3rd Level Language

RuehlTheWorld

Hey Guys, just wondering what language you guys think would be good to study with Business/Commerce in college.

French
German
Spanish
Italian
Russian

Most colleges only require one modern language regardless of the course desired. I'm doing French right now and have no idea whether to just keep with it or dive into a new one.I have a pretty good aptitude for languages.

What do you all think?

Swizz

RuehlTheWorld wrote: »

Hey Guys, just wondering what language you guys think would be good to study with Business/Commerce in college.

French
German
Spanish
Italian
Russian

Most colleges only require one modern language regardless of the course desired. I'm doing French right now and have no idea whether to just keep with it or dive into a new one.I have a pretty good aptitude for languages.

What do you all think?

Chinese, is the new business language of the world. The above are useless!

irishmonkey

Swizz wrote: »

Chinese, is the new business language of the world. The above are useless!

Was just about to say this.

Stop stealing my thoughts Swizz!

TheCardHolder

Chinese economy isn't as great as it was. I'd be looking towards leaning Japanese;)

thebigcheese22

Nah lads French is where its at! :P I'm doing Commerce and French in UCC and I love it thus far. The French is fairly easy, I tot twud be a lot more gruelling! I wasn't confident coming in as I only got a C1 in French in the Leaving but ya pick it up!

If French isnt your thing, you could look at Italian. I have a friend doing it and she loves it! I might take up the language after im fluent in French :cool:

Disease Ridden

TheCardHolder wrote: »

Chinese economy isn't as great as it was. I'd be looking towards leaning Japanese;)

Japan's a closed shop as far as I know! Not a great employment market for non-Japanese people.

OP I'd say French or German.

Spain and Italy both have high levels of unemployment, and personally I wouldnt fancy learning Russian or delving too deep into Russian culture or anything, it seems like a very depressing country!

Chinese might be a good idea as a few people have said. Still though, you'd want to hope their economy dosent go stagnant like is going to happen all over the world!

bythewoods

I've a friend studying both Chinese and French in college, she says Chinese is extremely hard and involves an awful awful awful lot of work. And still, even with loads of work and a natural aptitude for languages, it's really hard to do well in.
French, on the other hand, in comparison at least, seems like a walk in the park.

Swizz

Chinese would pay off. Why would you learn french for business? Are you gonna be doing alot of business with the people at Cuisine De France? Id be quicker to do German than French. Learning Chinese would pay off. and also it would look great on a C.V.

Jammyc

Id be inclined to say a European one because of the free movement of labour laws and whatnnot. Would it not be more beneficial?

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

PurpleFistMixer

I've a friend doing Commerce and French in UCD and she absolutely loves it... And well, Swizz, French is an official language in 29 countries, though I imagine African countries don't count when it comes to business. : p

pierrot

I did Japanese in DCU. It's not as hard as people would think, you'll coast through the four years without too much trouble, and you have the bonus of getting third year over there. Can't get a job now though.:mad:

thebigcheese22

pierrot wrote: »

Can't get a job now though.:mad:

I rest my case!

In french ya also do third year abroad

Swizz

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

I've a friend doing Commerce and French in UCD and she absolutely loves it... And well, Swizz, French is an official language in 29 countries, though I imagine African countries don't count when it comes to business. : p

Wikipedia :pac:
21 of them countries are in Africa, so exclude them for obvious reasons, and in the European countries, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland they speak more than one language. So French is useless pretty much with Business.

irishmonkey

pierrot wrote: »

I did Japanese in DCU. It's not as hard as people would think, you'll coast through the four years without too much trouble, and you have the bonus of getting third year over there. Can't get a job now though.:mad:

My brother did that course.
He's in Oz now doing something totally unrelated!

Fringe

I'm fluent in Chinese but it would insane to learn it. I'd say you'd be frustrated really quickly if you didn't have interest and only wanted to study it for a good CV. With languages like French or German, there's at least some kind of link. Chinese is completely different and you'll need to learn everything and the pronunciations are much different.

pierrot

I've done a bit of Chinese as well, and I found it very difficult. Grammar wise, it was fine, but the pronunciation was impossible. Ba ba ba ba. Very difficult.
If I could offer any advice to OP, I would say go with your best language (French or whatever) and take up a new one from scratch. It will be a novelty, and you will find you pick it up quite quickly.

PurpleFistMixer

Swizz wrote: »

Wikipedia :pac:
21 of them countries are in Africa, so exclude them for obvious reasons, and in the European countries, Luxembourg, Monaco and Switzerland they speak more than one language. So French is useless pretty much with Business.

