Slashdot Mirror
Learn a Foreign Language As an Engineer?
Ben B writes "I'm working on an undergraduate degree in computer engineering in the US, and I'm a native English-speaking citizen. In fact, English is the only language that I know. Maybe it's not the same at other schools, but for the engineering program at mine, a foreign language is not required. If my plans are to one day be involved in research, is it worth my time to learn a foreign language? If so, which one?" Learning something new is almost never a waste of time, but how much energy have others found worthwhile to expend with all of the programming/math/tech type courses to be had at a large university?
Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Klingon.
Latin....
It seems to me that if you are planning on working in the United States, your time would be better spent focusing on your Computer studies. Most foreign engineers here speak English.
IF, however, you were planning on going abroad, then speaking the local language would get you a lot of "street cred" that you would otherwise be lacking.
Learn it, live it, love it.
If you're going to stay in the US, you might as well increase your value by learning spanish.
If you're looking at the EU, learn spanish, italian, german, french, or russian.
If you're looking in asia, mandarin.
If you're looking at india, hindi (or PROPER english).
Kevin Smith on Prince
There are publications in basically every language in CS/CE. If you really want to learn one, pick from Japanese, German, French, Russian, Chinese.
But it won't do you much good, and in reality, you'll never have time to read foreign journals (or looked at another way, it would be a comparative waste of your time given the quantity of good material you could be reading in English).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Russian, Chinese, or Arabic. Bilingualism is a FANTASTIC resume skill, and it will likely pop up more than you think. If I spoke Russian instead of Spanish as a 2nd language, I could have taken a 3 month trip to Moscow with the QA team.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
With the shear number of outsourced and H1B workers in the IT community, it may well be worthwhile. I haven't taken any foreign language courses myself. But the more I've worked with Russian, and/or Indian programmers, the more I think about it.
I wouldn't let it distract you from your main coursework though, that is most important. Foreign language study should be in line with business courses. Not necessary for starting out, but helpful in moving up.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
When I was getting my BS in Computer Science (class of 08!), I took 3 semesters of Spanish and 1 Chinese. Taking foreign languages forces you to think in new ways, which is what problem solving is all about. Also, Spanish and Chinese are both fairly similar to English, but Spanish was fun for me while Chinese was just a pain in the ass since very few of the words are cognates.
Chinese currently has the largest "market share".
Yes even compared to English.
And there is probably going to be more hi-tech business between China and the US in the future.
Plus it will give you exposure to a tonal, non-romance language.
Mandarin Chinese.
If you actually want to enjoy, pick something that you actually have an interest in. Ton of anime junkies have picked up Japanese for example. If you like Bollywood, learn Hindi. And so on...
Hab SoSlI' Quch!
Support my political activism on Patreon.
is it worth my time to learn a foreign language? If so, which one?
Girlspeak.
I'm currently living with four (4) girls (three daughters, wife) all of which are able to speak in riddles and conundrums that they themselves understand, while leaving me completely at a loss of any valuable information.
Interestingly enough, this Girlspeak language transcends cultural boundaries! It is simply amazing how two girls can communicate without actually knowing the native tongue of the other.
The fact is, I've spent half a lifetime trying to understand girlspeak without much progress.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It could be useful depending on where you want to work. If you want to work just in the US, I don't think another language would be all that much of an advantage. If you want to go work in Europe, or some other place with lots of cultures, then English should be somewhat standard. Other good languages to know would probably include French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Cantonese, or Mandarin. For an English speaker, the first three would probably be the easiest to learn, because you already know the character set. I wish my university would have pushed this more. I'm in Canada, and it was a fully billingual university. But they wouldn't let you take second language courses for credit. I think the logic was that it would be too easy for a native speaker to take a course in their native language and get an A+. I think that a rule like that hurts the learning of more people than those that would end up taking a course in a language they already knew. Besides, is it any different than a student taking a C++ language course when they already taught themselves the language in high school?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This X-engineering student notes that adding German to my curriculum tacked one extra semester onto my studies. To say it was not encouraged is understating the case: I was told not to waste my time. Years have passed and the rest of my studies are some vague blur involving plumbing; but I can still speak German. Learn Mandarin. ---537
Because I for one welcome our soon to be new lemon chicken eating overlords.
If you intend to stay in the US you'll want to learn Spanish.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
With all the leftists on Slashdot these days, I'd say your best bet would be to learn Esperanto.
You can always learn another language by living in another country. That way, your time won't be wasted too badly.
I went to France for one year. I did quite nicely at school and picked up the language okayish.
I think you should choose the language depending on the subject you want to specialize in.
They have nice engineering schools in Germany, for example. Although with the current purchasing power of the US dollar you better have big pockets.
Ps. As you can probably guess, English isn't my native language either. It is the third language I have tried to learn...
Nerdu.
Most of the R&D in the world is being published in English, but adding either of those languages will get you a pretty big chunk of the rest.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Concentrate on what you need to concentrate on, and expand your horizons when it becomes necessary. This will provide the most efficient use of time in almost all cases - provided you don't become so focussed on whatever you're into that you genuinely don't notice when a new skill is required. (That's the only real risk of getting in too deep).
Despite this view on life, I've always had a great admiration for those who enjoy learning activities in their lesiure time. Personally I've always preferred video games.
Study Latin. You'll learn more about English and other Romantic languages than you could ever learn learning a single one of them. However, if you can't be convinced to take up Latin, but want another language quickly, check out Esperanto. If you want another language with which you can communicate with people immediately, find a large contingent of native something speakers at your school and befriend them, i.e. learn a language which your peers can help you learn and practice. It might even score you a girlfriend/boyfriend.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
If you want to do research and work internationally, you will need to be able to speak and write English. Oh wait, you already do. English is more or less the lingua franca for international communication and research.
Steps to guaranteed happiness:
1. Learn basics; enough to buy beers, etc
2. Go live in foreign country
3. Put advert out for "language interchange"
4. Reply to females only
5. Get them drunk (it helps with learning don't-you-know)
6, 7....at some point... Profit!
Even works for geeks! Trust me I know!
throw new NoSignatureException();
To attain the fluency required to read academic papers in their respective native languages, you're looking at going to said country and going native for 10 years. 5 at the very minimum.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If so, go right ahead.
If in the long term you do want to do research somewhere, or in the short term just visit, it makes sense to speak a bit of the language, even if it's just food and beer. I don't think that I'd bother if you're never going to use it though, unless you want to e.g. understand Bergman films in the original Swedish.
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but across Europe in business there's generally a reasonable grasp of English - I've heard of people living and working in some non-English-speaking countries speaking only English. I suspect that the educational world will be the same, only more so - people will often understand English but it's only polite to "have a go" and speak the local language as well (even if it is only food and beer).
Maybe you need to say where you're planning to study or work so that someone can give more specific info? The world's a big place...
English is the lingua franca, so from a business standpoint, if you want to be an engineer type dude, you are probably set.
Chinese would be smart if you want to make more money learning a foreign language, so is Arabic. Russian is damn hard, but that would greatly increase your marketability as well. Like if you want to be a consultant or something later on.
If you want to learn a language for the hell of it, I'd recommend a romance language. Pick one that seems interesting, French and Italian are very pretty sounding. IMHO, German is very cool from a logical standpoint, many words are simply conjugations of smaller words.
Here is a list of the 30 most spoken languages: http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html
> is it worth my time to learn a foreign language? If so, which one?
Is it worth your time to live in a foreign land? Taking language courses will give you academic credits, but practical linguistic skill comes bundled with learning the culture.
The problem with learning a language is that unless you are gifted that way, you have to immerse yourself in the language AND culture to learn it well enough to be useful. Doing it half-way is usually a waste of time. Be prepared for the long-haul. If you have a favorite country you like to visit regularly, then go for it. If you are single you have an added bonus: chicks dig "foreigners".
(If you live in LA, you'll always get a chance to use Spanish.)
Table-ized A.I.
It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you are younger. By the time you get to university the effort is probably not worth it from a career point of view, if you are an English speaker. English is the primary language used in technology fields world wide so you already know the language that almost all research is published in.
That being said, studying a foreign language is enjoyable from a personal enrichment point of view. I studied French in high school and hated it. But later in life I went to work for a French owned company that paid for French lessons - that high school stuff came back quickly, and it made the times I traveled to France on business a more enjoyable because I could interact more easily with the people and surroundings than if I had no understanding of the language. Because of that experience I now enjoy reading and watching French language books and movies.
I am also an engineering student (PhD student at MIT) and have pondered this same question recently. I concluded that learning Chinese is going to be important in the really near future. A few things have pushed me in this direction. First, a company that I co-founded has a few of our first customers in China, which really surprised me. I have had a chance to interact with these engineers in China and I really think that they are soon to be a large engineering powerhouse. I also have realized that I have had an exceedingly hard time trying to understand what they are saying even when they are speaking english. I realized this about a year ago and started taking undergraduate level Chinese classes here. From just this one year of studying I understand why it is difficult for them to learn English. I have to tell you that it is pretty hard learning Chinese though. I just returned from a trip over to China and was amazed by how much engineering was being done there. While most of thier engineering teams are pretty young and not as mature/experienced as in the US, they make up for a lot of it with the sheer numbers of engineers and they are very enthusiastic.
So I guess I would recommend trying to learn Chinese. As far as doing research, etc, all of the western world speaks English well enough and all of the academic publications and conferences are in english. If you are going into math it might be worth learning German as I definitely have found some math books only in German in higher level math subjects. Good luck.
I think Chinese is an easier language. You don't have to deal with verb conjugation and tenses. Grammatically, it is a simpler language.
It is an easy language to learn. I went to China and saw little kids speaking it, therefore it must be easy.
Fight Spammers!
There are two types of people. Bilingual people and Americans. Please learn another language, it is good for the brain. It will increase your marketability even if its not that useful a language employers respect it. More useful languages would probably be asian (mandarin, japanese). But it depends what field you are going into and if you intend to leave the country.
Chicks dig it.
Quick, I need to learn how to translate the following quotes:
"Buildin' a sentry!"
"Teleporter goin' up!"
"Dispenser goin' up!"
"A spy's sappin' mah sentry!"
Oh, and everything here.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
My advice would be the one which you can find a decent degree of personal interest in. Your choice in education is hopefully a result of your personal interests and not something you've simply been told "is good" for you and this of course increases your chances in succeding both with education and career. I believe the same thing goes for learing anything else that might be somewhat tangential to your direct goals.
As for what counts as personal interest of course depends entirely on yourself. Wanting to use it to further an international career, or being of use in a multicultural setting where you live or just having an interest in the countries where it's used in general are all valid reasons in my book. Just to mention a few reasons.
.... Elbonian.
Have gnu, will travel.
Foreign languages are priceless in today's world of constant internationalization. I work with people form Germany, Russia, Japan, Norway and Brazil. I speak one foreign language and I wish I knew more. In fact, not knowing Spanish has bitten me in the rear because I could have advanced my career by moving to Latin America where I would fly up the corporate ladder. As somebody who got hired (at least once) for my foreign language and IT skills, I firmly believe that speaking a foreign language is a good career boost.
We have been in many situations were customers from Asia and other parts of the world love to pay extra big bugs for specialists who speak their langauge. It is not that they don't want to speak English, it is the fact that they prefer to deal with people who can speak English and their own language just in case. Technical people who know English + one of CJK or Spanish are becoming priceless because Latin American and Asia are booming. When our company was rapidly expanding, we could not hire enough engineers who were fluent in several languages. Those who got hired received more than generous packages and relocation opportunities. While this may not be appealing to a married person with a couple of kids, a young single college graduate will sure appreciate a six month gig in Japan paid for by an employer. This really helps if you end up working in a small (but well paid) field. You help your employer with building a new customer base in a remote part of the world and suddenly you go from a college graduate to a young professional who brought a company XYZ to a new country. As you can tell from my post, I am all about speaking as many languages as possible.
The bottom line is: Learn language if you would like to be qualified for more opportunities when it comes to travel and corporate mobility. If you believe that your current town/city/country is the best place in the world, then do not bother.
No, really. There's a ton of R&D done in Israel or with Israelis in the US, and knowing Hebrew will give you a massive leg up during discussions with them.
Alternatively, Chinese. At some point, they will have quality R&D of their own, and knowing Chinese will again be invaluable.
Actually, any second language will help you. It's how you get into fun business trips that will expand your knowledge.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Are you a foreigner with a native language other than English who's learned a programming language? Before you learned English (or how are you reading this post)? What language is native for you?
How hard was it to learn the programming language without English as a starting point? Harder than it seems for English speakers with other skills similar to yours? Was learning English after learning the programming language easier for you than for people you know who share your language who don't program?
--
make install -not war
If you're staying in the US, there's no need to speak anything other than English, regardless of the native language of your co-workers.
I work at my company's headquarters in the US. The vast majority of my co-workers in the same office are Indian. We also have an office in India that we communicate with all the time. We all talk to each other in English all the time. All business is done in English. Some of them might use their native languages privately over IM, but that's it. Not speaking their native languages puts me at no disadvantage.
The only reason for me to learn, for example, Telugu would be for "street cred" as one of the earlier posters put it.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Klingon! Choice of nerdlings everywhere.
You can go to as many classes as you like, but it's an entirely different thing to actually use a language.
Deleted
It's almost always worth it to learn something new. However in today's economy knowing a language other than just English is a good idea. Perhaps good languages to learn is Portuguese, the official language of Brazil; Hindu, India's main language; Mandarin, the official spoken Chinese language; or maybe Russian.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you want to do academic style research, there are many languages that could be useful.
Any language spoken by a large number of technical people is always good, as is a language spoken by prospective graduate students. For example, learning Mandarin Chinese would be very helpful for an academic in the US for recruiting Chinese students. In the next 20 years, where are US companies and universities going to be importing foreign talent? Figure that out and learn that language.
You could learn Spanish. If you plan on being grant supported, it's very useful to recruit "diverse" workers and students. That usually means women, African-Americans and Latinos. Latin America may also be the answer to the question above.
I would have found Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian or Italian useful in specific circumstances (dealing with people I've worked with or at conferences I've been to). Of course, my university allowed me to take three years of music instead of language, and that's been useful too.
The answer to which language you should learn depends, naturally, on why you need/want to learn such a language:
* Communication with (not necessarily geographically distant) colleagues, or customers?
Certainly it's useful to know a little Mandarin, Japanese or Spanish. Even if you aren't fluent, you'll at least be sensitive to internationalization issues.
* Understanding professional literature from other countries?
This used to be very important, years ago, for Physics and Chemistry, where the premier journals used to be in German. Not so important in computer science, where the major publications are all in English.
* Simply expanding your mind? Tourism? Pleasure?
Studies have shown that simply learning a second language trains your mind to look at problems in different ways, opening it up to seeing new solutions (and problems!). So learn some language - any language - and just enjoy the process.
(I learned a little broken French when I lived next door to the Alliance Francaise in Bangalore, and it has been pretty rewarding to me, anyway. I certainly don't read novels in French or anything, but it has been culturally enriching..)
Don't just learn the language, study abroad -- I took Japanese and spent a term at Kansai Gaidai. The experiences of a) being put into an entirely new environment and b) being forced to set aside engineering for a term, were both invaluable. It was a tremendous aid as well in terms of getting into grad school.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
...i would have answered: Learn German.
:-D
Today: Learn English. It's definetely the language of technicians and scientists all over the world. Since it's your mothelanguage there is nothing more to do for you.
But if you're want to to go to a foreign country for some years, you should learn the language of the people there. In first line not for the work with other technicians/scientist there,
but for fighting the everyday life. Maybe you want to go shopping there, deal with the local bureaucracy or converse with some chicks at a party
He was reading in six weeks, and genuinely fluent in half a year.
"I beer liking please. Can you to me to have?" fluent.
Deleted
I lived in Japan for two years and learned spoken Japanese. I have forgotten a lot of it because I simply don't have the opportunity to use it very much. If you don't have the opportunity to regularly use it, then you will always struggle to maintain it. If you choose to learn a second language, choose one that is spoken by people around you or in your community. It makes a huge difference!
Well, I always thought that the second language of the USA is Spanish, so maybe you should learn that so that you can speak to the other half of your fellow citizens.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As someone who has studied Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, Italian, Spanish and French, I have two answers for you. First, yes, do learn another language while you are still relatively young and it is not as difficult. As you get older, brain plasticity decreases and it gets a lot harder to learn a language. The experience you get being able to understand another culture through their language provides benefits far beyond more opportunity and salary. It's life experiece. Do it! The second answer has more to do with you figuring out what sort of lifestyle you want to have. There are a lot of good suggestions about what language to learn - Spanish, Mandarin or French are all good. However, the most important aspect of whatever language you decide to learn is you have to use it, or it will atrophy. So, choose a language based on where you would like to work or who you would like to work with, then go there and use it.
I have a linguist friend that knows about 7 languages and he told me that by far the Russian language is the best to pick up chicks with. Something about whispering softly to them was the trick.
Japan is going to make a huge comeback. And their 3-way writing system is good for your mind. Hiragana will teach you elegance and harmony. Katakana will teach you adaptation. Kanji, though, will just drive you nuts.
Once you know C you can learn any language. ;-)
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
As an engineer, anyone you deal with will know English. It's considered part of the core curriculum from high school on in most developed countries. I haven't been all around the world, but I have gotten around fine only picking up very little of the local language. In a business setting they will be more interested in your technical skills.
I wouldn't recommend learning a new language to advance your career. It can be very interesting in other ways though.
A lot of people have suggested Spanish - just remember that if you plan to use it in the US then it's Latin American Spanish, there's enough of a difference between the American and European versions that it's better to learn from the one you'd use.
Don't waste your time learning Wookie -- they're not hiring right now. But if you can speak Bocce then you can get a job on any of the Hutt-controlled planets. What the galaxy really needs, however, is a droid who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators. I suggest taking some classes in Human-Cyborg Relations.
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
I was required to take four classes in a foreign language in college. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, but in retrospect I'm glad I did it.
I chose Spanish. I recall some of it, which is occasionally useful, but more important was learning a (albeit slightly) different language than English, in order to view natural language from a more abstract point of view. I also found great value in learning more about Spanish / Central-South American culture as part of the course sequence.
If you really get into it, you may be able to make technical presentations in different languages, which would likely be useful to your career in some way, if you let it.
