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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?
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.
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
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.
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...
Pie chart is also a valuable language
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.
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.
Yes, I can tell that English is not your native language. You use it too well. I could be a nit-pick and find one error (never end a sentence with a preposition ["...the subject you want to specialize in."]), but that's one about which most people either don't know or don't care, so it's forgiven.
As a Canadian, I have had French education since a fairly young age, and despite the general uselessness of French elsewhere in the world (besides France), speaking French is actually useful in Canada, it opens up certain jobs in businesses, government, etc. which are otherwise closed to monolingual speakers. Hell, in Ottawa or Montreal, bilingualism can secure you a job you might not otherwise get at McDonalds!
And so I recommend Spanish for Americans. It's one of the "easiest" languages for a native English speaker to learn. Over 10% of Americans speak it natively. It opens up doors in some State government positions and businesses. Did I mention it's easier to learn? There's considerable exposure to Spanish in American culture, which makes learning easier. How many Russian TV channels do you get from your cable provider?
Which language to pick will ultimately depend on exactly why you want to learn it. If you want to learn because it's fun, for "cognitive exercise", etc., then pick whichever one suits your fancy. 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.
Finally, on language difficulty, the United States government has some useful information on results from its language education programs.
You can go to as many classes as you like, but it's an entirely different thing to actually use a language.
Deleted
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.
Incidentally there is a universal guyspeak. To females, it sounds like grunting, belching, farting, and mumbling. Females just can't understand the beauty of simplicity.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The Chinese have no shortage of engineers. There's tons of them. They need people who speak English and Chinese and are engineers so the Chinese Engineers can talk to their English speaking counterparts and management. Generally speaking, the Chinese engineers ive met have known English, so I haven't had to learn any Mandrin at all to work with them.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Hindi? I'm not sure about that...most Indians in the tech industry are south Indians. In other words, they speak Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil. Not Hindi.
No, really. Look at all of the cities that are described as "the Silicon Valley of the East". They are Bangalore (Kannada-speaking), Hyderabad (Telugu-speaking), and Chennai (Tamil-speaking).
If you're going into engineering and want to move to India, look to the south.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
is it worth my time to learn a foreign language? If so, which one?
Girlspeak.
You must be new here. Learning girlspeak would be useless to /. readers.
Only speak when it improves the silence.
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
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?
I am a Software Engineer and I have. Depends on what you are doing, but to collect requirements there are lots of situations that it is handy. If you are doing chip design, then yes, maybe Chinese or an Asian Language would be good, but if you are building something there is nothing like talking to the people who are going to actually use it. A lot of Engineers try to avoid talking to the end customer, but there are lots of these folks who write amazing code and build a crappy product.
Learn Swiss..........Swedish hot chicks
Layne
I would think Swedish chicks would speak Swedish and Swiss chicks would speak German, French, Italian,or Romansh...
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.
However, most people from India you meet will have some knowledge of Hindi if they're not completely fluent. It's an official language and the language of most of their major films. So if you're going after a common tongue, Hindi is probably the safest bet.
If you know specifically what city you want to go to, or you know specifically that you will be dealing with people who hail from one particular city, then obviously go with that language (I seem to recall a lot of Tamil speakers at school).
Sorry... geek is universal. Hot chicks will ignore you in any language, so why waste the time?
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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.
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
When I was a wee lad of 16 summers or so, I took 2 years of Latin in high school. Then when I got to the big kids school, the university, I took a year of German and a year of Russian, while also learning Pascal, Fortran, PL/1, Cobol, Basic, and VAX Assembler. Now, nearing the half-century mark (and on that long slope down) I've taken up Japanese, studying it for the past 3 years (and took a trip to Japan for a month, too. Worldcon 2007 FTW.)
On a bad morning, I can get confused enough to sound like I know Klingon...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Chinese engineers and scientists generally learn their trade in English. When speaking about technical topics, two native Chinese will frequently switch to English.
Don't learn a language for your career unless you have a clear need. Learn a language now that really appeals to you to make learning other languages later easier.
From my experience age in terms of learning a language only matters in one point:
As an adult you have a much much higher expectation of what you want to convey in another language than a child.
Example:
After 1 year learning of another language, its fine for a child to say 'me want lollipop' while for an adult usually nothing less than 'My good man, can I have that lollipop please, and don't give me the tourist-price, I know how this works' would be acceptable.
