Posted on 12/25/2008 11:53:50 AM PST by I can has Low Taxes?
I have a cousin in 8th grade who's taking a "sampler" class in which she's taught the minimum basics of Spanish, French, and German. The point is to give her a better grasp of languages so that she can choose which class to take for her mandatory language requirements in Highschool.
I believe that the highschool she'll go to also has Russian and Latin in addition.
Do folks here feel that Spanish would be a bad idea, politically/culturally? Her parents consider it somewhat gauche, and there's also a concern that encouraging kids to learn Spanish would delay assimilation of US immigrants, since it gives them less incentive to learn English.
Would you advise she take Spanish, since it's more "useful" in terms of having native speakers in the US? Or should she take one of the other languages? I don't think Latin is a likely option, being that her family is quite anti-Catholic.
Advice?
Spain? Per capita GDP is $34k. US is $46k.
Civis Romanus sum!
The "casual" mention of anti-Catholic relatives was definitely a tell that this is a DUmmie.
Sixteenth-century Spain?
Low paying jobs like building gas pipelines in South America or negotiating wind mill contracts in Spain?
I’m glad to see that folks agree on Spanish being useful. That was my original gut-response to recommend to her, since I used Spanish when I did NGO work in Latin America back in the 1990s. Again, it’s one of those touchy issues, because her parents got quite upset at me when I mentioned that I use Spanish at the store where I work (in Texas), and basically said I was using my “talents” to delay assimilation.
I thought Russian would be kind of interesting since it’s a complicated language, but there aren’t many native speakers where my cousin lives. Latin is seriously out for religious reasons, not defending my uncle’s sentiments, just saying that the man literally dislikes candles in a church because they’re too “Catholic”. French would be kind of neat, setting aside the current anti-French political thing, which has gotten kind of silly, but again not any native speakers near the US besides Quebec and parts of Louisiana.
When I talk to her next, I’ll feel more comfortable making a good case for Spanish. Not trying to pressure the kid, it’s just that she seemed motivated about learning, but ambivalent as to which language.
Spanish is the most widely-spoken language in the Western Hemisphere. Being able to speak Spanish will be nothing but advantageous in life.
Try the Spanish Empire, c. 1492 - late 1800's. America should last so long...
” Latin is seriously out for religious reasons, not defending my uncle’s sentiments, just saying that the man literally dislikes candles in a church because they’re too “Catholic”.”
She would not be studying church Latin.
LatinLatiLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinnLatinLaLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatintinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLaLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatintinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatinLatin
Por me?
[i]BTW is there ANY Spanish speaking country that is pro$perou$? In history? ANY?[/i]
That got me wondering, so I googled up the CIA World Factbook for this year (figure they know their stuff better than Wikipedia), and looked at the list of GDP/capita.
The rankings were pretty interesting (out of 229 countries, with Zimbabwe being dead last):
Anglo-speaking countries compared to Spanish-speaking
9. Ireland
...
10. USA
...
23. Australia
...
29. United Kingdom
...
33. Spain (highest Spanish-speaking country)
...
43. Equatorial Guinea (Spanish-speaking African country)
...
46. New Zealand
...
65. Puerto Rico (hey, CIA lists them separate)
...
79. Chile (highest Latin New World country, other than PR)
...
83. Argentina
...
86. Mexico (highest Latin New World outside S. America)
It’s actually a really interesting list:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html
> Her parents consider it somewhat gauche
It is gauche to remain ignorant. Learning any language is good and/or useful — if nothing else, learning German, Spanish and/or French helps to understand the roots of many English words, as English is a “melting pot” language that has absorbed much from languages all over the world. And learning a language does not “encourage” any immigrant to NOT learn English. That’s just silly.
(BTW: “gauche” means “left” — which is certainly not something to aspire to :-)
Frohe Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noel!
According to Heritage's 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, Chile is ranked at number 8 in the world, but it appears to be the exception. (Correlating economic freedom with prosperity, which works unless you are a paleo).
Yes the apologists are out and so is rewritten historians to defend leaning Spanish.
We'll stick with the language of business and learning Mandarin. English #1 and Mandarin #2. Bases covered. Let idiots learn Spanish.
:-)
Your list is interesting....sort of destroys the phony old argument that the ‘immigrants’ from the south are going to save our economy and culture, doesn’t it?
I have studied German, in which I am nearly fluent, a couple years of Russian, and some Spanish. Of the three, Spanish seems to have the simplest grammar, although the language contains a lot of irregular verbs and pronunciation is somewhat difficult for an English speaker. German grammar is harder, and pronunciation is also difficult for speakers of American English, especially those with a California accent.
For English speakers, Russian is the easiest of the three to pronounce, but as for the grammar, I have come to the conclusion that the Russians designed their language so that no outsiders would be able to learn it. However, successfully studying Russian can boost one's self-esteem, since it is said that if you can learn Russian, you can learn anything.
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