Foreign Languages

[Muse]

Like I said I think Spanish should. Its been growing like crazy and is a beautiful lnaguage.

[Sharptooh]

IMO one language should be spoken the world over, and I know this sounds uber selfish and nasty but that language should probably be English.

Yes, let's just complete the steamroller of everyone else's cultures and have everyone speak English, watch Fox News, and eat at McDonald's. Grand idea.

Ideally a new "standard language" should be created and we should all learn that alongside our traditional language but I believe this was already tried, and failed miserably . . .

Most countries teach English mandatory because most of the biggest economies in the world speak English, it doesn't mean it's the only language people in that country know though, and that's not the way that it should be, as you've rightly said.

The three biggest languages as of writing this are:
1) Chinese
2) English
3) Spanish

It's much more efficient to learn just one of those than to try and learn French or German (and most other languages imbetween) I'd barter way more people are fluent in Spanish than French and German combined.

But English is probably the most useful and accessible because it's latin based (unlike chinese) more spoken than Spanish, and the largest economy in the world (Amerika) is an English speaking country.

[Neobaron]

Why spanish?

The countries that speak it are, by and large, complete garbage in terms of their contributions on a global scale, and the language itself is like a filthy, unmoderated cousin to french.

I would say chinese BUT on the condition that music is banned. Have you ever heard a chinese pop song?

[windhound]

lolNeo
According to wikipedia, which I'm going to lean heavily on here, there's 128 million French speakers and 390 million Spanish speakers.
Doesn't matter how ugly or kludgey a language is, if 3x the number of people speak it the graceful one loses out.

And all combined, there's 1.5 billion people who can speak English -- this including English as Second Language people (750 million)

There's 1025 million Mandarin speakers, but I'm not sure how fair that is -- with English dialects you can understand most people, even if they sound different.  I've heard that with the various Chinese dialects you can't necessarily understand someone from a different area.  Feel free to correct me on this though.

I'm curious, this may be a silly question, but computer programs, websites and such -- afaik they're all english based as most of the early dev. work was in the US.  Programming languages like C, Fortran, Java, etc -- all started in the US and thus English based. 
The user interface can be multilingual, but the underlying code remains english based, yes?


I took 4 or 5 semesters of Spanish in High School. 
I can count and say "No hablo espanol" but that's about it.  Como se dice...
Doesn't really impact me so I never bothered to expand or retain any of it, but I think a second language should be a core subject in schools.  Usually comes with a brief history and culture lesson of an area you wouldn't otherwise learn about.

[Neobaron]

I was mostly kidding, but spanish really is awful.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

Haha, I quite like Spanish. I learned it from the age of 11 to 16, along with German, and I can't really remember much of it. I'm sure I could pick it up again though.

It's mandatory to learn at least one foreign language in school in the UK, at least up until year 9 - I think. I wish I'd had the chance to learn Mandarin though, I think it's being taught at some schools now.

I also did after-school Japanese when I was about 10. I can remember all the ways to say 'hello'. :P

[Pippin]

Haha, I quite like Spanish. I learned it from the age of 11 to 16, along with German, and I can't really remember much of it. I'm sure I could pick it up again though.

It's mandatory to learn at least one foreign language in school in the UK, at least up until year 9 - I think. I wish I'd had the chance to learn Mandarin though, I think it's being taught at some schools now.

I also did after-school Japanese when I was about 10. I can remember all the ways to say 'hello'. :P

yeah i done french till year 9 and just considered it a waste of time, much like most of year 7, 8 and 9 as it doesnt affect your options other than a teacher liking you (no pedo).

no secondary language should be mandatory, being forced to learn a language you havent and wouldnt use in the future is of no use

[Ashyra Nightwing]

You're forced to learn things like physics and wood tech at school and you might never need to use them in the future either. I don't see any harm in teaching kids a language at school up until year 9 - it's not going to be useful for everybody but in terms of school subjects what harm can it do?

[Shadow]

School is more about learning to think than about the specific subjects you study. Learning another language can give valuable insights into your own.

[Pippin]

i see school just as getting GCSEs for future education and jobs, french wouldnt benefit that unless there was a good looking french secretary involved or maybe traveling abroad for whatever reason

[Muse]

I agree with shadow and am adding on to his arguement. Its amazing how much our language islike Spanish. Spanish is really quite easy or at least vocab when you see the connections. Cantar means to sing. In mass we call the person who leads the singing the cantor. Frio means cold. What do we do when were cold? We freeze.
But the best one is Frito. It means to fry.. What are Fritos? Fried corn chips. This is mostly because of our common latin roots.
And Neo one Spanish is a beautiful language. Two recognize the words burro, ranch, taco, chihuahua, churro, mesa, guitar? Its amazing how ignorant we are of the huge amount of Spanish words that we selfishly and unthinkingly call ours.

[Neobaron]

BECAUSE EVERY WORD THAT HAS A LATIN ROOT COMES FROM SPANISH.

AM I CORRECT?

[Muse]

Not at all. But Spanish is very close to both latin and english. How many german words do we use or really even french.

[Neobaron]

You are not a real person.

You are not a real person.

You are not a real person.

Can someone please make this stop?

[Muse]

Ok honestly? I am completely real. But am I wrong?