In over 25 years as a bilingual engineer, the fact that I speak a second language (French, well, lived there) has been nothing more than a curiosity from a work/employment standpoint. And I've had dozens of clients, from Fortune 100 to 1 man shops, so I'm going to call that basically universal.
Sad but true, being bilingual is exactly the kind of 'life skill' that people believe in in their college years that, in practice, unless you have to know language X at exactly the right time that someone needs X, is otherwise useless.
That said, I think all Americans should be bilingual, just for completely different reasons. Learning a second language opens your mind, and makes it possible to understand ideas that cannot be expressed in English. (Which is saying something; English is terribly expressive.) So I am absolutely suggesting that you DO learn a second language, because there are massive benefits from it.
But if it's all about cash, then don't waste your time. Burn your neurons learning the trendy fad of the year like Ruby or Drupal, something that will show up on Dice for a while and get you in the door. It won't give you any actual talent, but will at least get you hired.
Looks like submitter will be able to take courses while pursuing an undergrad degree. However, I'd be interested to hear people's experience with foreign language software. I've been considering Rosetta Stone but the price tag seems quite high for computer software these days. If Rosetta Stone is indeed worth the price, I'd love to hear what it does that others don't. Does anyone have experience with Rosetta or another like Instant Immersion that they could share?
Latin.
You will never cease to wonder how many doors it opens, how ubiquitous it's influence is, and how beautiful it is.
I have said many times that given any natural language, if i could i would speak to a computer in latin, it's structure is simple and logical and lends itself to discourse with a machine, while providing soul-rending rhetoric.
To be blunt, they are likely to speak English better than you will ever speak their language. They have no choice.
If you plan to be customer-facing, then a second language might be worth it. But if you are going to be monitor-facing, then a Master's degree in CS is probably worth a lot more.
In no particular order.
You can really learn any language and you should pick one depending on your interest (learning something you have no interest is both pointless and useless). However for any language, what is really important is how you learn it. Lot's of people claim to know languages, when in fact they know a few scattered words (I have interviewed people with "fluent" Italian according to the CV that didn't really know the language at all). How you learn the language is crucial. A good instructor is a good start, followed by a good program that doesn't give you only the basics to pass the exam, but a real grasp of the language. Then the REAL way to get fluent is top spend time in that country, living with the locals. The language is more than a dictionary, it's a cultural combination of factors that go beyond memorization and practice, and involve social interaction. You might not find it useful per se as an engineer, but also learning how engineers live and work in other country may teach you better ways to do your work. All this is way more important than which language to pick.
But if you're set on working on a new language, I'd suggest Mandarin. The reason here is that it's the only language in which there is a large amount of computer-related material which is not available also in English. The material I'm talking about is data sheets. There are quite a few data sheets for hardware parts available in Mandarin but not English. (see for example the article about Chumby manufacture in China
As a non-native speaker myself, my experience was that English is a must-have skill in the business. A lot of documentation is only available in English, when you do projects with people from other countries the language of choice is English and code comments and documentation must be English in 99% of the cases as well. And when companies hire their people from all over the world, as is common in IT, you have a pretty good chance that even the "company language" is English, no matter what country it is actually in.
In short, as an engineer it doesn't hurt you if you only know English.
Now, of course, knowledge never hurts and knowing another language can't hurt either. Which one? Doesn't matter. You won't outright need it. I would suggest pondering what you want to accomplish with it. Spanish has its merits, for it is widely spoken, especially in the Americas (pretty much every country in Middle/South America besides Brazil), and it's a language of the EU. German is only a viable choice if you want to land a job in Germany, Switzerland or Austria, as they are the only countries where the language is spoken widely and not just by some sort of minority group (and if the latter, you will NOT have a chance to understand a single word as a non-native speaker. Hell, German native speakers have a hard time understanding them! German dialects are completely insane). French can also be a sensible choice if you plan to work in Africa or the EU.
It all depends on what you plan to do. But, generally, it's not really a career killer if you don't know anything besides English. That's pretty much the lingua franca in IT, no matter what country the company is in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I will come right out and say I have a bias - I did my undergrad in linguistics, and am doing my graduate work in Arabic linguistics (emphasizing pedagogy). However, I think a lot of people have been absolutely right that you should learn another language. The thing that a lot of the people here haven't really touched on here is that regardless of WHAT language you choose (and there are a lot of good suggestions) what you get out of learning language goes beyond the language itself. What you really learn is how different and varied language can be, which in turn makes you think about your own language in a lot of interesting ways, as well as making learning a third language even easier.
Think about it like a computer language - I originally learned BASIC, then went on to C/C++, then Java. With each language, it got easier, and I learned what to expect out of a computer language - methods to move data around, conditional statements, subroutines and functions. I learned how things fit together, and what to expect when I encounter a new language.
The same is true when learning another language - you find the startling, but totally logical way that other languages express concepts you take for granted. You learn words and phrases which barely have any equivalent your own language, and which are sort of a new world of concepts and vocabulary. It gets you thinking. And when you come to another language, no matter how closely or distantly related it might be to what you know, you'll look at things and think, "hey, I've seen that sort of thing before."
And this is true of any language - just because Spanish, French or German are related to English doesn't mean they're any less different or exotic than many other languages like Arabic and Chinese. You'll get fluent faster if you choose them, because vocabulary is one of the biggest limiting factors on fluency, but I really say you should something for the sake of the process as much as the result.
Why not Ancient Greek? Worked for Larry...
(define (pigl wd)
(if (vowel? (first wd))
(word wd 'ay)
(pigl (word (bf wd) (first wd)))))
(define (vowel? letter)
(member? letter '(a e i o u)))
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
depends what you see yourself doing after college.
i did well in ece myself, tried grad ee and cs (neither of which panned out for various reasons)..
currently looking for a job, noticed that csem (extremely cool gadget company) is hiring a junior robotics r&d engineer in switzerland, english and german required, french a plus.
i don't see a single junior robotics r&d engineer job posting in the states :P
as a second language, my advice :
look around the world, see who's doing things you're interested in. spanish is great for business, as america has a lot of business dealings with spanish-speaking countries. but in your chosen field, i'd say french/german or japanese/mandarin, depending on which hemisphere you'd prefer to spend more time in. realistically though, i'd imagine a great majority of people in tech really don't need a second language and seem content working down the street from their house and getting stuck in the whole routine. your mileage may vary.
Pardons if someone has mentioned this (this is Slashdot, after all). Lojban is a parsable language that aims to encompass all the features of the natural langues we have. From a few years of occasional study, I've found it to be useful mainly for the way it makes you think about other languages. There is a nice book that summarizes the foundations, and I think they may have finished the YACC grammar by now. Have fun!
A lot of mathematics research is done in Russian and German (as well as English). Not sure about CS research.
On the other hand, if you want the language skills to help you to work with multiple languages or language processing, pick something as far from English as possible (Japanese or Chinese are two obvious examples).
I speak German , Mandarin, and English; however, they have not been beneficial to my career as a software developer in the US/Canada at all.
There is no career/business reason for an American engineer to learn a foreign language, ESPECIALLY if you're already in college and don't know one. You would be far better off spending that time learning more engineering, or taking business classes.
Basically anyone you're going to run into in Engineering is going to know English better than you're going to know whatever it is you take for a few semesters in college.
Now, that's not to say learning a foreign language might not be fun, or a good way to balance out your college experience, or have some classes with real girls in them, but in terms of your engineering career, foreign language is going to have pretty much no payoff.
Caveat: If you are going to be a freshman and want to study a language seriously for four semesters, I would recommend picking one up and studying abroad for your junior year. I lived in Germany for a year after learning German in high school. An exchange program is one of the few opportunities you'll have to be outside the country for an extended period of time. And my German comes in very handy when going to Oktoberfest for vacation.
But, it's been utterly useless as far as the engineering career goes.
paintball
...I would almost suggest that you save your money, quit school, and get a job. Work experience is starting to vastly outweigh the benefits of a piece of paper.
Otherwise, I would agree with any previous recommendations of: Russian, Hindi, Japanese, or Mandarin.
In my case, I am a native portuguese speaker and I studied English during school, which made it a non-issue for me in university and at work as a computer scientist.
However, since I decided to work as a linux sysadmin, I felt a lot of need for german also, since most of the documentation I'd find about obscure bugs would be either in english (about 70% of the time) or german (about 27% of the time) , due to Suse's origin and big popularity in Germany.
Also, as many have pointed out, another language may help even if you work in the US, specially if the company you work for has offices in other countries. It's not uncommon for the US employees of the company I work for having to call companies here in Brazil for support with our connectivity or even to call candidates applying for a job here (most of the time, the candidate may speak english, but their relatives may not speak it enough to understand 'Hello, this is X from company Y. Can I speak with Z?').
Besides those practical reasons, another reason is the challenge of learning a different language. I'd guess that most of us that follow slashdot like some mind games/exercises and learning a language is one of the best exercises I've found so far. Having to learn all the variations of verbs, nouns, adjectives , etc on a language can be boring, but it can be interesting to try to apply some engineering to it: why not try to find a pattern to apply when 'processing' the language?
I am a computer scientist working for a major industrial research lab.
English is still the primary language for technology research publications, and will continue to be so for the near future. So don't worry about needing to read foreign journals. Yes some French or German or Japanese might help you find a few more obscure things, but generally if the work is worthwhile it eventually gets published in English.
However, personally I think you should learn Mandarin Chinese. Why?
1) There's a gigantic pool of IT research talent in China that we're only beginning to tap. They publish primarily in English, but their spoken English is generally poor with some exceptions. It's a tremendous benefit to know at least some Chinese in order to be able to socialize with your Chinese colleagues at a conference or when visiting. And I'm fairly certain that if you make a career in research in the next 50 years, you will be visiting and possibly living in the PRC at some point.
2) Research isn't for everyone. If you discover this at an awkward time in your career, it helps to have other skills to fall back on. Being able to speak Chinese is already a significant career asset, and this is likely to continue.
3) Spoken Chinese is a great language to learn, because it challenges a native-English-speaker's conceptions of grammar and meaning. It forced me to think about language in a whole new way, similar to how Prolog completely broke my brain as a sophomore CS undergrad.
All that said, Chinese fluency requires 8+ years of intensive education and immersion to develop; you will most likely never become as proficient in it as you might in a Western language.
If you want to learn a foreign language, go for it. I'd go with Spanish first. You can have a lifetime of interesting vacations in this hemisphere. You'll probably never use it professionally. Even if your job involves traveling to another country you won't speak that language better than they will speak English.
If you want to learn a language so as to be able to speak it competently, remember: learning a language is an incredible amount of hard work, especially something like Mandarin or Russian which are quite wildly different from English.
Actually I think it depends on the person and how the language is taught. In college I took classes on campus in both French and German and I took a class in Mandarin Chinese where I was learning Kong Fu. Though we learned writing with both Chinese ideograms and the Pin yin romanization I picked up Chinese faster than either French or German. And my college classes were 3 hours a week whereas I only had one hour a week for Mandarin, then again I got to work with and practice it in Kong Fu. For one thing unlike European languages it didn't have a lot of verb conjugations or pronouns for different genders; der, die, das in German or un, une in French depending on the gender of the subject.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
. . . it's fun. I learned Dutch in college and it turned out to be the most fun of any courses I took. I chose Dutch because it was an accelerated course--four semesters packed into two semesters--and because I heard it was relatively easy.
I approached learning a new language with fear, and instead found that it was a lot of fun.
or PHP or Java?
but seriously, probably spanish is the way to go if your living in the United States, as much as i hate to admit it
It is truely unfortunate, however, that we are stuck with this dilemma of having so many languages. What benefit is it to society for there to be 50 words that all mean the same thing? In my ridiculous utopian world we would all vote on a language and then all learn to speak it. Of course my vote would be for one of those click-pop languages from South Africa. I figure they would be the best for translating binary data
1) Japan is the world's second largest economy (going to be 3rd eventually after China gets big) ... almost NO Americans speak business level Japanese ... this gets in the way of multi-million dollar deals every day of the week
2) Japan is America's #2 trading partner, probably #1 in software (no time to look it up)
3) Most Japanese people don't speak business-level English (engineers are worse than almost any college-educated profession at this)
4)
5)
Bonus points: its so much harder to learn Japanese (and Japanese business culture & etc) than it is to learn Java that you become essentially outsourcing-proof. Trust me: my Japanese employer is trying like crazy to find Indians who speak Japanese and can program, and its needle in a haystack even when multiplied by a population of a billion. So we get English speaking Indians instead. Somebody needs to be able to talk with the Indians on a level deeper than "Hello, nice to meet you. This is a pen", so I get promoted. (Our other bilinguals are the CEO and two department heads, and their time is too valuable to use doing low-level management on one programming team.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
unless there's a part of the world that you feel sure that you'd like to work in, or you're going to go into a field where there's a very high concentration of non-english speaking folks of a particular linguistic bent that lends itself to an obvious choice... it's hard to guess which foreign language would be best for you to learn.
however, mandarin (even if it's probably impossible to learn properly for an english-speaking adult) is very buzz-worthy on a resume. spanish is quite useful in the western hemisphere (even in the southwestern u.s. in case you've never been...). russia might be the next china in terms of economic development, and while it's difficult for an american to learn, it's easier than chinese.
having done some hiring in my life, though, i was always happy to have someone who was fluent in another language because you never know what you might need (how was i to know that having someone who could speak fluent polish might come in very handy some day??? but it did just the same). so it's always a good selling point. i say go for it.
signed,
someone currently visiting montreal who only speaks english, and barely gets that right half of the time.
This space intentionally left blank
Speaking as someone who has studied (to the point of having useful ability with) multiple languages, I can certainly attest to the benefits in the general case. When you're talking specifically about technical material, though... you need to have realistic expecations. Since it seems that you have never before studied a foreign language (at least, not to any significant extent) you may not appreciate how very difficult it for many people to acquire this skill after the age of 11 or so. Even if you find that you do have a knack for languages, there is an enormous (and I mean ENORMOUS) difference between the amount of effort required to obtain basic reading skills and true fluency. Depending on the language, it may be easier to learn to speak it than to read it. I think you should very carefully consider just how much time you think you would be spending in this effort. With that in mind, I offer a (very) brief guide to language complexity: Spanish : Doesn't get much easier than this. Has case and gender, but it's still a romance language using the latin alphabet. Grammar is easily relatable to English, and vocabulary can be acquired rapidly. It's also fairly regular in terms of both grammar and spelling. Not of much use as a technical language. French : Somewhat harder. Like Spanish, has case and gender; add to that an unbelievable butt-load of tenses (13, I think) of which you'll only ever really need four or five. Like Spanish, it is a romance language, so grammar and vocabulary are easy for an English speaker to acquire; also fairly regular (although not so much as Spanish), more useful as a technical language. German : Somewhat harder yet, I think, but not everyone agrees. Has gender, and is very heavy on case. Spelling can be highly irregular, although not nearly so much as in English. Case issues complicate grammar and can boggle an English-speaker's mind. Historically regarded as a language for technical documents. Russian: I'm married to a Russian speaker, and I can tell you that you are leaving the safe harbor of the romance languages behind. Russian has case, gender and (God help you) declension. Grammar rules are very complex, but fairly regular;. The alphabet is Cyrillic, of course, but it's not much harder than the english alphabet to learn, and the spelling rules are much more regular then those of English. There's lots of technical material in Russian that might be of interest to an Engineer, but the amount of study required will be significantly more than for the preceding languages. Japanese : we're starting to drift into the realm of masochism here. Japanese grammar is simple and highly regular, but counter-intuitive to a speaker of English. You will have to learn approximately 2,000 individual pictograms, just to acheive basic literacy, plus another 2,000 to 5,000 pictograms (Kanji) pertaining to your technical specialty. It's not too difficult to learn to speak Japanese; learning to read it is a bitch. Could be worse, could be Chinese... Chinese (Mandarin) : If you go this route, you are both maximizing your value and (probably) guaranteeing your rapid collapse into insanity. I can't speak too much to this language; unlike the others, I've never actually given it any formal study. It's grammar is supposed to be fairly regular, but it's poly-tonal (same phoneme has different meanings, depending pitch), which is hell on anybody who wasn't raised with it; lots of sounds that are very difficult for foreign speakers to distinguish. On the reading end of things, you will have to master about 5,000 pictograms for literacy, plus another 3,000 to 5,000 for technical literacy within your (technical) specialty. You don't even want to know what's required if your specialty is in the liberal arts. I hope this is of some help. As a general note, an English speaker with a moderate disposition towards acquiring new languages can gain useful skills in any of the romance languages via self-study. For any of the others on this list, the self-study approach is suicidal.
For market reach: Spanish (opens up most of LatAm) and you can extend that to include (Brazilian) Portuguese without too much trouble, Chinese (obvious), Arabic (opens up a huge swath of the Middle East), Swedish (opens up much of the Nordics)
For fun: Italian (absolutely beautiful to hear spoken well and makes non-Italian women swoon), Esperanto (is relatively easy and will make you understandable to just about all Roman and Germanic language speakers), Dutch (if you want to exercise muscles in your throat you never knew you had), Slovenian/Czech (lots of interesting pain in East European culture but you need the language to appreciate it), Japanese (to be amazed about and get rid of your own preconceptions)
For mind expansion: Koshian languages (mentioned elsewhere), Latin and ancient Greek, Romansh, Swahili, Gaelic, Japanese, Indonesian
Forget about French and German unless you have specific reasons to learn those.
So take your pick, but do it as soon as possible: learning a new language is going to be really, really hard once you're past 30, unless you have a knack for it.
While many posters to this topic have correctly pointed out the various deciding factors one can use when deciding to learn a foreign language---do you plan to work solely in an English speaking country, do you plan to work in a non-English speaking country, etc.
One important factor I haven't seen any other posters mention is the cost of learning a foreign language at your university. It may be negligible depending on how your university prices credits, but if it's not, given the rising cost of university tuition and the availability of foreign language education in large cities and "college towns", you might consider concentrating on your field of study at university and saving money by learning a foreign language from an outside source.
With that said, and complete agreement with the idea that learning one or many foreign languages never hurts, as a foreign language speaker and a published researcher in the fields of genetics and computational biology, I have never used my foreign language abilities in research in anything but trivial situations. The vast majority of journals are published in English, the vast majority of meetings are conducted in English, the vast majority of scientists speak English as a de facto language, and a large number of science courses at foreign universities are now taught in English.
