[Justin W. Williams]

So my spanish class is retarded. I have to spend 8 hours in this language lab (what a great way to put it to use) listening to these damn CDs of spanish people talking. What a waste of my time

I have no clue why they make college kids do foreign language. That's High School territory IMO.

Your thoughts?

[Mastrap]

I speak English and German as my mother tongue(s). I get by in French - ok - and Italian - just. Every time I'm in a foreign country and I can't speak the language I feel like a dork.

Few things are more important in education than languages. IMO.

[Justin W. Williams]

Originally posted by Mastrap:
Few things are more important in education than languages. IMO.

Yeah, in High School. Not college. I don't mind that i had 3 years required of SPanish in HS, but another 2 years in college is retarded.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Justin W. Williams:


Yeah, in High School. Not college. I don't mind that i had 3 years required of SPanish in HS, but another 2 years in college is retarded.

If you think it's duplicative, why didn't you try to tack on another language instead of spending more time on Spanish?

[Justin W. Williams]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:


If you think it's duplicative, why didn't you try to tack on another language instead of spending more time on Spanish?

b/c they told me to stick with what I know. It's not that its hard. Its just boring to be doing the same stuff over and over again

Thank god this is my last semester.

[Codename]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:


If you think it's duplicative, why didn't you try to tack on another language instead of spending more time on Spanish?

Because that way he might actually learn something and use his grey matter listening for 8 hours.

[Developer]

Spanish will become the dominant language in the US over the next decades.

So you better learn it soon.

[Jens Peter]

Maybe it isn't a issue in the US, but I find that here in Europe it's good to know at least one other language than your native. I, just like Mastrap said, feel like a dork when I'm in some country, and i can't understand or say anything in their language.
In school, i've learned english and german, and now I'm learning italian... It was a problem for me, not being able to speak Italian the last time I was there, and there were not many that I met, that spoke english.

My thoughts...

Jens Peter

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Developer:
Spanish will become the dominant language in the US over the next decades.

So you better learn it soon.

I doubt it. That's what was said about German a hundred years ago during the last major immigration wave. There is a stubborn pattern that within a generation or so people from immigrant families naturally learn English. Then add another generation and the kids are as unable to speak any language other than English as are the rest of Americans.

Nevertheless, it's still a good thing for people to study and learn other languages. I just wish that languages other than Spanish were more widely learned. There's a whole world out there and our schools aren't preparing us.

[The Godfather]

Too bad that you don't have a choice on getting better teachers and better classmates.

Back in Peru, there were two ways of learning English for me.

1. In Highschool: You get ESL classes by default. The teaching was fine but it went as slow as the slowest student. Add to that that no one was interested in learning English because they didn't see it useful (hey, 15 year old kids in 1993 didn't have too much scope).

2. In a specialized ESL academy: You enroll voluntarily and there is no pressure in staying, thus the unmotivated doesn't stay. The tuition is expensive for the middle class, so the students put a lot of effort. The classes were small and the teacher was GOOD. The books were excellent and the topics went by very fast. I had to travel by bus 3 days a week after HS, for 1 hour to downtown Lima to get to that ESL class. (ah, those old times)

I got nothing but 100%'s in all my HS English tests

Again, too bad that you can't take an active role in your foreign language education.

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by Developer:
Spanish will become the dominant language in the US over the next decades.

So you better learn it soon.

That's like saying that 1337 will dominate in the next 10 years

The International System of Units will be dominant before English gets second place to other language in the US.

[Developer]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
I just wish that languages other than Spanish were more widely learned. There's a whole world out there and our schools aren't preparing us.

Spanish is a good choice for US-Americans.

Schools don't have to offer one single other language instead. They just have to teach children to be open minded and interested in the world. Then naturally more children would pick a second foreign language they are interested in.

[Phanguye]

i hate learning languages, but i understand the importance of it. That however doesnt mean that i have to enjoy it... Justin you are lucky, I still have 3 semesters of Latin left here at IU

[Nai no Kami]

M�s te vale que te pongas a estudiar espa�ol de una vez, en vez de quejarte por internet.
Era joda. Pero bueno, hablando en serio, saber un idioma nunca est� de m�s y si, adem�s, ten�s la suerte de que venga incluido en tu educaci�n b�sica, mucho mejor. Adem�s, es un lindo idioma.

