<p>Since most colleges require a foreign language credit to graduate, I've been toying around with an idea of seriously learning a third language (I am fluent in Russian). It is most likely that I will double-major in political economy and history (with a European specialization, if offered) and go on to a graduate school, most likely to study something related to international politics/economics. Feel free to toss your ideas around, but I have to ask that you only consider European languages that are not either French or Spanish. I am also somewhat unsure whether other Slavonic languages are worth studying in college, as I could probably learn something like Polish or Serbo-Croatian in a month of intensive study and be indistinguishable from a native. My most pressing concern is basically whether to study a modern or an ancient European language.</p>
<p>Latin or Ancient Greek - both are extremely cool languages that stimulate the mind. Poetry is so much better in the original Latin or Greek.</p>
<p>if you plan on doing something political and working with peeps from other nations, I would go with a modern language. If you simply want to dive in and learn about a langague for the development of your mind, I would say either is fine.</p>
<p>OK, I know you said we should only suggest European languages... but I just have to throw in a plug for Mandarin Chinese ;) aka the coolest language in the world. If I had to choose a European language however, I would go with Italian - a very beautiful language. German is fun to learn, but IMHO, not as much fun as Italian. German would probably be more useful though.</p>
<p>yeah, chinese - or japanese.. both are wonderful languages. ive been reading up on japanese for awhile now and it's great.. takes a long time to learn though. Italian is a great language, very similar to spanish. personally i chose to learn spanish because if you look around, more and more people are coming to here that speak spanish.. and aren't learning english. if current trends continue within a few years something like 25 percent of our country will be fluent in spanish. i would love to have the ability to communicate with that 25 percent. but on the other hand, my one roommate is a math major, and many early math books were written in other languages, so she is choosing not to study spanish. it all depends on what you want to learn it for, i think.</p>
<p>uhh i think he said he wanted to know about european languages...
However important Spanish may be in America its NOT one of the most important languages in Europe (plus he said no Spanish), i would say French, German, English and Italian are all more important than Spanish there. Considering you know english and don't care for French i would pick German because its the most spoken native tongue in Europe by far, and is spoken across 4 countries and northern Italy, and Germany is the center of trade and finance of Europe (as well as London), and is the world's third biggest economy. So if you are interesting in working in the current atmosphere in Europe, German will be the most helpful, plus its one of the most commonly spoken languages in Eastern europe and many people are learning it as a second and third language in the east (i heard somewhere there are as many people learning german as a second language as english in eastern europe, though that may be changing). Now the fact that you could learn a second slavic language so easily makes it a bit more trickier b/c German would take several years. </p>
<p>As far as the modern versus ancient debate i agree with celebrian25 - it depends on whether you plan on current stuff and working with people from other countries or are just interested in historical stuff.</p>
<p>I am not sure about the various ex-WP states, but the preferred foreign language in Russian schools is English (although a few schools do German instead). I am really interested to know whether Latin or German is the easiest to learn without devoting a disproportionate amount of time to it, outside of the classroom - I intend to double-major and hence would probably have a limited amount of free time on my hands anyway.</p>
<p>I think Latin is easier than German. I took Russian my freshman year of college, and people who had experience with Latin had a much easier time with Russian grammar, if that means anything.</p>
<p>Plus pronunciation is easier in Latin, for what it's worth.</p>
<p>how do u get your skin cleared?</p>
<p>opps, wrong thread. sorry.</p>
<p>I know not many schools have this as a major, but Sanskrit and Arabic are great too, really good for business/politics and if you plan to translate literature or study theology, then Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek are very useful. Just something out of the ordinary :)</p>
<p>Hmm, I do not intend to <em>major</em> in any language, hence something like Sanskrit or Arabic would be out of question even if I was interested in Semitic and/or Asian languages. I seriously doubt that I would have time to seriously get into either with a double-major I am planning on.</p>
<p>I want to minor in Mandarin but that would be difficult with an engineering major</p>
<p>mandarin chinese, japanese, and arabic are the most in-demand today. I know they're all hard, but busieness, government, and security all suffer a shortage of speakers of these languages.</p>
<p>Well, the long-term significance of acquiring a resonable knowledge of German or Latin to me is putting either of them down on my grad school application. Given my preferences, knowledge of a non-European language would be useless (besides being unbearably hard to achieve).</p>
<p>off topic but... mmm mandarin chinese reminds me of mandarin beef. yumm</p>
<p>Everybody is trying to get into China's market now.. So Mandarin is a good choice..</p>
<p>can i just take spanish literature, continuing from high school?</p>