I would recommend holding off on learning languages at the University unless you are either interested in the language or intend to pursue a career in a place where that language is spoken.
My experiences with foreign languages:
If you know what you are going to college for, then work towards that goal. Don't take a foreign language just because you think you should. It will usually end up being a waste of time. You will appreciate a foreign language far more if you actually learn it while living in the country where it's spoken, and you will retain it far longer than learning a language only from a book. There are great career opportunities overseas for engineers...always have been, always will be, and I strongly recommend pursuing one, even if it's only for six months to a year. Then, while you're there, study up on the language. When you're there, then it's incredibly rewarding.
Quit screwing around with other foreign languages, this is the one you need to know first and foremost, you engineering weasel.
Only poofters and rounders learn "foreign languages". Give me a wavelet transform anyday!
Knowing more than one language has helped me quite a bit working on internationalized software. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I18n. It is actually more than just knowing a language; it is knowing that sorting works differently in different locales, decimal symbol can be different, currently symbol can appear in different place, upper-lower-upper does not always produce the original etc. It is not necessary to know another language, though, but it is certainly helpful.
suggest Korean?
http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/05/new-songdo-the-south-korean-ubiquitous-city-of-the-future/
http://www.idtechex.com/products/en/presentation.asp?presentationid=272
With Korean, you only have to learn some 41 "characters", tho it can be daunting stringing together a number of verb endings.
Also, see:
http://www.linkroll.com/computer-programming/on-the-way-to-learning-computer-programming-in-nano.php
http://www.learn-korean.net/
http://www.learn-korean.net/learn-korean-classes-listarticles-1.html
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'd suggest you take a "sampler" introductory course in several different languages, just to get a feel for them. Just as it's useful to know a bit about what C, Pascal, Lisp, COBOL, Javascript, Fortran, etc. look and feel like, I think it's good to get an introduction and know how to say a few "hello, goodbye, thank you, excuse me, 1-10, where's the bathroom, may I please have another beer" sorts of things in a variety of languages ("!Hola, mundo!").
I'd personally sample Spanish, French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi, Swahili, and Arabic. Learn a dozen phrases in each. Then see which appeals to you.
A friend and I took a single phrase and learned to say it in as many languages as possible. He chose it: "The only way to kill Godzilla now is with a nuclear weapon" - I have no explanation for why, but it was fun and it gave me a taste of quite a few tongues (so to speak).
This really depends on your motive for learning the language.
If your motive is purely pragmatic (you say you want to use the language for doing research) find out which is the second (English will most likely be first) most popular language in which the research papers are published in your field of interest. And then see if you think you would be able to cope with the difficulty in the time you have (what if the language proves to be Japanese?).
If your motive is pure intellectual advancement, then consider learning a complementary language to your native language. English is arguably Germanic language (but lots of words are borrowed from Latin based languages), so a Latin based language like Italian (most similar to Latin), Spanish, Portuguese or French would expand your horizons and make you understand more at abstract level and think more efficiently.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Learn Arabic and/or Spanish because in a few years one or the other will take over this country. :(
In my brief experience as a working engineer, and even back in college, the ability to communicate clearly with superiors, underlings and colleagues were what gave me the greatest edge over other engineers.
Take a public speaking, or even better, an acting class. Take time to make friends with and practice communicating with non-technical people. Learn to really listen to people. Learn to draw!
I agree with your statement that Chinese is a pretty easy language, as long as you can learn the pronunciation (some people have no trouble, some people have a really rough time) and as long as you never try to read or write it.
I had a private teacher for Mandarin Chinese and he taught us, I took the class where I went to for Kong Fu, to write in both Chinese ideograms and the Pin yin romanization. He'd give us an assignment and we had to do it in both.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I started trying to learn Japanese in high school. After four years of barely getting C's, all I qualified for was Japanese 3 in college ... so I took that. I then took Japanese 4, failed it, took it again, and failed it again. In other words, I spent four years of high school and a year of college learning Japanese ... and I still can't understand Japanese well enough to watch Japanese TV.
You'd think that given all that, and the fact that I'm happily employed in a well-paid programming job where I NEVER have to use Japanese, I would discourage you from learning a language (or at least a non-Latin based one like Japanese). But, quite to the contrary, I strongly recommend it.
I learned SO much beyond just the Japanese language by taking those classes. I gained understanding of another culture, understanding of a different perspective on our culture, and just generally a much more cosmopolitan outlook on the world. I also got a chance to go to Japan for a couple weeks, and to host a Japanese exchange student, and both experiences changed my life for the better.
Japanese may or may not be the language for you, and studying any language will cut in to your programming and/or non-programming classes. But even if you have an experience like mine, where you barely even learn the language, I promise that it will still be worth it.
...but if you really want to make yourself valuable, learn to write WELL in English. That may be rarer in engineers than bilingualism. Presentation skills are also rare.
I speak 5 languages with some fluency and I'm and engineer, so my opinion counts for... not much.
But if you're an adult and you've never learned another language until now, and you're in the US (which explains the first part) then Spanish is your best choice. Why?
- Spanish has no weird vowel sounds or nasal dipthongs, rising or falling tones, umlauts or other weird accents
- the sentence structure is straightforward, unlike, say, German's.
- You only have to learn two genders (masculine and feminine), unlike say, German with its third, neuter, gender, and it's easy to tell which words have which gender (except for a few, simple exceptions like 'mano' and 'mapa'). French and German are more difficult in this regard.
- Nouns don't change their endings no matter what they are doing in the sentence. You don't have to remember whether the noun is acting as a direct object or an indirect object, for example, like you do in German (or Turkish).
- you only have one new verb mood to learn, the subjunctive, which is used to express uncertainty or doubt or conditional actions (vestiges of this still exist in english, which is "it is required that he eat" is correct and "it is required that he eats" is WRONG).
- most importantly, you can get to practice your spanish. Virtually every you go in the US you'll find service staff that speak spanish, and all you have to do (as with any language) is risk embarassing yourself a little by opening your mouth.
- once you've learned one foreign language, the next is easier. You might as make that first one the easiest possible.
Que le vaya bien y que tenga mucho exito! (that should be e with an accent to indicate that the emphasis is on the first syllable, but Slashdot and Mac OS X don't play well together...)
- midtoad
Umwelt schützen, Fahrrad benützen
If you have a specific field of research that you work in (or plan on working in), spend some time researching which countries are prominent in that field. For instance, I work with Virtual Environments, speak English natively, and study German and Japanese, as Germany and Japan conduct a large portion of the research and development in this field.
I found foreign language classes to be really easy in university, where up to a quarter of my grade was based on attendance alone. My suggestion is to consider two possibilities: 1) Stick with the Latin base. Here you'd pick a language where the alphabet is still an A-Z group like French, Spanish or Italian so that the key becomes picking up on subtle changes like adding accents on letters and learning general things. In Canada, we have to learn some French in grade school so I had a bit of an advantage over my classmates in taking a basic French course as one of my electives. 2) Go with a non-Latin alphabet. Russian, Chinese, and Arabic would be a few choices here where part of that 101 course is just learning to read and write within that alphabet. Very interesting experience I had learning Russian 101 and 102 which were rather easy courses for me. JB
If you attempt to learn a language for the sake of your computer career you will almost certainly fail. But if you learn because you are fascinated by a particular culture, you have a hope of succeeding. Wait till you acquire such a fascination, then learn.
Learn Mandarin!
...learn AI, then build Kirk's Universal Translator. Done!
(Plus the added bonus of hitting on 3-breasted shiny green women.)
Table-ized A.I.
Unless you have a specific career goal in mind, it's a waste of time right now and you can pick it up later. In fact, go work for an employer who'll pay for continuing education and learn it on their dime.
My recommendation - do the bare minimum to get your degree. Everything you learn on the job will be completely different. Caveat: some obscure area you can only learn at a university. Otherwise, party your ass off, have promiscuous sex, and throw caution to the wind. You won't have many more chances.
----- obSig
Learn to talk to your staff. Chocolate goes a long way with female staff. A night out goes a long way with male staff. And a barbeque goes miles
If you really know how to program, then languages are just interchangeable tools that you can select from for each task.
Oh, you meant human language. I'll rephrase:
If you really know how not to comment your code, then human languages are just interchangeable tools that you can select from for failing to comment each program.
And don't go into research. Research is for people who don't make it coding and can't find a better career path like medicine or underwater welding.
Am I missing any?
A language, or 'roughing it round the world' will make it easier to get jobs with global companies looking for staff who can work at plants around the world. This type of job can quickly lead to a lot of varied experience and responsibility.
On the other hand, if languages 'are not your thing' then broaden your horizons in other ways - either starting with formal education or employment or simply getting engrossed in something that takes your imagination. In ten years time you could be directing opera, teaching at a school in darkest Africa or a million things that don't involve sitting all day in a cube.
If there's something you want to do then why not ask the people who do it already, or the companies involved what they'd recommend.
I took 2 semesters of Hindi as an undergrad CS major, and although I'm far from fluent... it's nice being able to pick up pieces of conversation among my Indian co-workers (this is here in USA)... rather than have it all just be completely foreign.
I suppose Mandarin Chinese might be almost as useful, but from the short time I tried to learn a little bit of Mandarin I can say that Hindi is probably way easier to learn if you're a native English speaker such as myself.
Learn Esperanto or klingon
It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you are younger.
I have a niece who though she hasn't started elementary school is already learning foreign languages. When she was 2 or 3 my sister enrolled her in a private school that taught young children different languages. Though 4 years old she knows American Sign Language, ASL, pretty well and is learning either French or Spanish, I don't recall which.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It depends on what kind of company you want to work for but from my experience, I would say, Japanese. Because they don't speak much English but they are leading many industries. It will come in handy.
Latin if you want to cultivate a superiority complex.
Nahuatl so you can pronounce obscure Mexican foods correctly.
!Kung if you want to work on your click sounds.
Romansh if you want to know the least common Swiss national language.
Basque if you want to feel unique.
Learn Management-eese.
I'm also a native English speaker. I went to France and had a great time. I decided to learn French. I didn't make much progress. The next year I went to Italy. I had an even better time and Italian seemed like an easier language to learn, so I decided to learn Italian. Again, didn't make much progress. I worked a semester in New Mexico, and took a course in Spanish. I can't have a Spanish conversation, but I know quite a few Spanish words. I then gave a training course in Germany, in English, and they apologized that their English wasn't very good. (Can you imagine a German company coming to America and giving a training course in German?) I now work extensively with Japanese customers. I will start a Japanese class next week. Everybody I work with in Japan knows English. Oh, and my wife is from Eastern Europe and my kids are bi-lingual. I know quite a few words, but can't hold a conversation. I've traveled to her country, and most people know English. It sounds Egotistic, but English really is the international language. It helps to know *about* other languages, but I don't think it's worth the effort to know another language fluently. Most likely, you'll end up working with people in an unexpected country.
First off, English is the lingua franca of the modern computing world. If you fluently know English (you'd be surprised how many native English speakers don't meet this criteria), you're all set. And by fluent, that means being able to write in a concise but descriptive manner.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't learn a foreign language. At the very least, you can become aware of the hurdles involved in localization. But more so, you become more marketable. Knowing foreign languages allows you to travel and to speak with others, including recognizing where other languages can fall flat.
The most important skill to pick up, IMHO, is to be able to understand the foreign language even if you can't speak (or write) it well. After 5 years of French, I'm nowhere near writing a dissertation but I can definitely get the gist of one (including what I should probably look at in detail) without aide and actually translate it with that all-so-important dictionary.
As for which language, it depends. Picking up either German, French, Spanish, Russian, or Chinese will generally be useful to you in some manner. Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, or one of the Nordic tongues I can't recommend unless you know you'll need/want it beforehand. Most of the other languages have little to recommend them. Which in particular depends on what you specialize in.
If you plan to do graduate studies, knowing French or Japanese will allow you to read a few research papers that would otherwise be inaccessible. If you plan to do highly mathematical CS research, Russian might also be helpful on occasion. If you would like to work overseas, knowing the language of the country you would like to work in would, of course, be helpful.
Otherwise, learning another language will broaden your horizons, but will not noticeably contribute to your career.
For example:
I'm not an engineer, but a trade consultant. I worked for more than ten years with chinese suppliers of all kinds. And I always got my job done in my poor English without much hassle.
I always wanted to learn Chinese, but there were a few details that made me change my mind:
1) Most chinese people you may want to comunicate with, speak English.
2) There are many languages and dialects in China (and not everyone is fluent in Mandarin), so even if you manage to command cantonese (for example), you would need another one to communicate with them (English?).
3) It is very hard to learn, because it is completely unrelated to any other language you may know, and their writing system is very complicated (what's more, there is more than one writing system...traditional, simplified, etc).
So my advice is: learn a language only if you are really interested in it, if you have a natural attraction to its culture and people, but not just for professional interest. It's not worth the time, you should just improve your engineerig (or whatever you do) skills.
As a native spanish speaker, let me tell you that unfortunately, English is "the language" for learning technical skills, because even if written by non-native English speakers, the books are written in English. And the information available on the internet is by far more abundant in English than in any other language.
Heck! even blogs written by my countrymen on interesting issues are written in English, and I'm from Argentina...
By the way, many friends of mine who have programming skills say that when programming or commenting code, they think and write in English, because it comes up naturally. I've read somewhere that Linus Torvalds, which is a finn, also comments his code in English.
Certain tasks are best accomplished by using the language that best describes them, because of tradition, terminology, etc...
I would have to think twice before finding the equivalent of many buzzwords in spanish. It is more straightforward to "think" in English.
IMHO for technical papers, reading in a foreign language is actually relatively easy to learn. Differences are much less for technical language than for spoken language, and formal writing is very consistent. Many science/engineering academics can read papers in other languages. This is especially true for newer disciplines.
Happy moony
It doesn't hurt to speak a second language. Even though English is the most universal language on the planet, knowing another can be very useful. You never know what life has in store for you.
There's too many people out there who think people should learn their language, if they want to communicate with them. If we want to be a global society, we need to act and think globally as well...
Speaking as a Japanese translator, I'd repeat the advice my prof gave me when starting out on this path, "Don't underestimate the commitment required."
It takes over 9 years at a normal university classroom pace to achieve limited working proficiency in Japanese, according to the US State Department.
The same can probably also be said for other languages in the "most difficult" category, such as Mandarin, Turkish, Korean, etc. You will be up to speed in French or Italian much faster.
That being said, the Japanese face a massive and growing shortage of software engineers. Not that I'd want to work for a Japanese company, especially given the high suicide rate of Japanese software engineers.
but only for CS majors and no other Engineers. In fact you could major in CECS and then your foreign language got replaced with a class on engineer economics and some more EE. I personally took Japanese as I had taken it in HS and enjoyed it. The first semester was largely a refresher but the second and third semesters were a nightmare. They would've been manageable had I not been a CS major who was too busy with CS to study Japanese. As far as usefulness I didn't learn anything remotely near enough to consider it useful, although I did get 1 job opportunity that was because of it. Personally I think that the requirements for the course were too much for someone who was an engineer. I had a friend who was in the same Japanese classes and CS classes who agreed.
Don't simply look to optimize your track to graduation and a career, but use this rare chance to learn about things you'll never again have such an opportunity to encounter. If you work reasonably hard and stay reasonably focused, you'll do well with your time in school and have a good career beyond. Don't be afraid to take a couple things off your track to broaden your experience. Often, the single courses that don't necessarily directly contribute to your core path are great experiences.
If you're North American, I would think that Spanish and/or French would be the most logical choices.
The main argument for Spanish is its ubiquity. Not only are there all those latino immigrants here, but with the exception of Brazil, pretty much all of Central and South America speak Spanish. It's also relatively easy to learn, as the spelling is simple and the pronunciation straightforward based on the spelling.
The main argument for French is that of all the Europeans, they are the least likely to be satisfied with speaking English with you. Yes, they are language snobs, and that has implications for dealing with them. As others have pointed out, Germans and other Europeans tend to learn English and are eager to practice it; the French, not so much. And of course you've got some Quebecois up North to justify it as a new-world language (although they almost certainly *will* speak English as well).
Keep in mind that if you don't use it, you'll lose it; I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, and now I can barely order off of a tex-mex menu...
US engineering grad schools are dominated by Chinese and Indian students. However you don't need to learn Hindi since Indians speak English in their home country.
And, your next employer will very likely have their largest branch in China or owned by a Chinese trust.
Why are there so many pessimists about it being too hard to learn a foreign language... how it isn't useful... how you are too old to be learning a foreign. This is absolutely absurd.
Learning a foreign language, at least enough to get around, is really easy as long as you have the motivation. Learning enough to read academic journals in your profession is something that can be done in a few months as long as you already know the script. Sure, you won't get everything, but you certainly will get enough to be useful.
It doesn't matter too much which language(s) you choose. If you want to use the language, you can certainly find the opportunity to do so.
I took both Japanese and French. Ramifications:
With Japanese, I understand i18n issues EXTREMELY well (word order, multi-byte charsets, the horrific beast that is iso-8022-jp, input methods, etc, etc).
With French, my understanding of English grammar and its idiosyncrasies was much improved. As an added plus, my wife thinks it's sexy :-).
Neither is probably an optimal second language for an English speaker, but they illustrate two goals that are different from the one you imply (i.e. to understand stuff written in a different language).
A language that has some similarities to your native tongue will grant you a much better understanding of your native tongue (plus it will be easier to learn because of cognates, etc).
A language that is radically different from your native language will open your mind to very different patterns of thought (without the flashbacks ;-) ). Particularly for i18n code (and everyone's writing i18n-friendly code, right?), this is a big deal.
I won't be reading any heavy tech papers in either language, but the experiences have been invaluable.
My suggestions: Spanish for the Latin language, maybe Mandarin or Japanese (still) for the "weird" one.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
I started with BASIC, then learned 6800/68000 assembly, then C then bourn shell, perl,, then C++.
My latest and the one I was dragged into kicking and screeming was Java. I think it's like the drink, I'll just piss my life away if I continue to consume it.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
Japanese.
I realize that Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic are probably smarter choices economically, but there is a dearth of good engineers and technical people in Japan. Not only this, most engineers in Japan are like engineers in the US-- they only know their mother tongue. Having bilingual people in Japan teaching them English would be an incredible bonus to them, and incidentally, they're in high demand.
