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Originally Posted by biznatch
I agree that Americans need to actually learn and KNOW another language. How many have I met that took 4 years of Spanish, or French, and still can't string 4 words in that language together because all you needed to do to pass the course was show up.
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That would be me--I took 3 years of Spanish, was a very good student, and can string together a few sentences now (12 years later) when I'm in Spain, but otherwise all that investment went to waste because I *never* had to speak it out loud, except for when called on in class. If I had been obligated to spend even a couple of weeks or a month in Mexico, especially in a rural area (not Cabo or something else like that), it would have done a world of good for my language practice/retention.
The only time when I actually became fluent in other languages was when I had to live in the country for an extended period of time, in a total immersion situation (Icelandic), or at least studying it intensively in a structured course, hearing it at home, and then using it almost daily in my work (Thai). Those are the two best things to come out of my degree in anthropology so far--improving my heritage languages to the point where I am fairly comfortable conducting semi-complex conversations. I only wish that I had been forced to study these languages much, much earlier, so that I could be truly fluent.
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Originally Posted by biznatch
However, I'm French, and I don't think learning French should be one of the main choices. Spanish, definitely. But French? you can speak it in France, Quebec, and a few African countries, which, let's face it, most Americans will never go to (or care about).
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I don't know, I still think French is quite useful (especially as a base language, for the other Romance languages)... it is the second language in Lebanon, my husband's country, and I wish I could speak it so that I could communicate better with my in-laws. It's also spoken in parts of SE Asia, which would be handy when traveling around there. But I see what you mean... maybe Chinese or Arabic would be a better choice.
I'm shooting to pick up French and Arabic next, as those are my husband's languages and it would make a world of difference when talking with his family. We both feel very strongly about raising our kids at least bilingually, trilingually if we can get away with it, or even more if we end up living abroad for periods in the future. The more languages the better, I say... the human brain can handle so much more than we'd like to think, if we just feed it properly.
