For Those Who Love Spanish
Dateline: 05/15/00Why should people learn a foreign language?
Where can I find investment
books written in Spanish?
What do you call someone who
loves Spanish?
What does ojalá mean?
Is there an authoritative guide to
Spanish writing style?
Where can I find a dictionary for
my Rocket eBook?
What is that that people who learn or use Spanish want to know? You name it — whether it's trivia they seek or an answer to a complex grammatical question, they often write to this site.
I can't always give the answers, but I do try. Following are a few of the letters this site has received in the past few weeks. No one topic dominated the letters. Here is a sampling along with the responses I provided (some answers have been modified slightly for the format).
Personally, I think
that one of the biggest benefits of studying and learning a foreign language
is to help one gain a better understanding of one's own. I have used the
English language as a key aspect of my career (I'm a writer and editor),
and for me, at least, the benefits of knowing
Spanish have been greatest in understanding and appreciating the complexities
of the English language. I probably wouldn't even know what the subjunctive
mood is in English except that I head to learn it for Spanish!
There are also many other benefits, both tangible and intangible:
- Learning a foreign language helps give us an understanding of and appreciation for people that are different than us.
- Learning a foreign language (and especially Spanish for those of us in the United States) opens up great travel possibilities. Know Spanish, and you can be more than a tourist when visiting Spain or Latin America.
- Learning a foreign language can give you a much better understanding of the world by making available resources not available in English.
- And as far as careers go, in the United States today there is almost no career that you could enter where you Spanish wouldn't come in handy at some time. Not only in places such as California, Texas, Florida and New York are there sizable Spanish populations, but almost everywhere. In almost all of the helping services (teaching and health care among them) you can expand your options by learning Spanish. And many other types of businesses are reaching out to Spanish speakers as well.
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