For some reason, only foreign-looking English teachers are in demand. Sucks to be Nisei.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Further to the cultural pleasures you can get from learning another language, it can also help you develop analytical skills.
I am a native French speaker, who learned English for economical reasons and Swedish for erotical ones. I recently started Russian (at 40) and know that I will probably never master it. On the other hand, the use of the different declinations forces me to think differently than what I'm used to. I build my sentences in a more "passive" way, which presents an intellectual challenge that I couldn't experience since my University years.
Learning new languages is important, not only to improve your culture and your chances to find a better job, but also for the intellectual opportunities it brings.
It doesn't hurt to speak another language well.
Look at it from a 'reach' standpoint:
With Chinese, you can converse with a huge number of people; and people who are part of an up-and-coming superpower.
Spanish and English basically guarantee you can converse with just about the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, as well as folks in the Philippines.
Spanish can also be learned fairly quickly.
I'd go that route.
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I suggest learning one of the large alphabet languages such as Chinese or Japanese. Even if you never use the language itself, the background of knowing at least a bit of such a language helps greatly in understanding why Unicode and il8n are such a big deal to non-English speakers and why ASCII just won't cut it in the long run.
DO IT. Seriously, this is your big chance to have the time to take a foreign language. I took french in college, did study abroad had a blast and I am fluent in a second language. If you don't do it now you are going to have A LOT of trouble doing it later. Passable fluency in french took me 3 years of college level french, plus about six months living there (half of which was working, the other half on study abroad). You will have a lot of trouble finding the time to do that once college is over. I could go on, but basically there is no reason not to do it. You probably need to take some non engineering classes to graduate anyway, and you are going to seriously regret it if you go through college and never take the chance to do something other than what you're going to spend the rest of your life doing.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
If you want to live and work abroad, pick the language for where you want to go.
If you're planning to stay in the US, get fluent in Spanish. And not just if you're in the Southwest; the Hispanic population is growing everywhere. You probably won't need it for interacting with co-workers, but if you ever have contact with end-users, you may need it then. God knows when I was carrying a pager it would have helped a few times.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Screw the career, or what's worth learning to work in the USA. You should, actually HAVE TO learn at least one foreign language. That goes for everyone.
Why? Because languages are vital to human understanding and communication. I am often amazed at the monoglot nature of English speakers. Most Europeans (Brits and Irish aside) can communicate in at least one foriegn language and Africans are the kings of polyglot, most people there can speak at least 3 languages: normally their native tongue, a neighbouring language or two and probably at least one European language.
If you're afraid, remember that it's not so much work, really. I'd say two or three hours a week of classes and some home study would give you the basics. You're not going to be reading novels, but it'll give you enough to get by after a few years of study.
I recommend native English speakers start with German. It's not too dissimilar to English to scare you and once you know how to speak one foreign language the rest become easier. (learning learning: how OLPC is that?)
COBOL, of course... OK, maybe FORTRAN as well. ;)
*shrugs* Pay attention to the grammar, as that's actually really useful regardless of which language you learn or how well you pick it up. Just knowing the basics of Hebrew and Russian grammar (I'm lousy in one language, only good with understanding/reading in the other) helps me understand how English is structured, and decode badly written English. Plus it's easier to pick up other languages in the same family if you've got a strong grasp of one child langauge's grammar.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Especially when you can order Greek food at a French restaurant in Sweden, all while placing your order in Mandarin.
So you want to be a programmer? lists several courses and their value for a programming career. Foreign language comes at or near the bottom.
I was a teacher of English as a second language for a major language school for some years. The worst students we had were engineers (engineers live in a world of formulas and have trouble understanding that language is illogical). Also, for an adult who only speaks one language, learning a new language with any degree of fluency is the most difficult thing you will ever do. That said, speaking more than one language is always an asset. It's too bad that the useful languages for an engineer are so foreign to English (Manderin, Japanese, Hindi. etcé)
Consider Chinese, Russian, French or German as a second language. If you choose Russian and you get an MBA you are gold at the moment. Latter when geekness rears its ugly head of datelessness (I know this doesn't apply to you but it is a generic answer...) you can find a more than willing female relationship in Russian speaking countries. And knowing is half the battle.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
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In many areas, including job interviews, your command of your primary language can have great influence. I found that by studying a second language, Spanish in my case, my English grammer improved immensely. I think this was because I was forced to think about it for Spanish, whereas in my native English I had picked up most of it by example and never really paid attention to English grammar in elementary school.
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
Reaching a fluent level in any language takes many years of serious study. You should understand that you will have to commit 2-3 years of consistent study to get to a useful level. Depending on the research you subscribe to, an English university graduate knows something in the range of 20,000-45,000 distinct words. A Child entering primary schooling knows 6,000-8,000 words. In my experience learning Chinese in China. I can learn about 10 words a day. On a yearly average, I learn a lot less. Maybe 2,000 words a year. So it takes 3-4 years to achieve basic proficiency. If you learn a language like German French, you can learn words a lot quicker because many words sound similar to their English counterpart. (Compared to learning Chinese, German is English with an accent)
learn C++
It has been mentioned before, but my vote goes to learning spoken Mandarin Chinese. I am fluent in four languages and speak a smattering of couple of others, but in my work as engineer and sometimes part of vendor qualifications/vendor audit teams/ a little Chinese goes a long way.
I learned Chinese and Spanish while commuting to work (45 min each way) with Pimsleur. You learn by listening and repeating phrases and it does not require you to be sitting at a computer.
xnok
You might keep in mind that places like NSA and government contractors will find any kind of foreign language knowledge a plus. If you pursue a PhD, you may or may not need to take at least one foreign language exam (Usually these exams do not require a person to be really conversant in a foreign language.)
On the whole, I think studying a foreign language would be a very worthwhile thing to do with some of your freetime in college. If nothing else, it will make you a more interesting person, which never hurt anyone in their career pursuits.
My opinions are based on watching for underlying learning errors behind the errors I notice English-as-second-language speakers make. Also I have used above opinions to try and learn Spanish.
Happy moony
Especially the English ... Except, if English were your native language you probably wouldn't have used a semicolon there.
I majored in both Computer Science and Spanish in college. There is *definitely* value in learning a second language whether you ultimately end up using it or not. Learning a second language will teach you new ways of communicating and help you see the world through the eyes of another culture. I've known far too many engineers (and researchers) who are incapable of expressing themselves. Anything you can do to improve your communication skills will help not only you, but also the computing field in the long run.
When I was taking CS courses I also took a year of German. I found those classes to be extremely helpful in the areas of discrete math and computer theory. Grammars and Turing machines just made more sense to me after taking a foreign language class, especially in a language that has grammar that is so much different from English.
Of course, I'm talking about language concepts here. The practical execution of German never really came in handy except to look at my professor with a deer-in-the-headlights look and say, "Ich habe keine Ahnung."
My first degree is in Computer Engineering, I always wanted to be in a research oriented environment. I tried to get a science oriented job for TEN YEARS, I applied for thousands of jobs research labs, defense contractors, or anything research related and GOT NOWHERE!!!.
I eventually gave up, quite my BS corporate jobs, went back to college and got a second degree in physics, and I am now a doctoral student in physics, and I FINALLY get to write research oriented software (simulations of molecular bonding).
With a computer engineering degree, you are condemned to the world of B2B web pages, enterprise blah blah, and whatever is the latest horse sh!t fad of the month in corporate America. Computer engineering is a black hole, watch out.
Ben, There isn't a day goes by in my job with a very large computer company that I don't speak with someone in another country (Netherlands, Spain, India, China, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and France). Even if you never have a business discussion in another language, your ability to travel confidently and carry on small talk will help forge the relationships essential to your organization's success. Q1: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? A1: Bilingual. Q2: How about three languages? A2: Ugh... trilingual. Q3: Four? A3: Quad-lingual? Q4: Then what do you call someone who speaks only one? A4: An American. You will be using your language(s) long after you've forgotten differential equations. JimC
I'm a native spanish speaker from Chile. Considering that all of my friends that had the same english language education don't speak english as well as I do, I think my experience may be helpful.
The main difference between my friends and me is that I played golf and liked computers, two activities that weren't being covered in spanish magazines at that time. I read a lot and when I like something I usually buy the best available books and subscribe to the magazines in the field, so I started reading Compute's Gazette and Golf Magazine.
My vocabulary expanded so fast (and effortlessly) that I outpaced my class and never had to study english again since seventh grade. I also noted an improvement when speaking to foreign people in my trips abroad. I don't consider myself totally bilingual, but for many people that's what I am.
Unfortunately for you, most publications in any field are in english. I would suggest you to find something (a hobby or professional interest) that you like and is well covered by magazines and books written in the language of your choice. Maybe some niche in your field has some experts in other countries (visual design?)
By the way, I lived in the US for 6 months in 2004 and I felt I had a considerable advantage for being able to communicate in spanish and english.
Finally, once you master the basics, you must live abroad in order to really grasp the language (in a way that you would never reach in class). If you do, take some time to learn from the local culture and history, or you'll be left out of many interesting conversations.
TIP: Rent DVDs of foreign movies and play them with english subtitles. This may be the only way to hear slang before you get there.
Cheers
Jaime
Partly for the modern use of the language. You will learn a great deal about your own language, English, and learn the basic roots of all the Romance languages and plenty of words in many other languages. You will also, by analysing the roots and perhaps by examining a smattering of Greek into the bargain, be able to decipher the meaning of another five thousand words in twenty languages that you've never heard before -- by deduction from Lation roots, prefixes and suffixes. Just remember to keep your own speech essentially Anglo-Saxon, but you can use your newfound knowledge of English for those occasions when a Saxon word won't do.
The other is the body of great literature that you will use while mastering the language. As a student, your texts will not be the boring invented rubbish you use with most languages (The bird flew into the tree; Johnny threw his ball.) but the actual literature of ancient Rome and of most civilised discourse until modern times. And let me tell you, that process can teach you a great deal about life, death and love, war and friendship, politics and law, and many other topics besides. The reason is just that from so far back, only the best literature is preserved, and you get to start on it immediately.
Hard to "learn Japanese business culture?" Come on, there's nothing wacky going on there.
As for the language: Reading and writing take a long time, but there's nothing overly difficult about it as a spoken language.
A little reading for the interested, re what's hard and easy about learning the language:
http://www.homejapan.com/blog/siteowner/2008/02/whats_hard_about_learning_japanese
http://www.homejapan.com/blog/siteowner/2008/02/whats_easy_about_learning_japanese
Yeah, probably, considering that the proper sentence in the title would be "Yo hablo, tu hablas, nosotros hablamos" Most people say that Spanish is quite hard, so it's understandable (being a native speaker, I can't say whether it really is that hard)
:) but I'll probably do French or Japanese after that (or Chinese now that you say it's not THAT hard).
I wanted to take up Chinese or especially Japanese while I was doing my degree, but I was pretty scared that they would be very difficult - and the announcement for every language course in my university said: "basic level - 1 year" except for Chinese and Japanese, which said: "rudiments - 1 year", and I saw students doing basic school stuff like writing down a thousand times each kanji character.
I'm starting German on Saturday
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Learning a foreign language is never a waste of time. Even if you never do anything with it, it changes the way you think in a way that can be valuable as a programmer and engineer. As a gainfully employed computer programmer, I think learning a language was one of my better decisions. And, if nothing else, language processing is always something you can pursue as a Comp Scientist if you find you have an aptitude for language. What language? If you want something straight forward that your programming and computational skills will be assets, I'd suggest Latin or even Ancient Greek. You might be surprised how readily some ideas transfer over. I say this as both a former student and a former teacher. If you want to actually converse with someone alive, you can't go wrong with Spanish or German. If you want it to be a genuine asset in your future employment, than some dedicated study to Chinese or Japanese, while intense, can be very valuable.
If you want to work with European engineers, knowledge of French or German or both will help a lot. If you focus in the US, learn Spanish. After you have learnt one of these, you could start thinking about Japanese or Chinese. I personally have picked up French and German.
Before I saw the computer engineering, I was about to say French/German if you ever thought you'd go on to graduate school. I still have a smattering of German in my repertoire, and it helps whenever I'm doing a literature search and I run into a foreign reference. Japanese comes in a close third.
That said, in computer engineering if you're going software or comms, India and China are likely the countries you'd interact with most.
And finally, if you think a 'government' career would be of interest, we're always looking for Farsi/Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Kurdish, Korean, various African languages, etc.
I'm an engineering student and required to take 3 foreign languages classes...silly liberal arts school...
I don't think it is a waste to learn a second language. In fact, I think it can help you in your primary area of interest/expertise. I found with learning foreign languages that I often had to think around or outside of the box in order to communicate. I might not know exactly how to say what I wanted, so I had to use different words with same/similar meanings to make my point. That can only help in the field of engineering, where break-throughs are made because one can think outside the box. If your goal is to challenge yourself to think in different ways, I don't think it matters what language you choose, though you will probably have more opportunity to use a language like Spanish than say, what I know, Italian.
German Euclidean and the obligatory Goblin and Gnomish.
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese included), English, Spanish, Arabic.
I speak the first two, the first one was my native, and I am learning the third one, even though it is not required for my graduate degree, so that I can hear if somebody saying bad words behind me en espanol.
The fourth one is used for beautiful chicks. Don't follow me if you are not prepared.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
College language courses are not going to give you a level of language skill that will exceed the English language ability of any tech person you are likely to meet from another country.
But a language course anyway. It is interesting, fun, and useful if you plan on traveling.
I would suggest Spanish.
I'm a native spanish speaker from Chile. Considering that all of my friends that had the same english language education don't speak english as well as I do, I think my experience may be helpful. The main difference between my friends and me is that I played golf and liked computers, two activities that weren't being covered in spanish magazines at that time. I read a lot and when I like something I usually buy the best available books and subscribe to the magazines in the field, so I started reading Compute's Gazette and Golf Magazine. My vocabulary expanded so fast (and effortlessly) that I outpaced my class and never had to study english again since seventh grade. I also noted an improvement when speaking to foreign people in my trips abroad. I don't consider myself totally bilingual, but for many people that's what I am. Unfortunately for you, most publications in any field are in english. I would suggest you to find something (a hobby or professional interest) that you like and is well covered by magazines and books written in the language of your choice. Maybe some niche in your field has some experts in other countries (visual design?) By the way, I lived in the US for 6 months in 2004 and I felt I had a considerable advantage for being able to communicate in spanish and english. Finally, once you master the basics, you must live abroad in order to really grasp the language (in a way that you would never reach in class). If you do, take some time to learn from the local culture and history, or you'll be left out of many interesting conversations. TIP: Rent DVDs of foreign movies and play them with english subtitles. This may be the only way to hear slang before you get there. Cheers Jaime
I can use myself as an example here. I am an American, which implies that I'm mono-lingual and arrogant, though that is not entirely true, I am multi-lingual.
I am quite fluent in French, conversational in German and Danish, and Norse and Swedish are about 80% a gimme because of the Danish. I am also *functional* in Japanese and spanish, and have all my meets-n-greets and directions and various other vitals in Russian and Mandarin as well as some of the almost-freebies from other languages such as Italian because of my Spanish and French.
Though these language skills don't neccessarily have any bearing on my Systems Administrator/Tech-nerd job, I got the job because of the additional skills and *added value* on my resume. A nice bonus for something I enjoy.
I have used my French a few times in company dealings with out northerly neighbors in Montreal which was a nice bonus for my boss.
Additional added value here is that being bi-lingual or poly-lingual opens your brain up to many more perspectives as long as you are willing to think through subjects in other languages. I am only able to really *think* in French but being conversational in other languages does help quite a bit.
Ever wonder why the Chinese and Japanese have such drastic differences in how they develop technologies? Language! When your thought process at the lowest level starts from a different direction(Lanuage), you arrive at conclusions from another direction.
anyway, good luck. I hope you choose to learn a language as it will help you in life. Mandarin is a good one. Not as hard to speak and listen as you might think, reading is a whole different animal though. I have about 100 symbols that I can read, the other thousands and thousands all look like the first 100 to me! Alternatively, Japanese, or if you are looking for something easy try German or French because they are remarkably similar to English.
Danish is super simple but doesn't have a lot of practical use. Way less words and ways to use each word though. 1 word for 'to be' = 'ar', skip the am-is-are-was-were junk. 1000s of english words come from Norse and Danish so a lot of stuff is very familiar. 'ar=are(to be)' 'go=go' 'dit=it' 'du=you' 'jag(yiye)=I'. Also, Scandinavia ROCKS, my favorite Euro-vacation is Denmark and Molmo/'Geatland' area of Sweden.
It's funny you should ask because I'm actually an American computer engineering student as well. On the side though I've just finished my Spanish minor, and while I haven't used it much in my engineering classes, it has been a much needed break from the hard-core "left-brained-ness" of engineering. It's coming in handy -- I'm working on getting an internship in Mexico next summer. More importantly though, it's helped me to learn to COMMUNICATE, which is something engineers are stereotypically bad at. Moreover, I've taken classes and labs where I was the only person who could understand the instructor -- not because I spoke their language, but because I knew what it was like to be on the wrong side of a language barrier. I've never had a problem understanding a person with some understanding of English, whether they be Chinese, Indian, German, or Egyptian. For that, and that alone, my 3 years in High School and 2 in college have paid off.
I'd agree with what everyone here has said about learning a foreign language, it does teach you another way of thinking, another way approaching problems - and the world. Different languages have different ways of describing things, which refer the different values of the culture. It's also interesting to realize that in most of the word people will speak at least two languages, even in the developing world, where people will learn a local, then national language, before even starting on English! It really shows us anglo-phones up! And word of caution, based on what I have found from trying to learn Indonesian: like programing languages, languages have rules (duh!), unlike programming languages, this rules are incredibly flexible, and often broken (this depends on the language though). This did frustrate me a little, but I think it is an interesting lesson on the boundaries between ordered systems and the somewhat chaotic results that sometimes evolve. I would recommend Chinese, because of the progress China is making, and because very few Chinese speak English. Also given it's potential position in the world, I don't think that the pressure will be on us to learn Chinese, not the other way round. Finally, you can only learn so much in class. You really have to go to the country, immerse yourself in it, force yourself to speak it. A month studying in the country would be worth a whole degree in a university (although you'd probably learn more theory in university, and they would compliment each other quite nicely). And the comments about picking a language with hot women have some truth to them. The best way to learn a language is to have a girlfriend who (only) speaks it!