Ah, si necesit�s ayuda con algo o vocabulario, mandame un mail.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Developer:
Spanish is a good choice for US-Americans.

Schools don't have to offer one single other language instead. They just have to teach children to be open minded and interested in the world. Then naturally more children would pick a second foreign language they are interested in.

Spanish is a good choice in that many of our neighbors speak it (with the notable exception of Brazil) but it shouldn't be the only choice. Really smart schools would offer languages spoken by our other trading partners. In particular, Chinese, and Japanese. Doing that, though, would require starting language instruction much earlier than is the norm in the US.

A lot of people who have only learned Spanish also discover that it isn't actually very useful in the job market precisely because there are so many bilingual native Spanish speakers in the US. Many employment forms (for example, those for the US government) specifically exclude Spanish in the section where it asks af you speak a second language. Spanish just isn't rare enough to be impressive.

I also don't think your theory about learning Spanish now, and picking up more languages later really works. Once people enter the workforce, the time needed for learning languages isn't as available. The time to learn languages is when you are young. That's when you are at your most receptive, and when you have the most time to devote to it. It really should begin in elementary school.

The problem, however, is that our teachers don't speak other languages either, so I don't know where they could find the instructors. Of course, they could fire one of the sports coaches and use the money for something that might really be useful.

[daimoni]

.

[Mulattabianca]

... English is a foreign language [ = foreign is a relative term ] .. so .. i should say it sucks?

[Sophie]

Originally posted by Mulattabianca:
... English is a foreign language [ = foreign is a relative term ] .. so .. i should say it sucks?

I concur with this, english is a second language for me. If you think that talking to other people across borders is stupid then by all means you are entitled to your opinion.

[OldManMac]

Spanish may not replace English as our primary language, but I've read that, by the year 2050, Hispanic people will be the majority of our population. Learning a second language does nothing but broaden one's horizons. I was born in Germany, but when we came to America fifty years ago, we had to learn English. My parents went through the war in Germany, which included my dad being a prisoner of the Russians during the war, so when we landed here, we focused on learning English exclusively, and my German is now limited to understanding it, but not being very good at speaking it. I have always regretted not keeping up with being able to speak it, and I am now spending more time relearning what I used to be fluent in.

[Krusty]

Learning other languages is a GOOD thing. About 12 years ago, my home state of NC started teaching Spanish to EVERYONE beginning in the 1st grade (I was in college by then). That program was nixed after a few years, but I think that it is a GREAT idea. Start kids very early with Spanish (since that it likely the most useful second language to know in the US) and then let kids take French, German, Italian, etc in high school "like normal" if they choose. Despite the sorry state of US education ... I think most kids could be passable (if not fluent) in Spanish if they took it consistently from first grade thru middle school. Having this "under their belt" before they even reach high school would not hurt anyone ... being more well rounded and/or knowing your THIRD language by the time you leave high school is NOT a bad thing.

[Sven G]

... BTW, what happened with



...?

It would have been a much better option than English as a truly international language, IMHO - but, sadly, it doesn't seem to have been so successful...

[Developer]

Originally posted by Sven G:
... BTW, what happened with



...?

Nobody wanted to learn a language that nobody speaks. What would be the point?

You could as well learn Latin. At least that would give you some ancient literature to read.

[Phanguye]

Originally posted by Developer:
Nobody wanted to learn a language that nobody speaks. What would be the point?

You could as well learn Latin. At least that would give you some ancient literature to read.

Hey, just because you learning english and french are learning to speak "hick" Latin, doesnt mean you have to make fun of it

[CaseCom]

Knowing a foreign language kicks ass. And it can be useful in the business world.

