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Learn a Foreign Language As an Engineer?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the math-is-the-universal-language dept.

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?

11 of 1,021 comments (clear)

  1. Suggestions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Klingon.

    1. Re:Suggestions... by SQLGuru · · Score: 5, Funny

      Learn Norwegian......Norwegian hot chicks
      Learn Portugese......Brazillian hot chicks
      Learn Swiss..........Swedish hot chicks
      Learn Japanese.......Cosplay...errr Japanese hot chicks
      Learn Khoisan........because noone else will (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages)

      Layne

    2. Re:Suggestions... by reddburn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.
    3. Re:Suggestions... by Jac_no_k · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you speak a bit of Japanese, fluent in English, and have technical skills, it's fairly easy to find work in Japan. I ended up in a company based in New York operating an office in Japan and I've been getting by with no Japanese at work.

  2. stick to english by Surt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Qu'vatlh ghuy'cha' jay'! by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hab SoSlI' Quch!

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  4. Questioned Answered by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  5. Depends on what you want to do by Yold · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  6. The language of engineers by DancesWithBlowTorch · · Score: 5, Insightful
    How about German?

    • It has more than 100 million native speakers, at least twice as many people who can speak it fluently. In northern and eastern Europe, it's among the most widely spoken foreign languages, together with English and Russian.
    • It has a very logical structure. Learning German might actually help you with maths.
    • If you are planning to work in the car industry or in renewable energy at some point, going to work in Germany for a while might be a very interesting option. They have a lot of good technical universities, research institutes and engineering companies, some of them among the world's best.
    • Ever wanted to read Einstein's, Schroedinger's, Bohrs, Heisenberg's,... original papers, in the language they were thought out in?
    • In contrast to the French, Germans are actually welcoming, friendly and understanding towards people you don't speak their language fluently. Most people there speak English as a second language, so if you ever go there, you will be able to settle in gracefully.
  7. Japanese works great for career purposes, too by patio11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    1) Japan is the world's second largest economy (going to be 3rd eventually after China gets big)
    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) ... almost NO Americans speak business level Japanese
    5) ... this gets in the way of multi-million dollar deals every day of the week

    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.
  8. Re:If you're going to live in the US ... by elbonian · · Score: 5, Informative

    It makes me sad to hear you say that from Spain, it just shows your lack of knowledge.

    * Spain is the 8th nominally-ranked GDP country in the world:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

    * Spain is ranked 10th in the Economist's quality-of-life index ranking (before the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index

    * Spain is on the high income list by the World Bank and on the IMF's advanced economy list

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

    But what else can I say? you are way smarter than me... right?