I loved learning french in high school, and eagerly took two semesters of it this year in the place that english would've been (thank you AP), but unless I'm working with the ESA on something, I don't think there's much call for it in the mechanical/aerospace engineering world :|
(not to mention the course load doesn't leave the time to persue it any further, except during summer)
That's not to say you should give up learning a foreign language, but I don't think it would be so worth the time as putting your effort into another, more relevant field.
if u want to be in the field, then C should be universal ;-p
if u r outta the field, then u need to learn business lang....hehehe.....
communication lang is a tool...not an asset
hahahaha
In the future we'll have more intense communication and people from all over the world will be more tightly integrated. The language skill will be very useful for a software engineer.
It's already very useful. Look at MS Windows or Office or whatever other software that is available in many languages and is used in many countries. That's a living example of multilingual/globalized software.
The more foreign languages you know the better you will be able to develop software for people who speak other languages because the languages are different in many ways (grammar, pronunciation, writing, idioms, different expressions of the same ideas, etc etc).
Also, learning another language (culture and so on) will show you how much you assume. And a good engineer should know that assumptions (especially unjustified and wrong ones) are the reason for myriads of screw-ups.
I can state from experience that learning a second language will broaden your outlook on life and increase your value as an engineering professional. You won't regret it.
Major languages such as German, Chinese (easier to learn than it seems!), and French are good, obvious choices.
But once you learn the language, You Must Maintain It. Use it on a regular basis for many years (preferably actively, by speaking and writing it as well as reading/listening), or else you'll lose fluency. Keeping up fluency isn't a chore; rather, if you achieve decent ability in a language, it'll be a pleasure to practice it (my partner and I regularly exchange private commentary in public about the funny Americans around us, as well as eavesdropping on unsuspecting visitors to the US).
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
As an undergrad, I took a couple years of German to meet my college's foreign language requirement, thinking it might help me in my research. It hasn't. But it was worth doing anyway.
As a CS professor, I've traveled to Europe on research projects more times than I can remember. Knowing a little bit of a foreign language has made the experience immensely more enriching.
In retrospect, I wish I had learned one of the romance language (French, Italian, or Spanish) in addition to (or possibly instead of) German. It would have come in very handy during my 6-month sabbatical in Northern Italy -- languages are much easier to learn when one is young.
You sound like me 2 years ago. I went to school for Electrical Engineering, and started having sworn I would never learn German. While in college, one of my professors really emphasized that we all should learn a foreign language. I didn't really get what all the hoopla was about until he said that a friend of his, Bill VanderRoost who is a higher up of TRW Automotive (a Fortune 200 company) said that it's of utmost importance for engineers to learn a foreign language. We live in a global society now and to have an ability to work with colleagues across the sea or in the next country over gives you a huge leg up against the competition. Not only that, but the fact that you took a foreign language shows a lot to a potential employer - it shows you have initiative. One of the sticking points for me though was this: If a company is looking to send someone overseas to say Germany to visit their sister company, they're more likely to choose the guy who speaks the language, so if you do, then if it's between you, the German speaker and Joe Blow, they're going to pick you to travel. It has also helped me speak with foreign colleagues who have come to visit here in the U.S. and made me very employable even in a down market. I learned German, and actually ended up spending a few weeks in Germany, and it was very rewarding. Learning German and how Germans think about engineering is really enlightening to an engineer - it gives you a fresh perspective on what it means to strive for perfection in your engineering. There is also a huge amount of history in Germany that opens your eyes to a different world. And I think one of the best reasons to learn German is this: they're the absolute nicest people I've ever met. (P.S. It's also not very hard to learn German once you get some base words down because everything is an amalgamation of different words. Oh, and they have a word "gepimpt" meaning "pimped" :D )
Learning a foreign language is sort of like learning Lisp, you may never use it, but the study of it will expand your mind in so many ways.
I am the worst spoken language learner on the planet. I spent four years in high school and a semester in college studying Spanish, but now all I remember are ways to insult your mother (tu chingada madre).
I worked for a French company and had a year of intensive French but all I remember is the phrase for a wet dream (faire une carte de france).
I also took a semester of Mandarin and remember probably nothing, other than how language reflects the history and culture of a people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gweilo).
I guess I've written a comment that signifies nothing, other than any question of "Should I learn X" should always be answered by "yes."
If you choose a language which associated culture is very differente from yours, better you'll think out of the box. For example, I'm brazilian and besides learning English, I'm learning Japanese and Mandarin. To understand why japanese or chinese people use some words sometimes, I have to learn about the culture. I think it's true for every language, but Japanese culture is more far from mine than American culture, for example. And I'm convicted that learning how different people think can expand my mind.
Take an advanced english course that focuses on grammatical structure followed by an arts elective that requires plenty of essay writing.
This will make you a much more competent communicator in your native language and will spill over into your technical writing.
I hire plenty of engineers every year. Those who are really good at engineering but can't communicate their ideas don't last long or end up in dark rooms doing gruntwork without much hope for advancement.
rich
Why post? Because everyone deserves their 15 minutes of flame.
Has anyone modified this sig yet by suggesting the removal of the "f"?
Ruby is from Japan. Does that count as a foreign language?
My two cents: I'm Spanish native speaker and I had the opportunity to learn English since child. I used occasionally until I left college. This isn't nothing new because I work with computers and English is a must. One year ago I decided to expand my horizons and try to learn any new language. I decided Italian because it's close to Spanish. I had the luck to get close to Dante Alighieri Society; where I'm not just learning the language, but also the culture, way of living, etc. The experience has been great! As soon I finish my intermediate course, I plan traveling to expand my knowledge. There are a lot of scholarships to study abroad with the only requirement to be proficiency in the a particular language. So my recommendations: 1. Forget about if this or that language will be useful. All of them are! Just pick one you think you'll be comfortable and try it. 2. Try to get a native speaker teacher (this is not always easy is some places) and, 3. If possible, try to get close to a local native speakers community.
Hi,
considering the significant rise in use of Spanish and Mandarin around the world, I think it's a good idea for every "smart person" to try to learn one of these languages. Additionally, learning a foreign language makes you smarter, helps you think in different ways and improves your openness to change and flexibility. All around, it's a Good Thing to learn another language, and imnsho, every American should do so.
Coward
the language of LOVE. It's your ONLY hope of ever getting laid without paying.
No disrespect meant, but you might look at learning English. A lot of people learn their first language more by intuition than by rigorous application of grammar. If that's you, taking the time to go back and learn why things are done the way they are will help you pick up other languages. Learning about verb conjugations (particularly where English has singularities because several conjugations are identical), declensions of nouns, and the overarching theory of linguistics can be valuable.
What really feels depressing to me are those populations (not necessarily Anglophones) where even highly educated people find it normal to know only one language. ...
/.'tter's knowledge of English. Myself included, so I'm not asking much :-)
It's as if it were normal not to have any sort of general education (math, reading, history, geography, etc.)
Knowing only one language is so... boring!
Not to mention close-minded.
Do yourself a favor, and learn at least another language decently.
And by decently, I mean at least as well as the average
Learn a language (and how to play some music) for the passion of learning, for the love of humanity and for your own pleasure.
You can't be doing everything for your resume, do something for your soul.
I'd suggest some language that's on the verge of dieing out, from some far away foreign culture that's as different from yours as possible.
Nullius in verba
I know so many are going to tell you how wonder this garbage is and how useful but of course they're lying. When I was in college we were forced to do at least 2 years of it. That's weird that it's so useful they actually have to force people to take it. Of course it was SUPPOSED to have all these wonderful effects, improvement of skills and employment avenues. Well I can say looking back after being out of school for over 10 years it didn't do anything. I found myself wasting more and more time to try and escape from this torture. All I saw was myself wasting more and more time on this shit and getting nothing in the end. I know it sounds cool and all now but once you've been through it you find out it's a complete waste of time and you'll probably just end up absolutely hating the target culture. (On the other hand at least my disgust is completely justified.)
As previously suggested, if you plan to stay in the US, learn Spanish. If you plan to come to EU, you can chose between French and Spanish, and, if you have the time, I would add a year of classic Latin. Then Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, all at the same time.
Bitches love Sanskrit.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/2/6/
Honestly though, learn Japanese, the number of times ive been trying to unfuck something and the only real documentation on it has been in Japanese is such a high number that we might need a cluster of PS3s to calculate it.
Navajo. They have the coolest swear words.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I'm a north american french native speaker. I used and use english for work. Here, we have a long curriculum filled with english, which makes you almost learn the grammar and syntax, and learn you to have conversation with other french canadian that have the same shitty accent.
The problems I got when I first travelled to an entirely english environment:
- Culture. WTF is Doctor Seuss ?
- Idiomatics. Hanging out got no french equivallent, and having to ask what mean making out is sktechy.
- Picking up everything, and getting people to understand everything.
Practice makes it perfect. Seriously, be sure to know a little about local politics and government, or better, go there for 1 or 2 months after learning grammar and stuff. Looking like a traveller is ok for most people, but pretending you speak a language when your not used to it and don't know nothing about the culture will make you look like a dumbfuck retard.
And if you have to travel, don't fuck with those "civilized western" countries. Morroco, Tunisia, Iran or Syria are not so dangerous, and not so "clean" either.
I think you have gotten enough responses encouraging to indeed study a foreign language but I would like to urge you to do it now. Your brain is still young enough to absorb the natural rules of the language and you will actually be able to speak it fluently in the future. There are big differences in how "natural" a person speaks a language and you often see people who learned a language later in life that never fully succeeded in becoming 100% natural sounding.
but that is only because I moved here.
I think you've gotten a lot of very obvious and correct answers so far. You don't really need one for your profession unless you're planning to move to a non-english speaking country for work, so choose one that you have a personal interest in. If you don't have a personal interest in one, debate whether or not you really want to learn a Language. Without a personal interest, your success will be more difficult and take longer.
Esperanto is a useful language throughout Europe, according to a multilingual co-worker of mine who grew up there. (It is also apparently useful throughout East Asia.) Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn, so its rate of usability versus time required to learn is very favorable. (Given the international philosophies of both Esperanto and Ubuntu, it is appropriate that Esperanto is one of the available languages when installing Ubuntu.)
Unlike math/CS/Engineering courses there are girls in language classes that aren't Asian (not that there's anything wrong with being Asian, its just that variety/diversity is nice).
If you spend the time you should get the most bang for the buck. As a programmer you will be probably working in the future with people from all over the world. Emerging countries in software are Russia, China, India and many Spanish speaking countries. So you will be in advantage learning these languages: Spanish, Chinese and Russian
I am a computer engineer, I work as a technical translator, and I speak (or at least understand) 6 languages, with some more coming.
I think languages are always interesting, at least because they let you understand how many of our concepts and words (yours, actually, since English is not my first language) are just a convenction.
But when I read the title, I thought about the learning STYLE of an Engineer.
At least, I start with a language the way I start with a computer language, with a new tool, a skill: I get a couple of examples (either I book I already read and loved, or a children book, or both: I think I read "le petit prince" in 4 languages at least), a dictionary, a grammar book, and I start. With the book, I mean.
(At least with a latin alfabet. Chinese is a bitch for this, and also Thai and Russian don't make things SO easy).
Word by word. I know there is MEANING there, so I want to get it. It takes me anything between 1 and 5 hours for the first page. After some afternoon, I begin to get an idea of the structure. I start reading the grammar, then. I make a list of words I want to know, common verbs, bodyparts, "where it the loo" and so on.
And I go on.
I am not sure it is efficient. I just know it is fun, for me, 'cause I get to look at languages as riddles. I learn very weird words (my first 2 words in German were Hornhaut, that is callus, and Verdauen, digest: useful to impress chicks... mostly).
Have fun with it.
China is clearly the big up and coming economy, and being able to interact with them in their own language is going to be a huge advantage. Yeah, the ones you meet all learned to speak English, but whoever knows the other's language has the advantage. If you want to win, you gotta speak the lingo.
If I were in school at this point, I would be learning everything I could about China.
G.
If you want to get into research, then english suffices as it is the international language of science. The top conferences and journals are all in english. Sometimes, very very rarely you might see a paper in german or french.
If you want to learn a language anyway, find what areas of research you would like to be involved in, then have a look at which country the best labs are and maybe give that language a go.
Although, I believe in germany people don't mind english, but in france they are passionate about french.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Cobol.
If you are a native English speaker, go for Chinese and learn to speak it well. It won't help you find a job in China since they are all very well educated and naturally prefer to employ native Chinese, but with China set to become the next superpower, their culture and language are growing in influence, and at some point they may well overtake English.
As an example of how fast things can change: it is only a few centuries ago that Latin was the language of all intellectuals in the West, and now it is only really used by the clergy of the Catholic Church. How long did it take for English to replace it as the main language of intellectual discourse? Probably less than a century, in reality. Nowadays international communication is many orders of magnitude faster, and the English language could be replaced as soon as enough people decide that Chinese is much more convenient.
BTW, I am not saying that Chinese is necessarily better than English, but with more and more research being conducted in China and published only in Chinese, at some point it may well be that learning Chinese is the obvious thing to do, if you want to be part of the leading edge. There are simply more Chinese in the world than any other kind of people.
If you want a challange then learn estonian.
Here's a link that explains fully why that's a _good_ idea. http://www.eki.ee/keel/et997.html
I have Italian as a mother language, and I speak English, Norwegian, and I am learning German. I can guarantee you that you cannot learn a language in a matter of weeks. No-way-in-hell.
You must be a monolingual English speaker to say this. Whoever told you that, was clueless about how much time goes into learning a language. It takes a long time (many months) to get used to the information flow of other languages (you don't get the same items in the same order), it takes time to get used to a new grammar, and especially it takes forever to learn the vocabulary of the new language. If you think you can speak e.g. German after a 12-week course, try going out on the street and have a non-trivial conversation with a native, or just watch TV programs in German.
As for me, It took me 6 months before I dared speak Norwegian (my first Germanic language, English does not really count) to natives, and it did not work well for a long time. After a couple of years I was confident enough that I could speak casually to natives.
So the gist of it is:
A last note: if you do not know any foreign language at all, you might consider learning Esperanto first. No, really, there are some experiments where students learned Esperanto first, then French, and ended up scoring better in French than students that had studied French all along. It takes little time and helps you understand concepts of language learning, such as case and number concord, future tense without auxiliary verb, different associations of letters to sounds, coping with the perceived awkwardness of the language's words, that usually are the first stumbling block when learning one's first foreign language (sounds reasonable to me, and yes I know some Esperanto). This, and you get a lot of courses and dictioraries for free.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It's probably been said in here, but if you don't have a strong motivation toward a particular language, choose what's easiest. Whatever you choose will be useful.
Because learning a new language is difficult, it's usually overlooked how much they differ in complexity and difficulty. My ranking, complex to simple:
Russian (miserable)
German
Spanish, French
Japanese
Chinese
Drawback with Chinese is that the sounds and vocabulary are completely foreign. Japanese has imported a fair amount of English, which helps. And Spanish and French each have a lot of hooks for English speakers. (German too, but I find it more opaque.)
Chinese or Japanese are both good choices, but I'd go with Spanish. It's the de-facto second language of the US, and really the first language of this hemisphere. It opens your home up in new ways.
There's no practical point to learn a language other than english. It's the lingua franca. ALL top research conferences and journals are english only.
Now, if you want to learn a language for reasons other than practicality that you could actually use in a quasi-engineering setting, learn Mandarin. Face it. It's this the most common foreign language you hear around engineering campuses. Even if you only learn a few words, you'll impress the hell out of them.
Three things that I haven't seen mentioned so far: 1. If you do study abroad, or want to learn a language by immersion, DO NOT GO WITH OTHER ENGLISH SPEAKERS. The temptation to talk with them will be too great. You will end up spending most of your time with them and as a result will learn much less of the target language. 2. A great way to recreationally learn a language is to subscribe to a language learning podcast. Get a kit or a cassette adapter so that you can hook your mp3 player up to your car and listen to it whenever you drive. Whenever you're alone in the car, practice repeating the words aloud. If you don't do this, you'll only learn to understand a language but not how to speak it. 3. If you are ever living are frequently around someone who knows another language, ask them to teach it to you. Most people won't mind, everybody likes showing off personal skills, and this is by far the easiest (not to least expensive) way to learn. SIDE NOTE: I think it's really hit or miss regarding professional use of a language. A lot of foreigners already know english (i've heard its quick to learn, but difficult to master). But it can never hurt to pick up a new language.
Q: What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
A: Bilingual.
Q: What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
A: Trilingual.
Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: American.
Yes, learn another language. Get some insight into another culture. Don't be the typical ignorant, walled-in, myopic American.
If you live south of Oregon-Wyoming-Nebraska-Kentucky-Virginia, it should probably be Spanish.
Take it from me. I am a DBA by trade, who was born in the U.S. I am an Anglo, but I speak fluent Spanish, some German, and am learning Arabic at the moment.
There is also some evidence that activities such as language learning (no, computer languages don't count) helps prevent brain aging. So there you are.
Cheers and good luck.
For 10 years now (I'm 22), I learn English at school (and I need to continue, I know). Consider that for that 10 years, I have 8h lesson a week, let's say around 36 w/ per year... 8*36*10 = 2880hrs of my life to learn that language. So my question is, what have you been doing, you native english speaker, all that 2880 hrs at school? I mean, seriously, It's totally unfair for non native english speaker, and learning a foreign language should be mandatory for you all... I think that I've seen an article from a british paper on that subject, if someone knows what I'm referring to...
The whole question sounds very odd to European ears. Why wouldn't you want to learn different languages? Yes, practically everybody speaks English nowadays, but as previously stated, you get massive street-cred for learning the local lingo. Potential employers abound all over the world, not just in the States.
Besides, learning new languages doubles as learning a new culture. Big business is always international, and small things like giving a business card using both hands have a great impact in the end.
I've had to learn two foreign languages (by law) and have taken on two more just for shits and giggles. And it doesn't take that much time away from engineering studies. Being able to write in your CV that you speak Finnish, Swedish, English, German and Japanese is a great career booster.
Obviously, knowing what a verb, noun, and pronoun are taken for granted. But you also need to know that English has simplified things to a point that we don't even know there is meant to be a difference. Take the word 'too' in a language like Dutch this can be mapped to 'te', 'ook' and some others. Is this because Dutch is some weird language. No (well, yes :) it's because we use 'too' in two different meanings; like we use 'you' to mean both singular and plural second.
person.
