I'm going to change my major and I need some advice

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clarityat3am

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I'm going to be changing my major to foreign language and I wanted some worldly perspective on how I should go about it. My thoughts are to major in Spanish and then most likely take German, Italian, and Russian, since these have generally been the most in the forefront of my mind. Here are the languages my university offers and I've grouped them together so that the ones that have the most depth of courses are listed first and the least are at the bottom. I'm really looking for opinions on which languages would be most wanted/beneficial to me and my long term plan would be to travel or at least move out of the country, most likely to Europe some place after I get my degree, or something darn close to it.

Grouped by depth of coursework:

These four seem to offer the most in depth coursework and language study:
French
German
Spanish
Japanese

Next would be:
Chinese
Russian
Latin

Then:
Arabic
Italian

And lastly:
Ancient Greek
Bahasa Malaysian


I think mastering or at least becoming reasonably proficient in 2 languages over the next 4-5 years is my true goal and reasonable given my time for school. Let me know how you'd do it if you were me and think of it from the perspective that I would like to eventually move overseas. Thanks for your help everyone!
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"It's all about drums."

Proud owner of the mofoin Discoboos (boom cha!) and Larry's stick...hehe.

Whether you love me or hate me you can still email me: clarityat3am@hotmail.com



[This message has been edited by clarityat3am (edited 01-30-2002).]
 
Assuming English is your first language, Spanish is apparently the natural progression from English. This is closely liken with Italian and French is even quiet easy once you know these apparently. So Spanish perhaps...??

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"we're free to fly the crimson sky...the sun won't melt our wings tonight..."
 
French...

nice and pratical way to look at it manda. hehe

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"we're free to fly the crimson sky...the sun won't melt our wings tonight..."
 
Originally posted by clarityat3am:


Japanese


Chinese


Arabic

Ancient Greek

I think mastering or at least becoming reasonably proficient in 2 languages over the next 4-5 years is my true goal


I've ranked them how I would do it given your options.Each one has a different alphabet/script, so good luck. With the still-increasing importance of the Pacific Rim, I think Japanese would be a wise choice. French and Spanish are fun and a bit easier, but they've been done.
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Your last statement is making me very jealous. I've tried several languages, but I suck at learning languages. I'm going to try Spanish next. Where I live, I can find plenty of practice, which is always my downfall when I try to learn languages.

Good luck!
 
Well if you want to live in Europe then probably take European languages first. My school used to consider French and German the most useful European languages, but that's just their opinion.

Also I know someone who studied Japanese and said it's been really useful in applying for jobs. Apparently there aren't that many people who speak Japanese competently and there are a lot of jobs available that require that.

*Fizz, who got kicked out of German class in school and has been scared to study languages again ever since :p
 
German. A lil difficult, but beautiful...
try to read Stefan Zweig in German!
or if you want Italian... even more beautiful.
 
actually, german is one of the easiest languages to learn if english is your native tongue. it's a lot easier than spanish, actually. why? cuz they're in the same language family! english is so closely based to german it's hilarious. i've had a blast (seriously) learning german over the past four years, and i'm getting better every day!
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awaken all those whispers in the dusty shadow of a passing favour...
ME!
 
I've studied both French and Japanese, so I'm partial to those.
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But in all seriousness, French is enormously practical for a European language and I found that Italian was pretty easy to understand when I was there because of my background in French. Japanese is definitely harder in terms of writing (wait till you start learning KANJI!) but in my opinion pronounciation and grammar are not all THAT difficult. And Eastern languages are a good thing to have under one's belt these days.
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Good luck to you. Since I plan on moving overseas in the next few years, maybe we'll run into each other, eh?
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-sula
 
French and Italian, so you can attract Larry!
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Avoid spanish, too easy and too common. Russian will give you a challenge.
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German would be good for business. Myself, I would choose Italian and French for practical reasons, then Russian just cuz its interesting.
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[This message has been edited by Miss MacPhisto (edited 01-30-2002).]
 
There is a shortage of Arabic and Russian speakers in the U.S. So I would suggest those.

But if you learn German, you can have interesting coversations with Khanada.
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Think about a double major or a minor in philosophy, too...best damn thing you can do for your intellectual life.

(Being a double major in English and philosophy, I may be a tiny bit biased, but...)

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If you cannot live together in here, you cannot live together out there, let me tell ya. --Bono

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