English easy to learn? Although the grammar might be quite easy, think about the relation between how words are pronounced and how they're written. The classic example of writing fish as "ghoti" comes to mind. "gh" from "rough", "o" from "women" and "ti" from "nation".
English has 40 phonemes and over 1000 different ways of writing them (Citation Steve Jones - Y: The Descent of Men). From an italian's (for instance) point view, for instance, this is just absurd.
The argument that pronounciation isn't important for a programmer doesn't really hold either. Human beings obviously have great use of auditory memory in addition to visual memory when learning a language. Just try to learn a natural language without any idea on how to pronounce things.
Since most philosophy students are exposed to formal logic, it's not unlikely to end up going into more technical parts of mathematical logic. So if you're the kind of philophy student who actually think that people like Frege, or even Carnap, was on to something, being good in mathematics is definitely a benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one getting up an advertisement for Sarah Palin's new book next to this article?
There are many women who are stronger and faster than a number of men.
The "men" you are refering to are, presumably, us slashdotters?
English easy to learn? Although the grammar might be quite easy, think about the relation between how words are pronounced and how they're written. The classic example of writing fish as "ghoti" comes to mind. "gh" from "rough", "o" from "women" and "ti" from "nation". English has 40 phonemes and over 1000 different ways of writing them (Citation Steve Jones - Y: The Descent of Men). From an italian's (for instance) point view, for instance, this is just absurd. The argument that pronounciation isn't important for a programmer doesn't really hold either. Human beings obviously have great use of auditory memory in addition to visual memory when learning a language. Just try to learn a natural language without any idea on how to pronounce things.
Since most philosophy students are exposed to formal logic, it's not unlikely to end up going into more technical parts of mathematical logic. So if you're the kind of philophy student who actually think that people like Frege, or even Carnap, was on to something, being good in mathematics is definitely a benefit.