I wish I'd followed through on my high-school German

[deekay1]

well, i also think that knowing different languages is a VERY good thing.

not only can you impress people when travelling to different countries , it also expands your horizons and helps you develop ideas.

i speak german and english fluently and do okay at french. but even at that, i still feel like i want to know at least 2 or 3 more...

when i was in spain this summer, i felt like such a dork at times, because i couldn't even ask the person at the grocerie store wether they had "freshly" ground coffee....

i hope that during my lifetime i will be able to perfect my french, and also learn spanish and some other language (maybe japanese)

[MacLone]

As Greek was the most important language back 2000 years in time, now spanish and english are the most common because of their importance in many ways.
You see, chinese is the most talked language but not because is so important but because there are 1300,000,000 people talking it and they are amost all chinese.
The spanish language is a nice one bacause you can tweak it a lot an yet understand everything; maybe is not as easy as english but its importance over the world will be increasing with time.
Yo no le veo problema a aprender mas de un idioma, de hecho es bastante importante como para escribir en foros como estos donde predomina la lengua inglesa y as� no quedar como menso preguntado qu� dir� esto o aquello...
P.D. Si no tienen oportunidad de aprender en una escuerla, tomen un libro en espa�ol y un diccionario y ustedes solos ir�n comprendiendo hasta que logren juntar las oraciones y obtener una idea o bien, escuchen una canci�n es espa�ol, lean la letra y usen el mataburros para traducir, as� es la manera m�s sencilla de aprender.
Saludos!

[Sven G]

Originally posted by Developer:
Nobody wanted to learn a language that nobody speaks. What would be the point?

You could as well learn Latin. At least that would give you some ancient literature to read.

Of course, people in general should have been much more enthusiastic at adopting Esperanto: this would have made it a success - but, as we know, English prevailed.

Anyway, one also learns languages for fun: it could be very fun, for example, to speak Latin in everyday life; there even were some famous Asterix cartoon serials translated into Latin, if I'm not mistaken...

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by MacLone:
As Greek was the most important language back 2000 years in time, now spanish and english are the most common because of their importance in many ways.

Actually. English+Spanish is fundamental IN THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. I think it would be hard to sell Spanish education to US'ians whose life will involve Europe, Africa or Asia or Oceania in an important way.

[Judge_Fire]

Why not learn a truly cool, flexible language:

http://www.lojban.org/

Ok, so not a lot people speak it, but hey, does any notable percentage of earth's population speak anything related to Finnish, either ?

I still like its ideals.

J

[bewebste]

I really don't understand why we teach foreign languages in high school and college. The best place for someone to learn languages is when they're young, like in elementary school, or even before. People are built to learn languages at that age, and a child raised in a multilingual environment will pick up all the languages with little effort. Of course this is very rare in the US, as the prevalent feeling seems to be that knowing more than one language isn't extremely important, certainly not as important as memorizing presidents and where to put your commas.

That being said, yeah, I had to do the language lab thing in college, and boy did it suck donkey balls. We'd have these questions we'd have to answer, but the conversations went so damn fast you'd have to sit there rewinding it 10+ times just to make out what the hell they were saying. Total waste of time.

[G4ME]

I had to suffer through 4 years of french in High School, i did it only to go on the Senior trip, to quebec and let me tell you it was definatly worth it. The only thing that drove me crazy is the fact that there is somthing like 17 different tenses, and each tense chaged a few letters in the verbs, or even an accenct so i always got raped on the quizes,

"is it an accent grave, or gue over the last e in the imparitif of dormir,"

gimmie a brake1. I was danceing circles when i found out that Engineer majors didn;t have to take a language in college, so HAHAHA to you all. I know enought to get by in quebec, and i don't see my furter traveling to a lot of places, even though it would be sweet as a vacation.

okay enough ranting now the joke


"What is the first thing they teach french kids in school?"




"How to say: 'I surrender'in german"

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by G4ME:

I had to suffer through 4 years of french in High School, i did it only to go on the Senior trip, to quebec and let me tell you it was definatly worth it. The only thing that drove me crazy is the fact that there is somthing like 17 different tenses, and each tense chaged a few letters in the verbs, or even an accenct so i always got raped on the quizes,

"is it an accent grave, or gue over the last e in the imparitif of dormir,"

gimmie a brake1. I was danceing circles when i found out that Engineer majors didn;t have to take a language in college, so HAHAHA to you all. I know enought to get by in quebec, and i don't see my furter traveling to a lot of places, even though it would be sweet as a vacation.

