When I was in middle school, I had the choice of learning French, Spanish or Latin. I didn’t have a particular interest in learning a foreign language, and had never left the country or had any international exposure to speak of. In my rather naive and simple estimation of my options, I understood that the benefit of learning French was that it was an “elegant” and sophisticated sounding language that chicks liked, learning Latin was good if you wanted to become a doctor since so much of the anatomy is based on Latin roots, and learning Spanish was good because Mexicans were over-running our borders. That was how I understood it. As it turns out, none of those are legitimate reasons for learning those languages and as I’ve progressed through my career and seen the careers of my schoolmates and the hundreds of people I know in my personal life, I’ve realized that learning a foreign language as an American usually has absolutely no utility whatsoever professionally.
Before you flay me for being “close-minded” or a knuckle-dragging engineer, just consider the points below. I’m just tellin’ it like it is:
…Continue Reading 6 Reasons Learning a Foreign Language is Completely Useless
Darwin, I think the only “foreign” language you need to know really well is “street language”. Better know what the boyz are sayin’ or you are likely to get whacked before you know what hit ya. John
I plan to learn Spanish for one reason…at 58 I will eventually be in need of nursing care. I am hoping that day is 15 to 20 years out which means all those giving the care (not RN level), but home care will most likely be Spanish speakers.
Years back when I worked in the field the Spanish speakers would switch to Spanish when they wanted to say something they did not want anyone else to know they were saying. Turns out one of my friends knew Spanish and never let it be known except to me and few close friends. The Spanish speakers were saying in Spanish how stupid American’s were and how the hated certain patients and would not give them their needed care.
I want to know what they are saying…
Very funny. Whitey is going to be a minority soon. That means the conservative ex-Cubans in Miami will seize power in the East, and Mexican lawyers in the West. Together, they will, using census numbers showing themselves to be a majority now, push for the official national language of the U.S. to be Spanish. Once changed, schools will be taught in Spanish, all former English T.V. channels will now be in Spanish, the DMV will issue tests in Spanish, ATMs will be in Spanish, and we will be relegated to pressing “2” to get English, as all recorded phone messages and call centers will be in Spanish.
Thank God our country is going to collapse before that happens.
You don’t necessarily learn a language just because you will need to speak it. Studying a foreign language improves your mind, even if you never use that language again. You also learn more about your own language. People who have studied foreign languages perform better across a wide spectrum of cognitive tasks than those who never have. Your brain is like muscles in that regard. Use it or lose it.
I’m of French descent. I took French in High School because the teacher had big knobs. I can’t speak any French.
I can usually get a feeling for whats going on,years back some mexican guys were laughing and talking by me,so i asked my girlfriend what they were saying,she told me loud enough so they could hear it.I told them to start fighting or get lost and they left.
More people speak english in the philippines than do here.
I never met a person in Holland that couldnt speak english to me once i told them i didnt speak dutch.
I dont get the,i want to be an american so ill only speak english,vibe from many mexicans.And the if you want to speak english press one thing on the phone always annoys me.
Years back i remember it was said if you spoke English,French and Spanish you could travel the world.
I have a poor aptitude at language acquisition. I learned this in college when I took a year of Latin. I could never get the subjunctive tense. It did however really improve my understanding of english grammar, plus the experience made me laugh my ass off at the graffiti scene in the flick Life of Brian. It’s weird because for the hell of it, I took an upper division linguistics class and aced it.
So what, really, if learning a language has no “utility” in a profession? Languages are beautiful. . evidence of our rich human heritage, examples of elegance in nature and human design. Contact with this diversity of expression, even a little, is a testament to our deep humanity. You seem to imply that language should not be taught in schools, suggesting that education is an investment with some kind of simple pay off. I read this because I was feeling quite depressed by another article suggesting that the humanities were “useless” college degrees, and I think what will we do without our grand diversity of thought and expression, like the rainforest stripped down to a cattle ranch for its “utility.” Children and young adults should have as much contact with the wealth of human knowledge as we can give them.
I think learning a foreign language is useless. And not because the reasons you stated but because of technology. Something like google translate works but it doesn’t make logical sentences. So i think within 5 years you will have a instant translator that works perfectly without any problems. But it would still be more “personal” when you could speak the language yourself. But the time it takes to be fluent in a language is extremely long.