So learn some grammar: you will be also learning grammar while you're learning the language too.
Currently at my University (U. of Rhode Island) you can earn in five years two bachelors degrees as part of an International Engineering Program. I'm earning a B.A. in German as a foreign language and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Currently I'm living and working in Germany, finishing the last six weeks of a year long stay before heading back to the US to finish both degrees.
Our program has a couple hundred students, and it's growing. For those interested in Engineering in other countries it's a great program.
In terms of a language to learn, I would have to agree with the fact that most Germans already speak very good English, especially in technical or business fields. However, if it's your dream to work for a company that's based in Germany (Bosch, Siemens, Hilti) or owned by a German company, it'll improve your marketability significantly. The Germans I work with have been more than impressed with the fact that I speak any German at all, and it's been a great experience.
In reality, I think getting out of the US and going to any country is a good experience. I'd say pick your language based on the location of your dream-job foreign company.
Almost 600 comments and the "All Americans (USAians) are dumb because they only speak English and we Europeans rule" kind of flamewar hasn't started!! Maybe all the pyros have been dragged by the greater gravitational pull of the "Hans shot first" post...
That said, I'm really glad I learned English and French at school (as a native Spanish, French is not that big deal), the things you learn as a kid, stay in your brain even if you don't use them for 10 years (like French in my case). Once you know 3 languages, learning more is just a matter of mental juggling. I live in The Netherlands and learning Dutch has not been especially hard (once you grasp that fu*&ng inversions), and it has the bonus that now I can catch some things in German too.
Being able to chat up hot chicks in their native language is also a plus.
50 years ago, the question would've seemed odd. 100 years ago, you would've been looked at is if you were insane if in educated circles you somehow, even indirectly, hinted that it might be ok to know only one language.
Definitely do learn a 2nd language. At least! Go read some old books, classics. No matter if you're reading Newton or Nietzsche, all those authors simply assumed that their readers were fluent in Latin and French, and probably in Greek, German and English as well.
Languages not only enable you to read stuff in the language it was written in - and I've read quite a few books where the translation didn't really do that well in expressing the author's thoughts - it also broadens your mind patterns considerably. Because, as linguists know, languages aren't just different in their vocabulary, there are many differences in the thoughts that model language. Let me give two examples, one trivial, the other tricky:
The german "Sie" vs. "Du" is missing in english. The translation is "you" in both cases, but they are not the same. "Sie" is a formal form, used to address strangers or other people in a formal setting. "Du" is informal, used among friends and (interestingly) children - kids are always "Du", never "Sie", both among each other and from adult to kid. If you think about it, this reveals quite a bit about german culture, and intentionally choosing the wrong form for a given setting transports meaning that you simply couldn't express in english. In addition, there is a whole set of rules around the transition from "Sie" to "Du" among people, while the opposite is a very unfriendly way of treating someone.
The more tricky example is some native indian language (sorry, forgot which one) in which there is a grammatical construct that allows you to express the difference between things that you've seen or experienced for yourself, and things that you have heard about. That makes a world of difference in thought and expression, because you are never confused about what is 1st and what 2nd hand knowledge. More importantly: You must make it clear in your own speech, because there's no ambiguity. The impersonal form ("someone killed Smith") doesn't exist, you have to say either the equivalent of "I saw how someone killed Smith" or of "I've heard that someone allegedly killed Smith".
Even knowing these things makes you think about a lot of stuff in your own language that you took for granted so far. Even if you never learn the language in question (I don't speak any native indian tongues, for example). To really grasp it, though, I think you need to learn at least one foreign language so well that you can think in it. Gives your thoughts more mobility.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
there's always this thing, regarding learning new languages...
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/
...to your brain.
This article provides good coverage of age vs brain development and language processing in the brain>
http://www.parentinginformation.org/braindevelopment.htm
Yup, you should have been learning Spanish and Chinese before or as you started your journey through school.
To oversummerise a British Council report (http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-englishnext.htm), so many nations, so many people, are learning English that monoglots will suffer in job markets in 15+ years, partially because being able to think in another language enables you to address problems in other ways. I think it's already happening in the contract market in the EU; most sites have natives from other EU countries. The professional language is (American) English, so every professional can compete for work in countries where English is generally spoken. But, in my experience, you can only live in a country where you speak the local language, so people can compete with me in my country but often I can't compete with them in theirs. That's the kind of challenge I enjoy (!), which is why, as a Brit, I've learnt some Flemish, French and German. I assure fellow grey-mops it's not difficult to pick up a language when you're 50+, even if you don't have the talent (I don't), so long as you make the effort.
If you're interested purely in fun and mental training, take a look at Toki Pona: a language with just 120 words in which it is nevertheless possible to hold a simple conversation. If you'd like a combination of fun and mental training with some practical utility, there's Esperanto: considerably easier to learn than most languages and a hundred thousand speakers spread over the world, nearly all of whom are well educated. If you only want practicaly utility and don't mind putting in a lot of work, I would guess that Chinese is probably a good choice, though it all depends on your personal circumstances.
so I cannot help but love how logical and orderly it is.
Which German are you learning?
Deleted
Which second language apparently doesn't matter ... as long as you use it reasonably regularly.
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i don't know why everyone is recommending chinese, but they are really idiots. no --- not to be a troll, but get realistic, do you have any idea how poor china is? 90% are farmers living at pre industrial revolution standards. in SHANGHAI most hospitals do not have soap in the restroom --- let alone a random village city of 5 million. also chinese are a bunch of english bandits and will harass you to no end to speak english (even if they can't understand you), so just stay away! (english bandits info http://www.englishbanditry.com/boke/ )
Russian... its a bitch of a language but give it 10 years and as Russia's economy overtakes that of the US then Russia will be outsourcing/offshoring to the US. At this point in time it will be good to speak the language of your new economic overlords.
Some languages are spoken by a lot of people, but the importance of those countries is not very high. So I'd recommend the following (since you already speak english, which would be on top of the list):
* Spanish. This is the language spoken by most of southern america, plus Spain, and you'll get a grasp of italian and portuguese with it as well.
* French. Spoken in France, the carribeans and loads of countries in Africa.
After you've mastered those, in that order, there are several choices which are interesting and of certain importance. In no particular order:
* German
* Japanese
* Russian
* Arabic
* Portuguese
There are several european languages which are not interesting unless the folks in the neighbouring country happen to speak it: Dutch, italian, czech, polish, greek and so on..
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
for an US citizen it depends where he wants to explore: || In the Oil business - Arabic || In general business - Mandarin & Japanese || In the Military - Speak US English || chip-design - learn Hebrew
First, speaking a second language (in addition to English) is 'very nice', but I wouldn't call it 'important'. I do like to put "Indonesian Speaker" on my CV (lived there for a few years), though, as it picks the reader's interest (on a recent agile meeting, we were asked to introduce ourselves by telling one differencing fact; most said silly things like 'I like raw spinach' or serious ones like 'I put integrity in everything I do'. My 'I speak Indonesian' got one of the loudest applause -- second only to the guy whose mother is drawing a famous comic strip for kids).
As for me, being pretty much bilingual in English landed me 4 jobs in 3 English-speaking countries (my friends and colleagues who want to go to London 'to learn English' have a much harder time -- it is acceptable when you're young and willing to work in pubs, but harder when you have 10 years IT experience and a family to feed).
Here in France, there is some pressure to learn German. It is more prestigious and harder to learn than Spanish, so ambitious pupils will take it to get to best schools, a bit like latin. Also, my parents thought that I had a good chance to work there, and get to work with Germans.
So I took German for 5 years (my wife did 7), and even got to visit a German family for a month. These guys -- they spoke better French than I did English, even. Bummer. Long story short: I never had to put my German to test. All the Germans I've met speak adequate English or French.
15 years later, I figure it was mostly a waste of time.
Pretty much the same story with Japanese, which I took for 2 years. Never got interested enough to remember anything.
However, I dearly regret not trying Spanish. My sister did, and got to work more than 2 years ni Spain and Mexico. I personnally visited Spanish-speaking countries 3 times, and was extremely frustrated not to be able to talk with most natives.
Also, Spanish/Latin culture is much more present in Europe and US than German culture. I figure this is one of the reasons I never quite liked speaking German. While I can still vaguely sing lyrics (that I do not understand) of various Spanish songs.
Finally, a word about French. I know a few British and Americans that took French, because they wanted to visit France in better conditions (a little French will help a lot towards winning people's hearts -- at least outside Paris). A bit like my approach to Spanish, then. However, a couple of them landed jobs in Paris. That works mostly if your French is rather good, but do know that this is a real option. That came as an afterthougth, though.
I cannot speak for Chinese or Hindi. I can tell, though, that Hindi is a risky option: it is only one of many Indian languages -- and not even the one spoken in Bangalore (they speak kannada there). Chinese could be the same problem, as you have different dialects depending on the region in China, but my understanding is that it is much more standardize than indian languages.
To sum up: I'd go with Spanish.
Python.
The Portuguese situation is different from the Spanish and English situations, for sure. Brazilians tend to have a hard time understanding European Portuguese, because they don't get to hear a lot of it. Whereas the Portuguese get to hear plenty of Brazilian music and TV. Seriously, they dub Portuguese TV shows into Brazilian Portuguese. The same thing, but in the opposite colonizer-colony direction, happens with Parisian French and Quebec French--the Quebecois hear plenty of Parisian all the time and understand it fine, while the Parisians hardly ever hear any Quebecois, and can't understand it very well.
Both of these examples definitely have to do with the fact that Brazil and France have bigger populations and more cultural impact than Portugal and Quebec; Paris is the center of the French-speaking world, and while Brazil can't claim to be the center of the Portuguese-speaking world, it has an order of magnitude more lusophones than Portugal. There's no such situation for English and Spanish; none of the urban dialects is isolated from any others.
Structural similarities (which you overstate; the phonology of European and Brazilian Portuguese is substantially different) have less of an effect on mutual intelligibility than you seem to think. You can quite easily fail to understand a language or dialect that's extremely similar to yours if you have very little exposure to it. Where the similarity helps is that you can pick it up in weeks instead of years.
Sorry, that's one hella messy sentence that I can't follow. I'll reiterate one of my examples from above: the French in general don't understand Quebecois (nevermind Cajun), but the Quebecois understand the French.
Are you adequate?
English is a more or less universal language these days... especially in the world of engineers. I worked professionally with Japanese, Chinese, Singaporian, Indian (a few different flavours), German, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, British (it's a different language in some places almost), Cuban, and more than a few from former soviet countries. Oh.. let's not forget Italians, I can write a book on that experience.
:
The languages I find most useful to attempt are
- German
- Manderine
Let me justify.
French, while an attractive language is of very little use for most people in the computer business since every French person you will need to do business with will speak English. This is true for many other places, but the difference is, unless you feel you can learn to speak French so well you'd be indecipherable to a native, there's a very strong chance they'll just force you to speak English anyway. I think they take so much pride in their language that they consider Americans speaking French to sound like finger nails on chalkboards. I'm sure there are people that would differ with my findings on this topic, but I am a strong believer there's no universal answer to this issue.
Spanish, there's a niche market in computers where Spanish is a useful language, but if you can speak at least one other language and have massaged your brain to support multiple vocabularies, Spanish is a language which can be learned quite quickly on the fly and consuming financial resources to pay for university courses on the topic is probably wasteful.
Japanese, unless you intend to live and work in Japan with strong Japanese work ethic, learning the language could do you more harm than good. Collegues in Japan like to have their privacy when discussing business issues before communicating their findings to vendors or customers. If you understand their language, it may give you an edge in negotiations, but if they learn you know their language, they'll have to delay any decisions until they have a chance to speak privately. So, even if you learn it, it will work better not to use it unless you want to work in their country with their work ethics. Most American's working in Japan still work hard, but are given a little extra leg room since "He doesn't know any better". Learning the language means you've also probably learned some customs and you lose this advantage.
I can descibe the benefits or disadvantages of learning each language, but you get the idea so far. Here's the reason why to learn German and Manderine.
Manderine is obvious as it is the most spoken Chinese language. In the modern world and modern economy it is likely that at some point Chinese companies will begin hiring Americans to bridge gaps. Speaking their language will make you more valuable especially since much of their designs and documents will already be in Chinese. So it's a valuable skill.
German, this is an important one. Germany is only part of the issue. Learning German will buy you respect in Germany since they consider it flattering that you've learned their language. But getting a job in Germany is easy enough with just English. Ther point is that as an American you will learn a root language which is present in English, but the German roots in English are quite weak compared to the Latin roots. By learning German you'll learn the root language to most other European languages that aren't Latin bsaed. This means that you'll find it easier to learn Latin languages since you've molded your mind to support more than one language and you'll be able to learn Germanic languages much easier. This would give you the Scandinavian languages and quite a few eastern block languages.
The benefit to this is that in times (such as current times) you would be able to leave the U.S. and work in a strong European economy, purchase real estate and convert Euro to dollars during a strong European economy. Working in Germany right now as an American is EXTREMELY profitable and should not be ov
IMHO, when working in IT you'll only need to use English.
Just choose a foreign language because you like it or because you're interested in some cultural aspects of the country where it's spoken. It's the easiest way to learn.
I'd suggest Japanese because the different structure of the language really opens your mind (and according to some research will keep you from developing Alzheimer by keeping your brains active).
PS I'm Italian, I work in IT, I studied English, French and a little bit of German, and sadly I never used French and German for my job.
I speak 3 languages more or less fluently with some sprinklings of more. Congratulations for wanting to learn another language! It certainly widens your horizons (as a human being), no matter what language.
English is fairly good for your engineering requirements, so I would rather look at general, day-to-day requirements for a language. Do you want to travel/live/work in a non-english-speaking locale? Go for a language there first. Similarly if you want to correspond/converse with people who are not native english speakers. Don't assume that everybody can/wants to communicate in english or thinks that english is God's gift to humankind :-)
I would say that since english falls in the germanic language family, you might look at other members of the family first - thought english has 2 problems: more simplified than many of the other languages, and it also includes substantial parts from non-germanic languages like greek, latin, and french. If you want to look at Romance languages, Italian might be a good entry point since it is written very phonetically (unlike e.g. French) and you can move on to other Romance languages from there. (Strangely enough, english was of some help to me in learning Italian.) Although, if you're USAian, you might get more practical use from Spanish.
One of the hardest parts about learning a foreign language, in my experience, is practising it and keeping your knowledge of it alive. Reading alone is not always enough, one has to speak it. I would say if you don't have access to a community of native speakers of the language you are learning, you may be wasting your time, as you will forget much of it in a few years. So find a (social) use for the language you're learning, or learn a language for which you have a need.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
That said, knowing another language can't hurt, but you did luck out you already know the dominant language in science (I'd guess 90+% of all science articles and books are published in english). What will happen in a generation is anyone's guess.
As was jokingly pointed out it might be Chinese or Hindi that is the common language. But I doubt it. Hindi and Chinese speaking people are learning english at a much greater rate than english speaking kids are learning chinese (culture driven not business driven, so it shouldn't change even as the west losses its economic dominance IMHO).
If you want to work in IT, you should probably learn hindi; we've got so many people from India, that i've often thought about it. Their english is good, but with so thick accent that we have a hard time understanding them.
Check out this essay - "Mnemonic chains", I explain how knowing multiple languages can help you memorize something that you hear easier.
Basically, when you hear some information (audio input), you transform that input into another language before writing it down - this way your brain makes several passes over the data - so more of it is cached (or dumped to the archive).
I speak Russian, Romanian and English fluently; I always think and write in English, even though everyone around speaks one of the other two languages. I also find myself translating my thoughts from English before speaking - maybe this is somewhat slower, but as this is another chain in the data processing - I get yet another chance to review my thoughts before making them public.
The essay provides more details, and explains which other techniques can be applied to enhance the effect.
The saddest poem
Why do you folks capitalize the nouns? What are the "evolutionary advantages" of this approach? Is this a bug or a feature?
The saddest poem
More than 1/4th of the Indian software professionals speak Telugu.
Telugu is the largest spoken Dravidian language, the largest spoken Indian language in the Silicon Valley, and the language of South Indian Classical (Carnatic) music.
Some links which show the importance of this language in the United States:
Telugu Association of North America
American Telugu Association
Silicon Andhra
Some languages are not worth learning for their utility but have some very interesting constructs. The Nguni languages of Southern Africa: Zulu, Xhosa etc have a very logical structure. These would be the ideal languages for computer language recognition.... if they had a larger user base, especially geeks.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think it'll really depend on where you plan to work. Spanish will open the door to interacting with a lot of countries in Latin America but, from my own experience, working in Europe requires a good degree of French and/or German to target countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria or France. In these countries, English alone may not be enough if you need to interact with people a lot.
I am a computer engineering major at Purdue University, and am also minoring in Japanese. I don't see why most universities don't require at least some foreign language as part of the curriculum. With the world becoming an increasingly global economy and many international firms traversing boarders, it only seems logical that engineers should be able to communicate with others.
I'm a Spanish engineer, and my advice is to study Spanish. Not for your career (everything in engineering is in english), but for your life. You could even come here to work and enjoy a great style of life. Try it!
You might be interested in the Delft Method, which was created specifically for engineers, to learn a language very very quickly and efficiently.
Chinese (Mandarin)
Spanish (Spain)
English (More people in US than UK, but UK gets cred)
Bengali (Bangladesh)
Hindi (India)
Portugese
Russian
Arabic (Egypt, you'd be surprised how many dialects there are.)
Japanese
German
French
Those take care of ~40% of the world's population.
As a non-english engineer, I have to learn some english in order to understand the books from Prentice-Hall and other publishers. ;-)
Learning a foreign language is thus a pre-requisite for very many people. "No english, no degree".
I almost never have to read non-english litterature.
Then again, it never hurts anybody to be good at Latin - this is the key to learning a lot of languages. English is 90% latin, the remaining 10 percent can be perceived as local dialects
"You can spell colour wrong and get away with it"
Seriously, the parent poster make a very good suggestion, with all the gadget churning industries sprouting up all over the east, learning their language is a very good idea, and being an engineer and all, would broaden your demand. Plus, knowing an extra language is always a great attention catcher in a CV, (except in the case of, say Spanish, which is know by just too many people in the US to still carry a charm) I would strongly recommend Korean, because it has, unlike Chinese or Japanese, a proper set of alphabets (28 i think) and is therefore (relatively) easier to learn for english speakers...Chinese and Japanese are difficult and much more demanding... and Hindi, well since the Indians themselve are quite fluent in english, the need of learning the local won't be necessary (and no, don't waste your braincells on klingon ;-) )
Also, culture wise, The Koreans (South-Koreans, that is) are quite receptive to foreigners, or so I have heard
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
I don't have an advice regartding the particular language choice, but with you beeing an engineer, I have a great advice regarding the technique: Spaced repetition.