Is English optional for "Engineer majors" too?

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by Justin W. Williams:


I have no clue why they make college kids do foreign language. That's High School territory IMO.

Your thoughts?

Learn it and then travel around South America for a month after grad. You'll appreciate it then. I hate going to another country and seeing Americans expecting everyone there to cater to them and speak English. Its moronic. Being fluent in a second language should be mandatory to get into college. I understand its more of a necessity in Europe. But it should begin to be expected of post secondary educated Americans to speak something other than English. Its important if you travel, if you do business in other countries, or even if you interact with anyone not born here.

My sisters have foreign language classes in grade school and I think they will be far better prepared to succeed after college as a result of it. I thought it was annoying and tedious to have to learn foreign languages in HS too but now that I do know them I see their value. It gives you much more leverage in the kinds of fields you can work in and it is an attractive ability to prospective employers. Plus it was fun in college when girls would ask to be "tutored." My mom made me knock down not only Spanish, but I had to learn French also... and I took some Latin on my own because it would help with legal terms. I am glad I did it and even if you don't like it now it will help you down the road.

[DaKiwi2788]

Sorry babe, but I'm going to have to disagree completely. I don't think there is anything more important than learning one or more forgein languages. It's all about being well-rounded. It's also proven helpful in standardized testing, and of course traveling. In a country that has more Hispanic influence everyday, I think it's very close-minded not to learn Spanish. This is why people think that American's are stubborn, selfish, idiots. Kind of like the whole metric system thing, too.

Just my two cents!

[nonhuman]

I've taken French and Russian, and I'm currently working on Japanese (my native language is English). I think learning new languages is really good for you. I personally have found that, especially with languages that aren't related to your own, learning a new language really exposes you to new ways of thinking about things. I'd always heard that, but never really understood it until I took Russian. There are a lot of concepts in Russian that simply can't be directly translated into English, many words are just slightly displaced in meaning from their usual English translations, and can really offer a lot of insight into the way that Russian speakers think and view the world. The thought processes that went into creating the language were fundamentally different from those that went into the Romance and Germanic languages, and I really think that being exposed to these differences is a good thing.

[wdlove]

Spanish is being pushed by the politically correct crowd. Currently those that speak spanish only are at the lowest Socio-economic scale of our society. Thanks to Sen. Kennedy, the architect of our immigration policy of the past 30 years!

[Mulattabianca]

I'd like to learn some Japanese...

Italian is "useless" = people talk it only here.

Spanish = "useless" as latin's don't have so much money ...

[etc similar stupid sentences]

finnish, estonian and icelandic must be really useless - if you talk neapolitan language (dialect) there are more people that understand you than when you talk any or ALL of those weird languages. but the fact there are 50 000 or 5 000 000 or even only 50 people talking one langauge.. does it make the language "suck" ?

if you are in an icelandic or estonian village where no one speaks or understands english, does the local language still suck? or english maybe? just because they dont understand you...

i guess i could say as well that german, finnish or arabic are "stupid" because i dont unserstand them and i dont like their SOUND. but again .. could it be me that is stupid if i dont understand them?

some languages sound weird and .. i might not find any reason to have developed a such language. but if someone tries to communicate on those and i don't speak THAT langauge, it's NOT KNOWING the language that is stupid.. more than that language.

finnish could be stupid for most parts of the world but if you happen to live in finland.. you surely are considered stupid if you are not speaking it. (and stay more than a month..)

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by Mulattabianca:
I'd like to learn some Japanese...

Italian is "useless" = people talk it only here.

Spanish = "useless" as latin's don't have so much money ...

[etc similar stupid sentences]

finnish, estonian and icelandic must be really useless - if you talk neapolitan language (dialect) there are more people that understand you than when you talk any or ALL of those weird languages. but the fact there are 50 000 or 5 000 000 or even only 50 people talking one langauge.. does it make the language "suck" ?

if you are in an icelandic or estonian village where no one speaks or understands english, does the local language still suck? or english maybe? just because they dont understand you...

i guess i could say as well that german, finnish or arabic are "stupid" because i dont unserstand them and i dont like their SOUND. but again .. could it be me that is stupid if i dont understand them?

some languages sound weird and .. i might not find any reason to have developed a such language. but if someone tries to communicate on those and i don't speak THAT langauge, it's NOT KNOWING the language that is stupid.. more than that language.

finnish could be stupid for most parts of the world but if you happen to live in finland.. you surely are considered stupid if you are not speaking it. (and stay more than a month..)