The benefit Kids have is that they're not inhibited to actually use the language, to play with it, even if it is wrong. But THAT single thing is the secret of learning a language - using it!
Adults are far to set up on getting it right, so they don't talk at all in the first place.
I studied Japanese, and the first time in Japan I was shy and taken back.. guess what, I didn't get anything from the trip language-wise. Second time in Japan I dropped all of that, and - o wonder - people talked to me and in just 3 weeks my abilities in reading and understanding the language doubled from what I brought there.
For what to study - If there is a region of interest, lets say europe or (south)east-asia, I would say any of the languages spoken there is fine. In Europe I would tend towards German or French - either one combined with english will make it easier to learn the other partner later. If Spain or Italy is the target - Italian. It is apparently easier for someone speaking Italian to pick up Spanish or Portuguese. In East-asia I would pick japanese again. Japanese is a well traveled language, it evolved through several other languages. With an understanding in Japanese it is easier to pick up Korean later (or vice versa - they hate to admit it, but it is almost the same). Japanese is a better basis for learning Chinese than the other way around (my opinion). And the basic principles how Japanese works grammatically can be found again in other Asian languages.
For why to study: if you plan to go to Europe, any other language than English will give you bonus points on your resume. It shows that you're willing to invest time to accommodate and to learn. Same is true in Asia from what I saw.
There's a lot of computer related tech research coming out of China and Korea these days, and I would expect both countries to grow in those areas. If you're learning a language for professional reasons either would be good.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As a foreigner, you'll be surprised on how many foreigners you'll meet. Since every exchange student is more or less on it's own, they're all trying to make the best of it. AND PARTY :D Meeting local people might be more difficult, just because they're not mixing with the foreigners as much, and he'll have to do an effort to learn the language of the country you're going to. But the experience will be worth a lot, not just on the resume.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
You learned how to read/write using the grammar-translation method, which isn't in itself a useful method for learning language. Even classical education recognizes this. For it, learning's merely a way to expand your mind.
Do you know how to conjugate verbs in English, or do you just use them naturally (and get the conjugation wrong sometimes)? Can you give me the grammar rules for English speech? Maybe you can, but they're certainly not require to speak well, and I'll damn well bet that you didn't even think of them while writing your response.
Language is not a skill you learn about then practice. It's acquired. The way it's acquired is understood fairly well, though there is some controversy. There is a lot of real, solid research on this fact about acquisition. Start by reading Krashen's work on it, back from 1981, then move forward to more complete stuff.
You're trying to put your personal experience and some common sense onto a well-researched subject which contradicts both. Accept it.
Put identity in the browser.
I'm an engineer, too -- a serious math geek -- and I'm asking you to think about what you propose in terms of your native tongue (recognizing that L1 and L2 acquisition aren't exactly the same but share similarities).
Grammar is never explained to you as a child. You hear things in context, notice word colocations, and reproduce speech in the language. As a child, you go on understanding 80% of what you're talking about when you talk to a more advanced speaker. As an adult who is used to understanding everything, going back to that situation makes you extremely uncomfortable.
Still, I bet you didn't classify English as you were learning it. You just naturally acquired it. Sure, it took years -- that's what it takes as an adult, too.
As you and your wife found out, survival language is possible through the method you propose. True fluency isn't. Language isn't a skill that way. Context and comprehensible input make a second language center.
Put identity in the browser.
I agree that Spanish is not much spoken in Europe outside Spain; still, it's the SECOND most-spoken language by native speakers (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language), it has LOTS of non-native speakers and it is certainly much easier than Mandarin Chinese . Last but not least, it opens you the doors to other neolatin languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages); after Spanish, learning Portuguese, French and Italian is a breeze (at the risk of confusing them a bit...)
It's currently $1.49.9 /litre here. I'm laughing at everyone who didn't take my advice over the last few years because they "needed" a van or suv. I'll be laughing even harder when it hits $2.25 /litre.
"I need a van because I have a child now" is fucking retarded. If you're that bad a driver that you need a van to protect your kid, you shouldn't be on the road in the first place - and the higher gas prices WILL take care of that.
Higher gas prices will force us to do what we should be doing anyways. For example, more telecommuting, 4-day x 10 hours work weeks instead of 5 day x 8 hours, moving closer to work, driving smaller cars, driving slower, better organizing, even *gasp* walking, biking, or taking public transit.
It's amazing the sense of entitlement that people continue to have towards their "right" to drive 3-ton gas guzzlers.
Kevin Smith on Prince