<p>OK, so my college has a lovely 2-year language requirement that I need to survive. Problem is, I'm having massive difficulties deciding which language to take. Can anyone help me out and give me some advice?</p>
<p>I'm an international who's interested in a career in international affairs, public policy, foreign service, NGO work, social science research, etc. </p>
<p>My options:</p>
<p>1) ARABIC OR CHINESE (either of these would probably interest me the most but I've heard classes are extremely difficult and I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice a high GPA to know the language</p>
<p>2) GERMAN OR PORTUGUESE (I'm almost fluent in both but have difficulty writing and speaking in highly advanced levels. Ex. I probably wouldn't be able to work in a highly-demanding job in Germany. Probably my last choice option since I'd be bored to death.)</p>
<p>3) FRENCH (I have some grounding in it since I took it in HS but have forgotten most of it. Very useful for my career but seems to me a bit boring.)</p>
<p>If anyone could also comment on the difficulties of college arabic or chinese classes, that would be very appreciated as well.</p>
<p>To do well in Chinese you need to 1) be able to hear and differentiate the tones and 2) be good a memorizing characters. Grammar-wise, Chinese isn’t particularly difficult. </p>
<p>I found Arabic grammar to be very difficult–it just doesn’t operate like Western languages. </p>
<p>That said, surely this school isn’t going to make you start at German I. You might be able to take some German literature courses that would be a lot more interesting than slogging through learning grammar and vocab of a completely new language.</p>
<p>Qialah is right - I’m sure your school has a placement test for languages. Mine has a 2-year requirement for foreign languages as well, but you can place out entirely just through the test. If anything, you would only have to take 1 semester of a course in German or Portuguese, which I think would be quite survivable.</p>
<p>Well assuming you already know English, which will already be helpful for much of the Northern Hempishere, and parts of Southern Hemisphere. Spanish would be helpful within USA and Southern hemisphere, I think that would be very logical.</p>
<p>i think it would make the most sense to take french. i took arabic for about 4 years and i’m not fluent nor can i read very well. i know nothing about chinese but arabic is pretty difficult to learn from scratch.</p>
<p>I would go with either Arabic or French. I took 4 years of French, and it’s a beautiful language that’s really not very hard. The hardest thing about it (IMO) is all the extra consonants in words that are silent, but once you learn basic pronunciation, it’s not too bad.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses so far! Alrighty, some feedback:</p>
<p>@coolbrezze, haha i actually know quite a bit of spanish. I think I’m about 60% fluent. But yea, that’s also an option for #2, forgot to put that in…</p>
<p>@llpitch, yea I know most students have the 1 year requirement, but I’m almost 100% sure that I’ll major in international relations, which requires 2 years (2 classes which are lit based ones…)</p>
<p>I think the common consensus is that Chinese is easier than Arabic, right? I’ve heard this before…</p>
<p>One thing I didn’t think about is that after my 2-year requirement, I probably won’t take any more foreign language classes, which means I might forget (again…) some aspects of the language. I think I’m leaning towards French now because I’d be interested in doing study abroad in France during my junior year. But we’ll see.</p>
<p>You could always add a foreign language minor so that you don’t forget! That way you can learn more about the culture and literature/grammar of the language. You might even be able to do study abroad!</p>