DAMN! What a turn-off you are

[mrtaber]

I have Latin and some ancient Greek and Hebrew under my belt, as well as a smattering of German and French.

I'm putting my efforts into Spanish and Italian; Spanish because I live in California, and because one of my favorite authors is Borges, and I want to read him in the original; Italian because I want to read Calvino in the original.

It's not always about the Benjamins, although that doesn't hurt

Mark

[Timo]

Originally posted by CaseCom:

I wish I'd followed through on my high-school German

Funny thing, Case, I also studied German in high school in MN.

I have terrible French which I love to try to use. My German isn't great, but I can understand a bunch. I wish I had some Italian.

My Finnish is OK, but I got that from my parents.

As for the topic, I think the idea of most types of general distribution requirements (or "core" cirricula) are stupid. You end up with a bunch of students who don't want to learn what a prof doesn't want to teach. Boring.

Better when the motiviation comes from the self, rather than some external requirement.

[daimoni]

.

[Timo]

Originally posted by Mulattabianca:

finnish could be stupid for most parts of the world but if you happen to live in finland.. you surely are considered stupid if you are not speaking it. (and stay more than a month..)

On the contrary, people in Finland know that Finnish is difficult to acquire as an adult, so they are invariably surprised when foriegners speak it. The ones I know generally don't mind communicating with the outside world in English.

Don't forget, knowing foreign languages has a cognitive benefit, which is difficult to state "practically," but has to do with the fact that if you only know one language you have less of a sense of expression. Some things, as mrtaber notes, are better in the original.

Besides, my morose Mulatta, to know Finnish is to know Tolkien's Elfish.

[Mulattabianca]

Timo, I guess the most people know just the bad words in Finnish ... or the normal words in Finnish that have a really BAD meaning in Italian...

(well, i know as well .. only bad words in greek, arabic, french, russian etc...)

Now do they censor here if i write Perkele (or something worse?)

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by wdlove:
Spanish is being pushed by the politically correct crowd. Currently those that speak spanish only are at the lowest Socio-economic scale of our society. Thanks to Sen. Kennedy, the architect of our immigration policy of the past 30 years!

Actually, Spanish is popular because its easy to learn compared to other languages. The phonetics are pretty straight forward and the grammar is the easiest to grasp of all the Romantic Languages. Americans like easy and simple things so its a not much of a competition when it comes to which language a HS kid will choose. Add the fact that a substantial part of our country has always been heavily populated by a Spanish speakers and it gives it a head start on popularity.

[Timo]

Originally posted by Mulattabianca:

Now do they censor here if i write Perkele (or something worse?)

I prefer "satana perkele" myself, or "cacatso fi / va fanculo" (sorry 'bout the spelling).

[3gg3]

Originally posted by Mastrap:
...Every time I'm in a foreign country and I can't speak the language I feel like a dork.

Few things are more important in education than languages. IMO.

I agree. Nevertheless, Thpanish thuckth.

[G4ME]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:


Is English optional for "Engineer majors" too?

English is next semester

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by 3gg3:


I agree. Nevertheless, Thpanish thuckth.

I speak a language that sucks! WOOHOO!

[Ozmodiar]

we were required to take 2 years of a foreign language in high school. I took 4 of Spanish (the only language offered), and when I went to college I took a year of French, just because I wanted to learn something different. It was a little difficult at first, but then I picked it up and don't regret it at all.

/two cents

[wataru]

It's funny that a bunch of people have mentioned wanting to learn Japanese... I just got word that the evil new principal at my old high school is planning to can Japanese next year. The Minneapolis Public Schools are pretty special in that they offer Japanese from 7th grade (if you go to the right schools). As a person who has committed significant amounts of time and energy to learning Japanese, I am, of course, incensed. I've gotten a pretty big group of former classmates together to fight it, but you know budget cuts...