Today in the forum: French vs. Spanish
Tuesday April 18, 2006
If you had to choose a foreign language to learn, which should you pursue? OK, being a Peruvian and all he may be biased, but Carlos makes his 11-point case for Spanish in the forum. For starters, he looks abroad: "France is seen here as a mediocre developed country which can't even handle its 'domestic' problems. On the other hand, Spain keeps experiencing economic growth and with a very small population of 45 million it's on the top 10 list of largest economies." Join the discussion...
Comments
I am currently a freshmen in college, and after much thought, I decided to take French instead of Spanish, even thought I live in Souther California, where there are much more Spanish speakers, than French speakers.
I just wanted to learn something new for a change, but that does not mean I do not want to learn Spanish eventually. From my understanding learning either Italian, Spanish, or French, will make learning the other two fairly easy, which is what I plan on doing.
Carlos, your opinion on France is a very “uneducated” one based simply on opinion rather than fact. France is the seventh richest nation in the world when it comes to their GDP, which is at $1.83 trillion, compared to ninth place Spain’s, coming in at a little over $1 trillion. France is also home to Paris, one of the three major financial, and cultural capitals of the world.
Both are lovely countries, with beautiful languages, but you should really learn to check your facts before you make statements like that.
Surely no one is so Eurocentric as to believe Spanish and French are only spoken in the two countries that lend their names to these languages. I work in French and live a lot of my life in the language of Voltaire. My government documents are in that language as well as my driver’s license. I live 400 miles from New York City in the province of Quebec, Canada!
People frequently learn languages because they need to either for monetary gain or to ‘fit in’. Arbitrarily saying one is better than another is silly; it doesn’t recognize the personal needs and motivation of the learner. Using the economy of Spain as a justification for learning its language is like using the economy of England to justify mastering English.
What I care is the commonality of the two languages. I would like to know if I learned French, will it make me learn Spanish much easier. Taking it more quantatively,
1) From English -> French 100% effort, from French -> Spanish 30% effort
2) From English -> Spanish 90% effort (comparing with first), from Spanish to French 40% effort
anyone can give an estimation for an average people?
Norm is right, to believe that these two languages are only relevant in their respective countries is a step in the wrong direction. The biggest motivating factor should be what motivates you. Think about where you want to live, what culture fascinates you more. Both of these languages are one of the six official language’s of the UN, so obviously you are going to be helped out learning either of them. As for Jon’s reasoning, there isn’t really a mathematical formula, although there are a lot of words that stem from French in the English language. I’ve taken about 4 years of both languages, and enjoy both of them. Really, it depends of each person on what one you learn better, I find that I end up getting stuck on the same things in both. Best of luck in what you choose…and if you get really stuck, you can always try Italian.