John Derbyshire writes in The Corner about his son's upcoming choice of foreign language in his middle school years. He says
We just got a flyer from the school board asking him to choose a foreign language class. The choices are: French, Italian, Spanish.My advice to him (which of course he will ignore) is just to be hard-headed about it & pick the language most likely to give him an "edge" in future employment.
That rules out Spanish, since the USA is choc-a-bloc with Spanish-speakers, so the market value of this skill must be low.
My emphasis. Question: Do you believe this to be an accurate assertion? Sure, Spanish is by far the most popular lingo in the US after English, but wouldn't being fluent (or close to it) thus be an advantage when entering the job market -- especially for one coming out of a good college (like Derbyshire's kid probably will)? Not only in the US but what about the growing opportunities with NAFTA and now CAFTA?
Derb recommends his son take Italian because he (the dad) likes opera. Wha-a-a ...?
If you want your son to "get an edge" in future employment, Derb, get the middle school to offer Arabic!
I'm with you Hube. My choices were Spanish or French. I took French. I've never used it since. And since languages are perishable, I'd forgotten too much to remain conversant when I actually encountered French students on a regular basis in graduate school. Spanish is far more useful in the US.
In truth, I'd rather study Japanese, Chinese, Greek, or Hebrew than either of the two I was stuck with though.
Posted by: Jeff the Baptist at February 7, 2007 05:51 PMHube is correct here. My brother-in-law was hired at a bank - and they paid for his education and promoted him to assistant manager despite his absolute lack of experience in financial matters - all because he was fluent in Spanish, and the bank was looking to expand into the hispanic market.
Posted by: Ivan Wolfe at February 7, 2007 08:35 PMI took German, and I used it again only because I traveled to Germany. I should have taken Spanish, although I wish I had also taken Latin, but not for any economically productive reasons, but for its own virtue.
Posted by: Paul Smith at February 7, 2007 08:58 PMI'd go with Mandarin. But given only those three, Spanish is an obvious choice. The logical fallacy on the father's part is, or should be, clear -- a language isn't LESS valuable because it's spoken by many others, it's MORE valuable, since the whole point of language is to communicate with others.
Posted by: Al Mascitti at February 7, 2007 09:02 PMI would think it's about the balance between the supply and the demand, not about the absolute amount of one or the other. Having said that, I would imagine low demand for Italian or French in the U.S. now, much less a few years from now.
I agree with Al, I'd study Mandarin if I could. That's easy for me to say, though, since I currently live in China.
Posted by: The Unabrewer at February 8, 2007 12:56 AMMandarin gets my vote as well, but then I'm biased like Unabrewer, having lived in China myself. If I had to do it again, though, with employment as a criteria, I would have opted for Arabic or even Pharsi. Still, Spanish is a good language to start out with, espacially if you want to go into construction. Germans all speak English anyway, and French is just plain useless.
Posted by: G Rex at February 8, 2007 12:23 PM"French is just plain useless." Really? My wife had a very good job for a while because of her fluency in the language. Something's only useless when there are no speakers of the language left. Arabic? Farsi? For what, so you can work for the government? I thought conservatives hated government work.
Posted by: Al Mascitti at February 8, 2007 09:58 PM