Absolutely the best way to hack your brain to acquire as much vocabulary in as little time as possible.
Learn one of the main romance languages and it's a great deal: once you can speak, say, French or Spanish well, you're a week of exposure away from at least being able to communicate in any of them. I studied French--never got fluent but good enough for conversation. Took a two week driving tour on my own through the wilds of Portugal, meeting new people everywhere. After a day or two I could communicate, and after a week I could communicate pretty well. And Italian--as a French speaker, start watching an Italian movie for the first time and an hour into it you'll be understanding almost everything. When I was in high school I saw La Boheme and thought it was in French and understood everything--was quite surprised to be told later it had been in Italian.
Japanese looks tempting because of the size of the economy, spoken Japanese is actually easier to master than some European languages (though the written language is the most complicated for a variety of reasons), but I doubt it'll be useful except in specific situations. I live in Japan and do speak Japanese fluently, so I should be pushing it, but what I see all the time tells me it's not going to that useful. Partly because of its own linguistic isolation, Japan's the economic and engineering powerhouse of the past, not the future. Few Japanese can function in any foreign language, despite putting more effort into it than any other people in the world, so as the business and engineering world comes more and more together, Japan, standing on the sidelines, is becoming less and less important. I often see international groups of engineers and business people on the trains and in restaurants. It's always the same. The European, North and South American, and other Asian engineers are speaking comfortably, all in English, while their Japanese hosts sulk off to the side, relying on the one guy in their group who speaks English to try to be included at all. I'm sure it's the same back at the office. If you're going to go with "oooh, maybe I'll have to deal with these people because they're going to be so important during the time I'll be working" motivation, go with Chinese. If you want to go with, "Well, I'll be working with these folks and they all speak English but I want to be able to speak at least one of their languages so I don't seem like a total chimp," then learn one of the Romance languages. It'll have the side benefit of making you able to communicate through huge swaths of Europe (French or the ability to transmute French into pigeon Portuguese and Italian has vastly improved my stay in parts of southern Europe where nobody spoke English--I don't think such spots exist in northern Europe [my god, their educational systems are doing something right], so German etc. wouldn't be as useful [plus it's harder]). French will also carry you through remote areas in some parts of Asia (look for the old people) and Africa.
If you do want to learn a language, do realize that it's a lot of work. After a year or two of classes, you have got to go live where it's spoken. Use the language day after day, for everything. It's hard and frustrating at first, but well worth the payoff in the end!
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Well there are many things to consider. 1. How usefull a language would be. French, Japanese, German, Romanian, Magrabesh (not sure how to spell it in english) Sure its nice to learn Magrabesh but would it be usefull.. so think ahead where you`d like to move to if thats your plan. 2. The most and I say this very seriously, the most important thing is that you can easily practice that new language. Im french and learned english easily. I watched TV, I chatted on the net I read some books (thank you Asimov) I learned by practicing. Thats the most easiest way, if you can`t practice regularly it will take way longer for you to learn that new language. So thats definetely something to think about when you choose which one to learn.
If you're a little bit geeky it would make sens to chose your language by the number of people you would be able to communicate with.
Since you already speak English, which is the de-facto international language both for business and technical communication you can try:
1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
2. English (480 million)
3. Spanish (320 million)
4. Russian (285 million)
5. French (265 million)
6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
7. Arabic (221 million)
8. Portuguese (188 million)
9. Bengali (185 million)
10. Japanese (133 million)
11. German (109 million)
My personal list would go like that:
1. English (Mandatory. period.)
2. Arabic (Huge opportunities in the Arab world although speaking Arabic is not required a basic level will give you a strong competitive edge and people will love you for trying)
2b. Mandarin Chinese (Will eventually co-rule the world along US/Euro and Indian. You can make a small fortune there if you can understand what's going on. It's probably one of the most difficult language to learn due to complex pronunciation and writing)
3. Spanish (Most of South America and Spain, I wouldn't know if it is useful for business but for travel it's sure practical. I've also heard it's useful to communicate with the maid if you live in the US)
4. French (Not really useful, unless you want to go to France and as Spanish it can be a bitch to learn, but as a US citizen speaking French you'd score lots of point with French chicks if the USD goes back up enough so that you can afford to travel there. A bunch of ex french colony still use broken french as second language, but most of them would understand English anyway.)
5. Japanese (Unless you plan to go there to use your 10 words to impress girls don't. Japanese is useless outside of Japan and there is not that many of them.)
6. Russian (If you want to work there it is almost mandatory, like Russia few people speaks English 7. Hindi/Urdu and other "Indian" dialect. (Completely useless! Despite the shear number of Indian/Pakistani/Bengladeshi who can understand Hindi/Urdu few speak it natively. There are hundreds of different dialects in that part of the world and you'd be lost in translation most of the time anyway. Work language there is English.
As an engineering undergraduate, I spent a lot of time learning Chinese, later I did my graduate work in China, and now I work in China as a software engineer -- And after that large time investment, Im as comfortable using English as I am using Chinese. But with that in mind, I still wouldnt recommend learning a language while your doing an engineering major. Engineering is very demanding and so is learning a language -- if you want to learn well. But the problem is you wont learn a language well in a classroom setting -- you will be distracting yourself from your major and getting little in return. If you want to learn a 2nd language do an intensive language course during the summer (like Middlebury's). Three months of intensive study will leave you far and away more capable in your chosen language than 4 years of dedicated classroom work.
...by the rest of the world, i guess it would be a good idea to learn another language...
You have to know that in most other parts of the worlds, Americans are looked at as a species who believes everything Fox & the rest of the government tells.
So if you learn another language, (French, Dutch, German, Chinese ,Hindi, Urthu, Italian, Russian, Georgian, whatever....) you can finally get another point of view than the one your government wants you to know about.
As a software developer being sent to France this fall for some project meetings, I'd have to recommend -- you guessed it, German. I find that most of the developers I encounter overseas are German or at least German Speaking. I'm actually trying to pick up a bit of French for the trip though. High School French was so little and so long ago!
Actually, of course I encounter a lot of Indian folk (from India, not native americans :P) but usually they have a good enough grasp at english that I just have to get over their accent rather than learning another language.
Being a language geek and having a degree in Verbal Engineering (linguistics) I would say that it is a good idea to learn a foreign language. However, the following items should be taking into account.
Language Learning: In learning languages you need to realize that you will be working in one or more of four language environments. They break down into two passives and two actives. The passives are Listening and Reading while the actives are Speaking and Writing. Listening, Reading, and Writing all occur inside your brain and therefore don't have the "verbal baggage" that you get when you open your mouth and begin to speak. Speaking is a very neuromuscular activity that requires you to practice, record yourself, and develop an ear for what is considered acceptable for pronunciation in your chosen target language. Or, you can just fuddle through it and sound like the typical monolingual American murdering the language without making an effort in learning how to pronounce it right. And yes, you can learn how to roll/trill your "r's" like in Spanish because Bernoulli figured it out and all Airplanes fly because of the same principle (Dog Bless Science).
Language Maintenance: Once you've gotten beyond the "beginner's" equivalent of your language you may come to a sickening realization that maintaining language fluency is just like maintaining a diet and your weight: LOOOONNNNNNNNNNGGG and time-consuming. The more you focus on it the more you realize that there is a good bit of work in keeping your fluency. You didn't have all the childhood years growing up in the language are trying to compensate for all those "lost" years. Hence, the "use it or lose it" adage. Maintaining fluency is easier for the passives (reading, listening) and much harder for the actives (writing, speaking). A lot of effort is involved with the later two and requires to you actively get out and speak or write. Even though this is a slashdot crowd, I won't bore you with the amount of research that supports language maintenance and attrition. You just have to do it and deal with the time involved. Some will pick it up quicker and some will take a lot longer. Remember, languages are not necessarily logical and can have double-negatives that still mean a negative (sorry to bash all you math-dweebs out there, I hope your sensitive logical personalities can handle this) and also far more ambiguous then asking if you've beaten your wife lately. So have fun.
So, pick a language wisely and then be motivated to study it. And no, mathematics is not the universal language because it still can't define emotion other than Level42 equaling the answer. Something up with which I will not put.
Tom
There is no "Swiss" language, they speak German, Italian, and French.
Actually swiss german (Schwyzerdütsch, or however it is spelled) is different enough from German that a German is likely to not understand most of even TV swiss german... let alone "up in the mountains" swiss german.
I have a BS in Computer Science and can speak Spanish and Russian well and I can get by in Portuguese. I studied Spanish in college and Portuguese and Russian on my own after graduation.
While there are certainly benefits to studying another language, I'm not sure that your rationale is correct. Many people who study other languages fail to learn much if anything for a variety of reasons. Unless you are really interested and motivated to do so (thinking it will help you in the future probably won't be enough), you'll fail too. I can't imagine that you would really need to know another language for research.
Here's a few thoughts about other languages.
Spanish - Probably the easiest language to learn for any speaker of a Western European language. Things are always pronounced as they are written and the rules are consistent. The fact that Spanish is easy to learn is a Good Thing and not at all at criticism of the language.
Portuguese - Almost as easy to learn as Spanish. Differences between Continental Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are slightly bigger than between British and American English, so if you learn one, you'll be OK in the other.
Russian - Very difficult grammar. The declensions will take you a lot of time to learn, but the language is the most logical of all the ones I've studied.
Chinese - The grammar is about the easiest in the world. The use of tones is more complex than you could possibly imagine and 99% of the people who suggest that you learn it would fail miserably if they tried that themselves. I'm speaking of Mandarin Chinese here. I do not recommend learning the even more complex Cantonese language.
Arabic - The grammar is incredibly complex. I know little about this language, but it's not any easier than Russian and maybe harder to learn.
Japanese - No tones (yea!), but possibly the most complex grammar on the planet. It will take a long time to learn it.
German - Harder to learn than Spanish/Portuguese, easier to learn than Russian. Widely spoken in a lot of Europe and a very useful language for work in the EU.
Why stop at one? I know a lot of programmers with multiple human language skills. My own experience is that over 36 years of computer programming, I need to learn (actually look forward to learning) a new programming language every 3-5 years or so, just to stay in the same timezone as the leading edge. IMHO, this kind of conditioning keeps the brain paths responsible for the "learn new language" task pliable and more attuned to learning new human languages. Granted, computer languages are not the same as human languages, and involved different requirements (listening and pronunciation for example), but they "feel" similar. Note that I haven't tried any Chinese dialects. When my non-programmer friends (over age 25) describe the process of learning to speak a new language, they use words like "horrible", and "impossible", and I'm sitting there thinking "gee, it's not that hard...". I just wish I had more incentive to use that knowledge on a day-to-day basis.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Learn a foreign language (any one really). Choose a country/language/culture that you like, or have an interest in for some reason. Visit the country. If you get a chance, live/study/work there for a year or so. Nothing else will widen your understanding of the world as much.
In my opinion, people who only speak one language and have only ever lived in one country are incapable of understanding what cultural difference even means, just like a color blind person is incapable of understanding colors. Of course nobody can understand "other cultures"... the world is too big and life is too short, but at least we can really understand that *there are* other cultures, and what this means beyond stereotypes and folklore.
That's one thing I like about Europe as opposed to America. Because we are so many countries close together, we have more experience of foreign cultures. Also, thanks to the Erasmus program more than 1 million European students have lived and studied abroad for a year or so.
English works ok in most places, at least as a starting point.
What you absolutely must learn if you want to work as an engineer outside the US is to work and think comfortably using the metric-system and SI-units, since this is what most people use.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Picking a language in this case is pretty simple, actually. First, look at the research journals you might want to read. Then, look at the journals cited by the different authors in those journals (to get some extra breadth). Whatever language you see lots of articles being printed in, that's the language you will want to learn.
Having said that, the language of science (physics, in my case) is overwhelmingly English, and I expect this will be true in most any science or engineering field. If everything you want to read is already in English, then your choice of language becomes fairly subjective.
If you have to pick a language at random, though, why not pick the language of a country you might want to live or work in? I'm spending the summer working in Italy, and I took a year-long course in Italian at the local U before coming over. I'm still not very good in Italian, but I can at least function on my own if I have to. Life in a foreign country is a lot more fun when you don't need a translator all the time!
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
I had English, French and German in High School, which were mandatory foreign languages (as well as Greek and Latin). I dropped them as soon as I could. My language skills after high school were moderate, and I learned English only really in university when all my study books turned out to be in English. I tried to learn French when hitch hiking through France.
Then I took a Spanish course in Salamanca, only two weeks, and that taught me basic Spanish, enough for tourist needs. I spent one night drinking Sangria with a French girl that didn't speak English, and suddenly everything fell in place. That evening I talked to my Spanish teacher for about half an hour. Strangely enough, my French improved a lot as well....
So my advice, take a course in Spain or Cuba, and drink lots of tequila or rum...
My family and I produce a daily "Learn Hindi Podcast" at http://www.ISpeakHindi.com If you are interested in learning Hindi, this could be part of your approach.
My suggestion to you: make it a priority to learn another widely used language. Now. It will never be easier than it is now. If you have to, take a year off of school and go teach English in another country. School will wait. You don't believe me (even if you're nodding your head you don't really believe me), but believe me - school can wait a year. It will not make any difference at all for you to not be in school for a year. Really.
Don't know what languages to choose? Make sure it's on this list (don't take a year off of school to learn Gaelic, for example): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers If you're American, I would choose Chinese and Spanish in that order, unless you have a good reason to pick another one. If you are European, I would choose Arabic and Russian.
Can I stress some more that you should not wait to go do this? Following my advice blindly would be the smartest thing you could possibly do at this point. As for me, I am going to pay for my children's education on the condition that they do the above.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
My boss has a wife and two daughters, and his side of telephone conversations goes like this:
"Yes ... oh, but ... okay, okay ... yes, dear ... yes ... yes ... all right"
Polish is the best European language you could learn. Here's why:
Polish people are everywhere, but since nobody dares to learn the language they never realize how many of us are there. :-) EU crawls with Polish people. Since I live in Poland I'm stunned so many of us are still around. You'll get "WOW!" from anyone who's ever learned any language and realizes how hard Polish is. If they were dumb enough not to learn any (pun intended) the sound of it is mind-numbing to non-Slavs. Most importantly, Polish people love foreigners that took the great effort to learn it. Just try speaking Polish in Poland.
Accent no substitutes, Polish is the way to go!
I live & work here now, and pretty much everything that guy said earlier about Japan is true- very few people here can even speak basic conversational English, even though EVERYONE learns it for at least 7 years in public school. Their system is shit, what can I say... There is another reason engineers specifically that can speak Japanese & English here are needed- there is a critical national shortage of engineering grads in Japan right now, you could make a killing of a salary with a good company. Bad news- Japanese is a very high rank language in difficulty for English speakers, it takes several years of intensive study to become business fluent. I've been studying 10 years, with my degree in it, and I still barely get by (granted, I never study, just speak to people & listen- living study) If you don't mind an incredibly inflexible and often life-joy sapping work environment, come here and make some serious money after you learn Japanese.
doing it for your research isn't a good reason, unless you're interested in doing a research stint abroad
Doesn't it rather depend what field you're in.
I was a patent examiner (UK) and we had to learn enough German/French to read patents in those languages. Their were some electronics fields with a lot of Japanese stuff - I can see you'd benefit from reading Japanese research matter if you worked in these fields.
Urdu might be good for a programmer?
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
Hi ScuttleMonkey, Given that Spanish is the 3rd language used in Internet, you should consider learning it.
Do it later when you have the time to commit to it, a motivational reason for doing it, and you don't have to worry about it affecting your GPA. The only people I knew at college that did ok in the language classes had already had 2+ years in high school. Foreign language classes at University have two major problems:
1. They take up a huge amount of time. I don't just mean that they are a lot of work, but that they are time consuming.
2. They don't effectively teach you a foreign language unless you stick with it through at least 3 years.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
So you looked at that list and chose "Chinese"? Wu, Mandarin, Cantonese, ...?
There are it seems 7 main Chinese languages, the most spoken language in the world appears to be Mandarin.
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
Don't just learn the language, study a broad
There fixed that for ya!
Note, I'm assuming that the practical engineering mind is asking if it is USEFUL to learn a language. Some nutc^H^H^H^H savants learn languages for fun. More power to them; especially if they can do so while getting an engineering degree.
In reply to other posters. German is useless; I speak it, but not nearly as well as 95% of Germans speak English. Germans KNOW noone speaks their language, they want to do business, therefor most speak English as a matter of course. Italian is also useless; noone but Italians speak it and they really aren't terribly interested in doing business with foreigners. Learn Spanish and you can pidgin your way into Italian in a month or two.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
I think it is a great move to learn a foreign language. I have to ask a question though:
Is it normal for an American to not have learned a single foreign language after coming out of High School?
In Germany, where I live, we have to learn at least two foreign languages. The first is mostly English, although Latin or French are also possible in special schools/regions. Then you can choose between at least Latin and French and depending on the school you are at, you have different choices like Spanish, Russian, Japanese etc...
One tip: If you start learning a language (whichever you choose), try to find as many people to practice with and try to do a semester abroad, if possible in order to not fall for the same problem as many others: They learn the language but forget everything because of missing practice. Naturally that's the case with Latin for me :)
If you are an engineering major, look at the world's engineering centers. Learn the language used by these engineers, but just enough to help you along. I would study practical German, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and maybe some Russian. I would not learn a new language for the sake of learning a new language. I would concentrate on words, terms or phrases in those languages which would help me work with native speakers of those languages. Here's another point. English is sort of the World's language - chances are, somebody in that engineering group will know some English. Somewhere along the way, your knowledge of the foreign languages above will intersect with the little English that they speak.
There's always a possibility of using IVF, isn't it?
