2nd Language for Business Economics & Finance Double Major

footballfan832 · May 29, 2009, 2:01pm

I'm planning on double majoring in business economics and finance. What second language should I take? By the way, I took Spanish in high school and didn't do to good. My options for a 2nd language are: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Spanish.

Last question: what type of job would I be able to get with a Business Economics & Finance double major?

yawn · May 29, 2009, 2:14pm

I actually made a chart about which languages would be the most practical:

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…the first four columns have to do with these languages’ Wikipedias. In other words, their intellectual depth, as well as their prominence in terms of global Internet usage. The other three columns are self-explanatory.

In all columns, the higher up, the better.

The calculations at the end average their overall scores. The highest are the best, and the lowest are the worst. Keep in mind that this is skewed by non-economic/financial factors (i.e., intellectuality). If you’re concerned solely with GDP, just stick to the two relevant columns.

Of course, Japanese and Chinese are much harder for a native English speaker than the European languages. And if you’re more interested in Africa, French would make more sense, and, of course, go with Spanish if you’re more interested in South America.

The Japanese economy will likely shrink massively over the next couple of decades (due to its shrinking population), as will most European countries. The Chinese economy is likely to grow, and may eclipse the US economy within a couple of decades.

sp1212 · May 29, 2009, 2:15pm

Well if you didn’t do good in Spanish at a high school level, how will you do good in any of the other languages at a college level?

Spanish is probably the easiest foreign language to take.

Other than that, I would go exactly with yawn’s list.

footballfan832 · May 29, 2009, 2:26pm

I didn’t try in Spanish at all (I was a lazy freshman). It sounds like I should take Chinese. Would Rosetta Stone help at all before I start taking classes at my school?

yawn · May 29, 2009, 2:28pm

You can actually learn just about any language you want online.

I have almost two dozen online resources to learn Chinese - all of them free (and all of them legal).

I could share them with you if you want.

footballfan832 · May 29, 2009, 2:33pm

I also have to take the classes in college (its required). Should I start learning Chinese online now or just wait until college?

Yawn, can you share your online resources with me? Thanks in advance.

yawn · May 29, 2009, 2:40pm

Here you go:

This isn’t in any order. You’ll have to go through all them and decide which ones you want to use, and in what order you’ll want to use them. There is, of course, a good degree of overlapping (but you can just view that as “reinforcement”).

The Wikipedia articles at the top and the book at the very end are more just to learn about the Chinese language, and to understand it from a linguistic, historical, and demographic point of view. The rest are your standard “learn Chinese” resources. The YouTube videos are great, because you can actually hear it being spoken, which is, of course, very important.

footballfan832 · May 29, 2009, 2:43pm

Wow, this is awesome. Thanks for all of the links. How long did it take you to learn Chinese?

yawn · May 29, 2009, 2:50pm

I actually haven’t learned Chinese. I’m just interested in linguistic demographics. ^_^

I have tons of resources for many different languages. It’s just a weird hobby of mine. :x

You’ll almost certainly never become fluent in Chinese. But, with a good deal of time and effort, you should expect to be able to use it with a degree of ease within a couple of years.

Keep in mind that it’s a tonal language. Some people just don’t seem to be able to grasp the idea of speaking tonally. After a while, you should be able to gauge whether or not you’ll get the hang of it.

BC2011_25 · June 1, 2009, 8:28am

You should take accounting as your second language, haha.

MD_Mom_1 · June 1, 2009, 9:29am

Get some language advice (from your university advisor)before jumping into college level language. Chinese is quite difficult. If you had difficulty in Spanish, you may want to see if a language aptitude test (I don’t even know whether such a thing exists) is available for you to take that might indicate which language would suit the way you learn.

Yawn–love your chart.

footballfan832 · June 6, 2009, 12:49am

For my first two years I’m pre-business at the University of Arizona. My adviser said that Chinese was the best foreign language to take for business so now I’m signed up for Elementary Chinese to get rid of my 2nd language requirement. I’m planning on majoring in Accounting and then applying for UA’s entrepreneurship program my senior year. Hopefully Chinese will become useful sometime in my life…

Sleepy_Sentry · June 6, 2009, 12:11pm

That is am amazing chart, “yawn.” Thanks for sharing. You are right on target with your predictions.

I am in a similar scenario as the OP. I am starting an international trade & finance major as a freshman and would like to pair a language with it, but already have two years of Spanish and three units of college-level Latin under my belt.

Chinese is a good language to learn, but if you had trouble with Spanish, Chinese will be 10x worse. Go ask any Asian language major, even if they are good with languages, and they will tell you how hard it is.

One thing I have been considering that language programs don’t always seem to want to answer is how much study is necessary to become fluent or a at least capable. Some have told me that it takes five years of Mandarin Chinese to reach even an elementary level of competency, but my university’s Chinese program doesn’t mention anything about this.
Can anyone with Mandarin experience comment on this? If I do any Chinese, it will be a minor only.

I don’t think European languages have received their fair due in this thread. Learn one Romance langauge and the others will be very easy to pick up. If you know Latin, Italian, Spanish, and Romanian become a cinch to learn. Learning Mandarin doesn’t make Japanese any easier, but a strong knowledge of a Romance language will pay itself back twice over if you learn another.

Spanish and Portuguese would be a killer combination. French is still important in international business circles so mixing that in would be a plus.

On a final note, my high school Latin professor made a very good point when I asked her what languages I should take. She recommended Chinese or Arabic, not necessarily because of demand, but because those two languages are hard to learn on your own and are still relatively uncommon in Academia. A Romance language is much easier to gain competency in with an intensive 6-week class or self-study after college.

I am still somewhat unsure of which foreign language path I wish to pursue, but am leaning towards a dual Spanish and Chinese minor so I can get the best of both worlds.

yawn · June 6, 2009, 12:47pm

^ Here’s an excellent table regarding the relative amount of time it takes to become proficient in any given language:

[Language</a> Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks](<a href=“http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers]Language”>Wikibooks:Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, open books for an open world)

rosedust · June 9, 2009, 10:40pm

@ Sleepy - You should look into how your university structures your Chinese program first. It really depends on structure, at least for me. Our classes at the elementary and intermediate levels weren’t bad, but that’s because we did not have native speakers in our classes. Once we hit the “advanced” level, the two classes were integrated - native and non-speakers. It was very difficult to learn anything because the course was trying to cater to both types, which for me made it that much harder to learn anything worthwhile. Add on that I’m on a quarter system and it makes things much more difficult.

If you do take on Chinese, I would recommend watching dramas and speaking with as many people as you can. It’s an insanely difficult language to learn and requires a lot of self study/practice outside of the classwork. Depending on how your university structures the classes, for me I feel I would have been better off going abroad and attending a language program instead.

And also, it would help if you had a genuine interest in the language and culture. Chinese gets hard once you hit the third year and if you’re only doing it for business reasons…I’m not sure it would be worthwhile in all honesty.

rosedust · June 9, 2009, 10:45pm

And also…this thread might help or might not -

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/713063-worth-learning-chinese.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/713063-worth-learning-chinese.html</a>

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