everyone spoke English. We were still required to take two years of a foreign language in high school (everyone chose Spanish). At least if you wanted to go to college.

Do Texas schools not offer Spanish courses or what's the deal? After I left my high school they started teaching Spanish in elementary school and my younger sister is basically fluent because of it. You would think that if schools were filled with hispanic children and also bi lingual children that kids would want to learn a second language. Even beyond how useful it is to learn a second language, how it helps the mind grow at those ages is also beneficial.

I've brought this up to people I know here and usually get a, "F that, they should learn English" type of response. Glad I haven't had that attitude, knowing some Spanish has helped me tremendously at work, and my still lack of Spanish is actually hurting me now because I probably won't get sent to Ecuador for a few months when we finish our project for them soon. I'll be missing out on a pretty large amount of money because of it.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 12:24 PM
 
766 posts, read 1,245,189 times
Reputation: 1112
Quote:
Originally Posted by houstan-dan View Post
I'm pretty amazed at the amount of people from Texas that know minimal to No spanish... With how many people speak it you would think it would be taught in schools or people would take some initiative to be able to interact with the large immigrant population. I am white and from a virtually all white town in Iowa. I could count the number of non-white kids in my entire high school on one hand. Everyone spoke English. We were still required to take two years of a foreign language in high school (everyone chose Spanish). At least if you wanted to go to college.

Do Texas schools not offer Spanish courses or what's the deal? After I left my high school they started teaching Spanish in elementary school and my younger sister is basically fluent because of it. You would think that if schools were filled with hispanic children and also bi lingual children that kids would want to learn a second language. Even beyond how useful it is to learn a second language, how it helps the mind grow at those ages is also beneficial.

I've brought this up to people I know here and usually get a, "F that, they should learn English" type of response. Glad I haven't had that attitude, knowing some Spanish has helped me tremendously at work, and my still lack of Spanish is actually hurting me now because I probably won't get sent to Ecuador for a few months when we finish our project for them soon. I'll be missing out on a pretty large amount of money because of it.
It's definitely the "F that, they should learn English" conservative attitude here in Texas. I think it's completely ignorant considering the majority of the developed world force their children to be bilingual and there are tons of studies showing that being bilingual actually makes you smarter.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-29-2013, 12:52 PM
 
Location: Breckenridge
2,367 posts, read 4,667,651 times
Reputation: 1650
I have lived here all my life. I took Spanish in HS. My Spanish still sucks. I admit it might be helpful for me to learn it. I have just had zero desire.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
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.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Texas > Houston
Similar Threads
View detailed profiles of:

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top