Comisia de ancheta din Ministerul Transporturilor a prezentat vineri concluziile in cazul accidentului de la Tancabesti. Pe 25 iunie, o basculanta de mare capacitate, ce se deplasa cu viteza, a agatat pasarela de pietoni din localitate, care a cazut peste doua autoturisme. Un martor a declarat ca basculanta circula cu bena ridicata, acesta fiind motivul pentru care a acrosat pasarela. Eugen Ispas, seful Comisiei de ancheta, a declarat ca soferul autobasculantei circula pe DN1 fara autorizatie de acces. Totodata, Ispas a declarat ca structura pasarelei a fost proiectata sa reziste sarcinilor normale.
For an computer/electrical engineer, the best choices IMO are Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or German. Basically, anything computer related comes from Asia so you'll be (potentially) interfacing with them often. German is good just b/c of the general level of research coming from there (most European languages are similar in usefulness though, but from a supply chain everything comes from Asia).
Learn Hindustani (also known as Urdu or Hindi). It's the national language of both Pakistan and India, and is spoke by more than 900 million people, making it second only to Mandarin. But you should also learn Indian English (yes, there is an Indian English too). Indian English will serve you well in the entire Indian subcontinent. You'd also want to learn Arabic. The Middle East, specially places like Dubai, have a huge demand for IT these days. Be sure to learn Modern Standard Arabic and not a local dialect, as the dialectal variants of Arabic are nearly unintelligible to speakers of other dialects, but everyone understands Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic, with all its extremely diverse dialects, is spoken by about 400 million people worldwide.
Learning new things is addictive and is never a waste.
Language is particularly useful as it gives your brain cells more interconnections as you use different words, idioms, and concepts for the world around you.
I'm currently learning Japanese for my upcoming trip to Tokyo -- it's a really fun excercise and is keeping me sharp for other mental activities (ie: i'm also reading up on 3d math fundamentals and computer vision stuff and some martial arts texts).
It does however, take a little discipline to maintain since it's unlikely that one would use their non-native tongue in every-day use.
Currently, English is the single most useful language in the world. It is the international language of commerce, diplomacy, and - along with math - science. I've met engineering students in Syria of all places that go to school in English.
So, at least at this point in time learning another language isn't the most useful thing for you to do. Predicting the future is hard, and but I would say that English is unlikely to be supplanted in the forseeable future. Its most likely competitor - Mandarin - while spoken by a lot of people, is unlikely to become the international standard simply because the vast majority of those people live in a single country. More widespread languages - French and Spanish - aren't exactly in economic ascendancy, so don't count on them either.
I think this is doubly true of computer programming, since programming languages have a syntax based in English, so programming without English knowledge is extra challenging.
That said, there's lots of other great reasons to learn another language. I like to travel, so I'm constantly bemoaning my restriction to only two languages. If that's your motivation, Spanish, Arabic and French are probably the most useful in terms of opening up the most countries.
French has the most beautiful women...which is the most important consideration for male programmers. Plus French has the quality that it is the language used for 'diplomacy'. What that means is that when you don't want to acknowledge the inherent humanity of some sub-human barbarian culture that has managed to enter your plane of existence, you speak French to them. And they return the insult by refusing to speak the language of oppressive imperialism to you, and only address you in French. Voilà, instant diplomacy.
Plus French is a serious intellectual challenge to learn, even though half of the words are cognates of English. Due to a historical fluke, every Hollywood DVD sold in the USA has French as one of the alternative languages available at a click away. You will notice if you set the audio language to French and the subtitles to French also, that they are NEVER the same. Every movie is translated in the French twice, by different teams: once for the audio and again for the written subtitles. This is a real pain for language learners. It's only a few French original language movies that have the audio and hearing-impaired subtitles identical. I recommend "La Femme Nikita", the original French version by Luc Bresson, which is one serious kick-ass movie. Avoid the lame Hollywood remakes.
Also French is the main second language of West Africa, in case you come to find the European French insufferable (a definite possibility). And, as you may or may not know, French is the native language of millions of people living on the Northeast border of the USA.
So, when it comes to actually learning a second language for your own use, French is the best option. All the other languages can be translated using advanced inexpensive 32-bit computer technology (language translation is the killer-app of the ARM processor). Or you can reasonably expect the native speakers of these other languages to learn English.
Take note however, that there is an unconscious English tendency to assume that an American speaker of a complex third-world language is really smart. That may be, but there is a parallel tendency to assume that person who has not completely mastered all the arbitrary and bizarre exceptions of the English language is not very bright. Try to avoid this logical asymmetricity, as it is racist in nature. English is seriously difficult to learn: be glad that you don't have to master it as a foreign language.
As someone who learned Spanish in college and studied abroad twice, I can tell you that having some grammatical grounding helped a whole lot with being immersed in the language. In Spain I was always thinking "how do I say 'I would have done this if...' or 'when we have eaten we will' or 'if only there were'...". Having to say such things on a regular basis sent me back to the books. Later it became more internal, and eventually I didn't have to think English first at all.
Immersion also helps you practice parsing a long stream of sound into words - if you already know some of the words. Your brain starts picking them out of the stream and reconstructing the meaning. From there you can explore the parts you didn't understand. If you don't know the words, it's just sound.
I'm not sure that I'm really contradicting you here, but I do think that foreign grammar study is useful. You don't have to know what all tenses are called, and maybe eventually you can forget the grammar and just speak, but at first, it helps to know the patterns so you recognize them when you first hear them.
During the 25 years that I've been an engineer, I've never needed a foreign language. The times I've had to interact with foreign clients, they've always been excellent English speakers. On the other hand, being able to speak even a little of the language of your clients could improve your relationship with them, which is always a good thing to do from a business standpoint.
Aside from professional considerations, I'd highly recommend learning at least one foreign language. Foreign travel is so much more interesting when you can actually talk to people. I just returned from a visit to Spain and France. Knowing Spanish made being in Spain a lot more fun. France was also fun, but not knowing the language detracted somewhat from the experience.
If all you know is English, *any* language would do you good. Just pick one. If you are in US, Spanish is a good choice. As are French and German (you would be surprised how many people know these two).
Knowing a second language would help you understand and improve your grammar and train your ear to pick up pronunciation nuances.
And it would be a huge leg up when you try to learn a third one...
I was an undergrad Japanese major and did a few years in Japan before coming back for grad school. It is definitely a useful language and it adds a lot to your resume (provided you're interested in heading to Asia).
Otherwise, I'll admit, speaking Spanish fluently and having access to most of the Central/South American countries would be nice.
Before you learn a foreign language, get your native one right: ..." should be "If my plans are to be involved in research one day ..."
"If my plans are to one day be involved in research
Sincerely,
An Asshole
By all means - you should learn a different language. To quote John Searle: "You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.". I personally feel that knowing several languages has expanded my understanding of all of them, made it easier for me to communicate in any of them, and made me a better person (including a much better programmer).
I personally am not sure I can recommend any language. Hebrew is my mother language (being an Israeli Jew), but it's kinda useless except for Biblical/Mishnathic/etc. research, because most Hebrew-speaking Israelis have working English. I like Hebrew a lot, and find it a wonderful language, but it is kinda hard and as you know, not many people know it (yet).
I've also studied Literary Arabic (or Written Arabic) for 6 years. It's a beautiful language, but very difficult, and counter-intuitive, even for a Hebrew speaker, and Arabic suffers from a very severe diglossia, and most Arabs are not literate. I've spoken with two Arab Israelis who've studied both Literary Arabic and Hebrew, and they both said learning how to read and write Hebrew was easier for them than learning Literary Arabic. Since then I've lost most of my vocabulary.
I also studied French for 3 years in Junior High School. It seemed likeable and nice, but I was told it gets much worse as you study more of it, because there are much more exceptions than words that follow the rules. French is naturally very useful.
Spanish is also very useful, and arguably the easiest language to learn, and I don't know it very well. I was told that it makes learning other languages much harder after one learns it.
See also what I wrote about why Chinese may not become the next international language
We have two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. http://www.shlomifish.org/
You can go to as many classes as you like,but it's an entirely different thing to actually use a language.
You do NOT have to be there to use a language. Sheesh, just now I am practising a second language with you. Don't you see it? it is called "the internet" and will hopefully allow people from remote locations to communicate in the future.
There is instant messenger, and Skype even if you want voice and video chat. There are these cool skype talk rooms where you can enter just to listen to people discussing in one language and if you feel like, you can practice a bit of talking.
There are tons and tons of resources on the net to practice language learning. I would recommend the Michel Thomas series for learning French, German and Spanish. I used them (in conjunction with the Rosseta Stone) to learn German, and I was impressed when I visited Germany at how not-as-bad as I thought was I.
As a person who has learnt English as a second language, I really believe that learning a language is good for every person. It does not matter what career do you have, learning a language will help you broaden your way of thinking, if not only because you will invariably learn a bit about the culture of the people that uses such language.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Which would be more effective in the job search, learning another programming language or learning a real language?
One of those two you will want. I am currently learning Japanese...I really wish I had taken the courses back in school...(I went for Computer Engineering also)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/05/10/offbeat.klingon.interpreter/index.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/11/0235254
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's much harder to learn a language if you can't find something about the culture that you find interesting, because you can not completely separate language from culture.
Read a bit about the modern day culture of a language you are interested in and use that to decide what you want to learn. After that, decide on a "hook", which is a hobby, cultural aspect or other thing that you will focus on. For example, BEER.
Learn how to say everything about BEER in your target language, from ordering and drinking, to getting a taxi home or passing sobriety tests. Eventually, move on to learning how to talk about beer brewing or bribing foreign cops so you can avoid the drunk driving charge.
Either way, find your hook and learn it in depth. You'll find that your ability to use the language to talk about other things improves and then you can actually talk to foreign girls about something...like "No, I didn't put roofies in your beer."
Enjoy!
I took a required 4 semesters of French, barely slipping through on the last one, as a CS major. Though it was interesting, I didn't learn much. You need to learn how to live in a language. Go volunteer somewhere with an immersion program (I was a Peace Corps volunteer), that way you'll have practical skills.
Would anyone except a US native even ask this question?
For the past 50 years it was probably a no brainer that you needed to learn English as an Engineer.
I think one needs to recognize that the days of the USA being the only/best place to get a high tech job are gone.
I suspect speaking only English is going to be a liability in the job market of the future, whatever your degree is in.
Probably the only language you'll be able to get away with as your "only" language will be Chinese, and that's probably not a long term situation.
I suspect English, Chinese, and Farsi will take you a long way through the century, though -- and if you know those, you'll probably have no trouble learning another one when you need it...
Its Hindi not Hindu (Hindu is a religion OR a way of life practiced in India and in the Indian Sub-continent)
Japanese for Hot cosplay women/awesome electronics that we will never see.
Chinese for dealing with our overlords one of these days. Especially chinglish
Mexican-Spanish if your smart and staying or going to the Southwest US.
Indian(not native american) if you ever want to get decent technical support/customer service.
Insofar as engineering/research, I would definitely recommend German. Ultimately, you'll have to decide for yourself, as most people here are only suggesting the languages they are interested in, regardless of their relevance to your question. I'm seeing some predictable trends here; people suggesting Spanish (which is not nearly as widespread in the US as people seem to think), Arabic(which is another misguided trend for people to mention; no one here is learning it). I also found it odd that people are suggesting Esperanto, which definitely will not benefit your career.
First - get out of the country for a year. Whether you learn the language or not, get out of the U.S. and experience life overseas. Once you get married or get tied to a well-paying job and mortgage you'll have a hard time doing anything like this, so do it while you're young. Spend a year in another country - a three week or even a three month vacation won't do it. You need to live there, not visit. Second - Chinese is one of the hardest languages due to the disconnect between the writing and speaking. Unlike Spanish, you can't learn how to say a word and automatically be able to recognize it on a street sign as reinforcement. And you can see a word and simply remember the pronunciation to ask someone what it means later. Even if you're only trying to learn the speaking, the lack of reinforcement will be a handicap. Find out how much phonetics are used in a language before deciding to tackle it. Third - You'll need to learn a language really well for it to help your career. I speak Chinese well enough to hold a polite conversation and handle daily life in Taipei, but not well enough to handle a general conversation or even figure out what a conversation I'm overhearing is about. Though if I know the topic and speaker well I can follow along for while. But that hasn't helped me a bit on the job. I can't be useful at a conference held in Chinese. I can't meet with Chinese clients. And even if I improved my Chinese ability a lot, there are plenty of immigrants from China around me who speak Chinese better. Perhaps you might get a job with a Chinese speaking company helping them interface with their English speaking clients and vendors - but you'll need to speak Chinese well enough to communicate with your co-workers. Finally, get out of the country for a year. You'll never feel so alive and free again.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
... I am quadrilingual!
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esparanto so that you can watch Incubus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1965_film) in it's native language. You will also understand the flame-wars that erupt from proponents of various computer languages.
Being a CS/CE major, how about learning C?
you're an engineering major?
I'd day learn english.
There are lots of people who speak French/German/Mandarin in addition to English, but learning something like (say) Vietnamese would put you in very high demand. Polish is also recommendable. Korean as well, although many South Koreans can speak English at a basic level.
You can't sit on more than one chair at once. If looking for a job in Madrid, for example, the economy of Mexico City won't be of much help. So don't just look at the total economic mass of a language, but rather its hot-spots. Also take into account that some languages are less useful because most of their speakers speak English anyways - this applies to most of the Northern Europe and will soon apply to the rest of Europe, urbanized India, and some East-Asian hot-spots as well. (Though not Korea and Japan.)
If learning Mandarin Chinese (which I would recommend against due to political instability), keep in mind that the dialects of Hong Kong and Shanghai, the two biggest economic hot-spots, are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin of Beijing, Singapore, or Taipei, with the latter also using a slightly different character set.
Since you're an engineer, don't get distracted by finance and services-focused economic hot-spots like Singapore and Hong Kong: high-tech manufacturing still matters.
When you crunch all the numbers, Japanese can't be beat. It's currently the #2 economy in the world, but Tokyo is the #1 economic hot-spot in the world in terms of total GDP, GDP density, number of Global 500 companies, and many other indicators. The modern cultural prestige of Japanese culture also must not be underestimated, and so is their focus on emerging technologies in nanotech, robotics, etc.
Japanese is also the most phonetically-accessible of East Asian languages, which can be very important. Unless learning a tonal language like Cantonese (dialect of Hong Kong) from an early age, you might spend a decade learning it and still not be understood because of bad pronunciation. If you master Japanese, you'll be half-way closer to Korean due to similarity in grammar, some vocabulary of Chinese origin, and cultural concepts like counter words and honorifics. Good knowledge of Japanese, with some additional training, can also enable a reader to catch the gist of a Chinese text due to similar characters being used.
You have not experienced NetHack until you have played it in the original German.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
I took Japanese first (well, forced to take French in elementary school...) and while it took about a decade to reach a useful level, it quickly improves from there. Just... get ready for a loooooong journey to literacy.
Modern standard Arabic may also be useful, but I like learning languages and the difficulty scares me off. Then, I don't do anything with languages that apply gender to inanimate objects.
Korean looks fun personally, I don't know how useful it would be for a random given person, but S.Korea doesn't strike me as a bad place to live. The alphabet is super simple and I learned it in about a day - yes, a day - I'm not that amazing, but it is that easy. My vocab is way behind, but what little I know looks like an easy leap from Japanese.
I also learned a bit of Cyrillic, but I don't know... I think it would be more fun reading Russian blogs and literature than it would be doing business or living there.
And if you're feeling brave, standard Cantonese - at least in Canada here it would be very useful with the tons of people from Hong Kong. Again, get ready for a rough trip - Japanese kanji and Chinese characters draw from the same pool, and it's not like you just get the general idea one day and know them all - you have to learn each one and exercise it so it doesn't get forgotten in the thousands of others. At least in Japanese there's hiragana and katakana that are easy enough to pick up.
Boston University has some excellent Engineering programs abroad. You get to continue taking engineering courses without interrupting your academic progress, with Eng courses taught in English but a chance to learn the local language as well. See http://www.bu.edu/abroad/science/ for a list--specifically, Dresden Engineering, Tel Aviv Engineering and Guadalajara Engineering. I did Dresden 3 years ago, right before BU began offering the Tel Aviv and Guadalajara programs. It's an excellent opportunity to travel and to learn a foreign language and culture. Also, BU takes you on tours of local plants so you can learn about the industrial history and future of these regions.
Spain is the 8th nominally-ranked GDP country in the world:
Who gives a shit about nominal GDP? What on earth is that supposed to tell me about quality of life? That sounds like something Borat would put in his satirical Kazakh national anthem.
I mean, geez, Mexico is even in the top 15 on that list.
Spain is ranked 10th in the Economist's quality-of-life index ranking (before the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK)
Quality of life is very difficult to quantify in order to produce ranks. Does it include how ungodly hot it is in Spain? I mean, y'all may party 'till 5am every night, but that doesn't change the high incidence of homelessness and street crime. Say what you want about the US, but you're not going to get pickpocketed in Washington, DC like you will in Madrid.
Spain is on the high income list by the World Bank and on the IMF's advanced economy list
Admittedly, my perspective may be skewed a bit because I live in a high-income area of a high-income country, but Spain did not seem high-income to me at all.
Look, I have nothing against Spain. I have a great time there every time I go. But there is no way I would have the same economic opportunities there that I do in the US (and that includes the current state of the US economy). Spain is a great country to visit, but not to try to make a living.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I have seen 3 year old children speak Chinese. Why can't you? I guess you are not smarter than a 3 year old.
Well if you work in an industry like the semiconductor industry you better learn to speak and read: Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese and to a lesser extent French and Italian. You'll be all over the world as a software engineer in that industry. The purpose for learning to read especially Korean and Mandarin is you really don't want Koreans and Chinese driving you around it's much better (and I know from a lot of experience) to be able to read the signs and maps and drive yourself around.
Mandarin
Cheers,
Filipino Monkey
Engineering is everywhere. It just depends on where you want to be. I love South America, so I've learned Spanish and Portuguese. If you like the eurotrash lifestyle, learn some european languages. If you want to participate in the Indian takeover of American jobs, you can learn Hindi and other languages from that region.
I plan to retire when I am 45 or 50, or at some other time that is financially feasible, and move to my apartment in São Paulo. What I will have amassed in savings by then should carry me for a very long time down there, but I have businesses operating there that will provide me a modest income.
So, the short story is, my recommendation is to learn a language in an area where a) you would like to live some day and b) american money goes a long way.
There's only one second language you need to learn as a true geek, and thats lojban.