I’m going into college this year to study international relations, and I realize that international relations and a foreign language go hand in hand. In high school I have taken Italian for 4 years, and I was debating whether I should continue with Italian in college, or take a more useful language like Spanish.
If I take Italian I’ll obviously have the advantage of already knowing at least the basics-intermediate stuff and most of the grammar, and so would have a solid foundation to work off of. I’d have to work more or less from scratch however with Spanish (though I know the two languages are similar, so not completely from scratch). However, Spanish is far more useful than Italian.
Which language should I take in college? I’m of Italian descent, so it’s important to my dad (who’s a first generation immigrant) that I learn Italian, yet at the same time, it’s pretty useless I think outside Italy if I want to have a second language for my IR degree.
Most people I know in IR have at least two foreign languages, so it might be a good time to switch over to Spanish.
For most IR programs, you need to choose a thematic specialty and a regional/country specialty. So, it depends on what areas interest you. If you’re interested in Western Europe, Italian is good, but it wouldn’t hurt to add another European language. If you are interested in Spain or in Latin America, learn Spanish, too. If your interests lie in another region, learn a language relevant to that region.
Since you’ve only taken the equivalent of two years of college Italian (intermediate level), I would recommend another year of Italian to bring you to a higher level of proficiency unless your region of interest has a non-Western language, in which case you should study the new language for four years to gain as much proficiency as you can. You’d still have time to do three years of another language, too.
If your region of interest is Western Europe, Italian can still be a useful language (spoken in Italy, parts of Switzerland, the Vatican), recently Italy also is a target country for refugees and immigrants fleeing North Africa, and Italy is a NATO member, US ally, and trading partner. The UN FAO also is headquartered in Rome. On the other hand, French and German are the languages of the two major West European countries, plus French is an official language of the UN and it is spoken in several areas outside Western Europe.
I was thinking either Africa or Latin America, but Western Europe would work. I know French is pretty widely spoken (relatively speaking anyways) in West Africa, but I figured of the two, Spanish would be more useful. Western Europe would work since I’m already big into European history, and, as you said, there’s the migrant crisis there, so it would tie in to north/east africa and the middle east quite well.
Maybe I’ll see where I test in Italian (I wasn’t great at it in high school. I can understand it a bit, but I’m by no means close to being fluent, although if I try I can get by in the language), and if I place well enough, I’ll do Italian 1 year and then 3 years of Spanish.