French or German?

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AvsGirl41

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According to my self-appointed advisor, I *must* take a language next semester. This does not leave me alot of time to decide.

My school only offers 3 languages: French, German and Spanish.
I am trying to decide between the first two.

I was originally thinking German, since it's fairly close to Middle English and Anglo-Saxon, both of which I enjoy, but now I wonder if French might be more useful, seeing as it's spoken more places.

What's the general consensus? (I'm also taking a Beginning Russian course at another school, but I won't get credit for it.)
 
I struggled through the last two semesters of German (I had to have three).

If it is ONLY one semester...do German. If more...and knowing there are a lot of French-Canadian hockey players out there...take French! :up:
 
I was going to say Spanish as theres more people on the planet that speak Spanish than French or German.

If you ever fulfill your dream of hiking along the Andes....hangon, thats my dream. :|
 
I took four years of German and thought it was relatively easy. The fourth year was kinda hard though b/c we were basically taking German like we would any Lit course in our language (English). We'd read German novels or plays and then have tests with essay type questions. It kinda turned me off to taking German in college, but once I found an essay someone in a 200-level German class had dropped and it was easier than our 2nd year German! Also, German has like half as many words as the other languages and the rules are adhered to much more so than in English. I prefer German b/c I'm Dutch and Dutch is basically right in between German and English so even though I've never taken Dutch, I can read Dutch. My mom is the same way, she took German b/c that's what's offered, but knowing German and being from a Dutch background, she's fluent in reading Dutch. If you take German, you'll also have a basic handle of Yiddish!
 
I've studied both French and German (and a few others). My advice is to pick whichever one you're most interested in. Don't go for usefulness. Pick the one you think you'll enjoy more. :up:
 
i've never studied either french or german. i've got a personal bias against french because i have a huge mental block against it--i can't for the life of me understand how those sounds come out of the letters that they're corresponded with while written. plus i'm really just not a fan of romance languages. naturally my vote would be for russian, but since that's not an option...
 
I took four years of Spanish and a few years ago two years of Russian for my job. I would go with Heartlandgirl's advice. Take the one you would enjoy the most.
 
bonosloveslave said:
Is sign language an option? My husband was allowed to take that for his language requirement...

LOL, my experiences with ASL are actually why I haven't taken any other languages until now.

I tried to take it and was really excited. On the first day, the professor asked "Who knows the finger alphabet?" and the whole class raised their hand. "Good, we'll just skip the first section then. Pair up with your classmates and start signing with each other." :|
 
Francais... I would have done the proper c, but the alts aren't working.

:down:
 
I've done German for five years, though we've been totally screwed over with horrible teaching methods for three of those years so I can't speak German much better than a normal second or third-year student despite being one of the top two German students in my school. If it weren't for that, I would absolutely love the language. It's nice and structured, easy to get into because it's similar to English in many respects, and I believe the statistics are that it's the first language of 100 million worldwide and the second language of another 100 million. I think it's definitely worth it.

At the end of the day, pick whatever language takes your fancy the most, but German's pretty good. I only had a choice between German and Japanese, and I think I made the right choice.

... always wanted to learn Latin, classical Greek and Russian though.
 
I am studying French and Spanish now. This is my 2nd year of studying them at uni. Personally, I would pick Spanish. I find it a lot easier than French, although my marks in my subjects are very close. :shrug:

Can you sit in some of the classes and see what they are like before you decide?
 
I would say French, it is probably a lot more useful if you wanted to learn for travel purposes. Of course Greek is a good language to learn, also for employment you cannot beat Farsi.
 
Do both, French and German :wink:
French is afik the most sexy language and German to be able to read Goethe's Faust, Die Leiden des jungen Werther and some of his poems in the original language ;)

Jeder Jüngling sehnt sich, so zu lieben,
Jedes Mädchen, so geliebt zu sein;
Ach, der heiligste von unsern Trieben,
Warum quillt aus ihm die grimme Pein?

Du beweinst, du liebst ihn, liebe Seele,
Rettest sein Gedächtnis von der Schmach;
Sieh, dir winkt sein Geist aus seiner Höhle:
Sei ein Mann, und folge mir nicht nach.

Can't be translated without loosing some of the emotions ;)
 
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yo, i speak fluently german, because i was born there and i've grown up there. if you want a more simple language to learn, i advice you to choose it, it is very alike to english. if you want a more "around the world practicable language", then go for french. but don't forget that german is a very spoken language in the bussiness world :wave:
 
My translator friend...born in Greece of Armenian parents; moved to Argentina where he lived until for 20 years...now serves as my Greek, Armenian, Russian and Spanish translator and boy does he make the big bucks off of me!

That's where its at kids!..You can land a translating job with any local interpreting company; you jump on the contracting list and they send you the work...you split the cost with the agency and its money in the bank!! its true, its damn true! :yes:

For instance, I call the company and need a Russian translator for an interview; they send me Mr. So and so; we interview someone for an hour; the company bills the insurance carrier for 4 hours work and the translator splits the pay with his boss....easy shit for speaking a language...

I generally do my own Spanish language cases but the Exotic languages are big bucks...just some thought for you college-kids...I have plenty of young-uns' who work for me!

And for you who are interested in the REAL big dollars; take certified courses to support your language and you can do Court work...that's where the treasure is!
 
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I studied both (French for five or six years, German for two), but liked German better because I'm a big loser and love grammar.
 
French will be easier for you to learn as an anglophone.

Although German and English are similar, in German you have to go through 4 conjugation cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) which should actually be easy for you if you know a Slavic language or Latin, so your Russian could be helpful. ETA: you have cases in English too, but they are easily resolved, for example in genitive it's a matter of adding a possessive form whereas in German and in Slavic languages, you are changing the word endings, including all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc and it becomes very confusing for non-native speakers.

I've studied both, but I've also lived in Austria for a period of time.
 
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meegannie said:
I studied both (French for five or six years, German for two), but liked German better because I'm a big loser and love grammar.

:lol:

glad to hear i'm not the only grammar nerd around here. :wink: i studied both french (i'm canadian, so it wasn't smart not to learn it) and german (in university, loved it) for several years. i had a better learning experience with german because our prof was the most amazing teacher and person. they're both challenging languages, and both very useful. i agree with the other kids, you gotta go with what you're interested in.

grammar nerds rock!
 
Mr. BAW said:
My translator friend...born in Greece of Armenian parents; moved to Argentina where he lived until for 20 years...now serves as my Greek, Armenian, Russian and Spanish translator and boy does he make the big bucks off of me!

That's where its at kids!..You can land a translating job with any local interpreting company; you jump on the contracting list and they send you the work...you split the cost with the agency and its money in the bank!! its true, its damn true! :yes:

For instance, I call the company and need a Russian translator for an interview; they send me Mr. So and so; we interview someone for an hour; the company bills the insurance carrier for 4 hours work and the translator splits the pay with his boss....easy shit for speaking a language...

I generally do my own Spanish language cases but the Exotic languages are big bucks...just some thought for you college-kids...I have plenty of young-uns' who work for me!

And for you who are interested in the REAL big dollars; take certified courses to support your language and you can do Court work...that's where the treasure is!

My Dads friend is German and when they were getting an IMAX cinema here the instructions for a projector type thing were in German and they needed someone to translate because it was a german engineer working on it. They got my Dads friend. apparently, the only things he said in the 2 days he was there were things like the man working on the projector wanted a cup of tea. He got £300 for 8 hours work.
 
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