Yes wikipedia, your point? I wouldn't say French is useless, (having any second language is going to be useful) only perhaps not as useful as others. Though by the same argument I assume you believe Chinese to be useless, considrering it's spoken in relatively few countries also, and the majority of its population are uninteresting from a business standpoint. : p

Swizz

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

Yes wikipedia, your point? I wouldn't say French is useless, (having any second language is going to be useful) only perhaps not as useful as others. Though by the same argument I assume you believe Chinese to be useless, considrering it's spoken in relatively few countries also, and the majority of its population are uninteresting from a business standpoint. : p

No read Page 1. Its not how many countries a language is spoken in but what specific country/ie's its spoken in.

PurpleFistMixer

Swizz wrote: »

No read Page 1. Its not how many countries a language is spoken in but what specific country/ie's its spoken in.

I was merely using the argument you used to discredit the usefulness of French. : p

p1akuw47h5r3it

TheCardHolder wrote: »

Chinese economy isn't as great as it was. I'd be looking towards leaning Japanese;)

Yeeeerrr I'm (hopin) to do japanese next yr in DCU.

Alan1988

Which will be most useful to you?

TheCardHolder

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

I was merely using the argument you used to discredit the usefulness of French. : p

*Raises PurpleFistMixer's hand.

We have a winner!

maninasia

Chinese takes 5X the amount of time of a European language to pick up due to the reading/writing system and it is not an Indo European language. Grammar is easy, pronounciation is difficult. You don't need Chinese to do business, however if you are in the hotel or tourism trade in Europe (especially the big cities) you will find it an incredible asset to your career in future. Otherwise if you have an interest in coming out to China or working in that part of the world and interested in the culture you may also give it a go. It's not for the faint hearted. I'm pretty fluent now but only after years of effort and actually living in a Chinese speaking country, take it from me!

For your career in business in general German is definitely the best bet as they are one of the world's leading exporters, followed by Spanish and French. European languages are great for getting competitive international jobs, they are also a requirement for many EU government jobs. Ireland still has few links to Asia, so realistically European languages are the best bet for most people who would like to stay in Ireland or Europe!

djcervi

Do Spanish. It's easy to pronounce. If you like it it's easy to learn. It's the third most spoken language in the world after English. Spain is a lovely country with lovely people. Need any more reasons?..

Des23

If you are doing it in terms of working in business, Germany has the safest economy in europe, and you will also be able to go to the other german speaking countries i.e. Austria and Switzerland (and we all know how good they are with money), although Switzerland speaks french and other languages aswell.

As for eastern languages, Japan's economy still hasn't recovered from the 80s/90s and their government are very protectionist... there is something like 0.1% of people employed in Japan who are not citizens.

China has been hit extremely hard by the credit crunch so it's economy is nowhere near the height of the pre-olympic boom.

RuehlTheWorld

I've since ruled out Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

And whatever ounce of interest I had in German has dissipated when I confirmed to myself how harsh and not nice it is to speak or have to listen to.

SO

Spanish, French, or Italian?

Because I want a career in business (broad, I know) is that ruling out European Studies?

Also, anyone have any idea of what colleges in the country have the better language reputation?

Thanks!

Toad-Girl

Do french! You can already speak it so you'll most likely end up incredibly fluent with much less effort than a new language!!

Kournikova

I'd love to do Russian but I doubt I would get a high enough grade in French to do any language, I am doing higher level but I assume people who study languages at college are practically fluent going in.

1huge1

Doing commerce/business and german in UL at the moment, pm me if ya have any questions about difficulty, course material, studying abroad and the overall crack etc.

djcervi

RuehlTheWorld wrote: »

I've since ruled out Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

And whatever ounce of interest I had in German has dissipated when I confirmed to myself how harsh and not nice it is to speak or have to listen to.

SO

Spanish, French, or Italian?

Because I want a career in business (broad, I know) is that ruling out European Studies?

Also, anyone have any idea of what colleges in the country have the better language reputation?

Thanks!

European Studies is what I want to do. There is an economics module but the course is mostly history and politics. ES is a broad course so you can study lots of different things at once. I'm hoping to study French and Spanish with it as I'm doing both for the LC and I like both of them.

As far as I'm aware UCD conduct all their language courses through the actual language you are studying, whereas in Trinity a few modules are done through the actual language but that could be after your first year or within it. (Don't quote me on that as i'm not sure on that).

Romance languages i.e Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese are quite easy to pick up. If you want to start a new language i'd suggest Spanish as grammar/verbs/ nouns and genders have quite straightforward rules. Pronounciation is quite easy however it does take time to learn the subjunctive as the Spanish use it a lot more than the French but that takes practice like every other language.

French has it's advantages as you have already studied it before. French is used in the European Parliament and in many countries so if you wanted to travel it would certainly be an advantage. So if you really like French and want to became more fluent then maybe you should go for it.

Italian, (unfortunately I don't speak it but want to study it in the future because of my italian roots), is similar to Spanish and has similarities with French (e.g. Cheese le fromage, Il formaggio) but it is supposed to be hard to learn from what i've heard. Having said that language learning takes time and Italy is a nice country so why not?!

Seems like you have a decision to make?