French or German. Which language is the most useful?

Guest   Fri Oct 09, 2009 6:57 pm GMT
I live in Spain and I am wondering which of these two languages I should study. I don't care if one is more beautiful than the other and such things, I'm just interested in the usefulness. Thanks in advance.
cnablis   Fri Oct 09, 2009 7:08 pm GMT
If you're planning to move to Germany, German.
If you're planning to move to France (etc.), French.

Otherwise, flip a coin?
Tionghoa   Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:45 am GMT
If you were Spanish speaker, then French would be easier for you to learn, and I personally think French is a bit more useful than German from a global perspective.
CID   Sat Oct 10, 2009 5:14 am GMT
If you are interested in culture, high-fashion, and antiquity, then French is the way to go.

If you are geared toward business, banking, and science then German.

Usefuleness depends on what you are more interested in as cnablis pointed out
Guest   Sat Oct 10, 2009 5:34 pm GMT
Then I'll study German cause I'm not interested in high-fashion and antiquity. Casual wear is enough for me, but business and making money seem appealing. As for culture, what do you mean? Is French culture more refined than the German culture ?.
Guest   Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:24 pm GMT
"If you are geared toward business, banking, and science then German. "

This is an outdated stereotype.

French is way more important than German in banking and business.
In sciences German used to have an edge but now I'd say it's a draw.

Reminder: biggest and most profitable banks and investment companies in Europe are French.

And France has more top 500 companies than Germany:

http://blog.emerginvest.com/top-world-companies-increasingly-outside-of-the-us-a-look-at-fortunes-global-top-500/
another guest   Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:27 pm GMT
Also, the Germans prefer to speak English.
Baldewin   Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:09 pm GMT
<<Also, the Germans prefer to speak English>>

Not true, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laUJzGMUEI4
another guest   Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:22 pm GMT
Westerwelle is a German but not the Germans.
Baldewin   Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:48 pm GMT
<<Westerwelle is a German but not the Germans.>>

Well, Germans still prefer to speak their native language above English. They DO switch to English when your German sucks. But only if your German REALLY SUCKS!

Rudimentary but fluent German will get answered in German.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL-UWGTT7x8

This man's German is Dutch camping-German, still no one responded in English.
???   Sun Oct 11, 2009 12:28 am GMT
German would be more useful in terms of learning about the structure of languages in general, so that if you want to learn further languages other than these two and ones outside of the Romance family you will have more of an idea. All of the Romance languages (that I know of, although this may not include Romanian) are similar in terms of being complex with regards to verb conjugation, but reasonably simple with regards to noun declension. They show gender and simple plural inflection, but have no cases and accompanying morphology. If you want to have more of an idea of languages in general, go for German. I'm a native English speaker and am grateful for the grounding learning German has given me in terms of an overall idea of grammar.
???   Sun Oct 11, 2009 12:32 am GMT
And I should add that German is not that complex, so that you can learn it reasonably easily, and get an idea of how the grammar of more complex languages might work, without struggling too much with it. It's an extremely logical language and so is probably an ideal intermediate step, should you then choose to go on to other languages. And if you don't, well you will still have learnt a language with a different structure to those in your immediate language family.
fraz   Sun Oct 11, 2009 2:40 am GMT
<<Also, the Germans prefer to speak English>>

Nonsense. The Germans prefer to speak their own language in their own country. If you have a have a reasonable grasp of German, you will find millions of Germans more than willing to speak it with you.
Xie   Sun Oct 11, 2009 3:13 am GMT
>>German would be more useful in terms of learning about the structure of languages in general, so that if you want to learn further languages other than these two and ones outside of the Romance family you will have more of an idea. All of the Romance languages (that I know of, although this may not include Romanian) are similar in terms of being complex with regards to verb conjugation, but reasonably simple with regards to noun declension.<<

German or French is alright for that purpose. I went for German first since I was more interested, and have been dabbling with French for a very long time.
German guest   Sun Oct 11, 2009 8:29 am GMT
German is becoming a REGIONAL language, like Korean. It is spoken in Central Europe, a little area of 100 million people. By demographic reasons, this language will be spoken by 90 million in the near future.

One of the most important problems of German is ENGLISH. German was the lingua franca of Central and Eastern Europe. It was also the lingua franca of Scandinavia.

At this moment, the lingua franca of Scandinavia is English. In Germany and Austria almost all people speak a basic English. And in Eastern Europe all people study English too.

German is not useful in Italy, France, Spain or Portugal, where anyone speak this language.

Meanwhile, French is a WORLD language. If a language has the label of World language is very important (with English and Spanish, in my opinion). For example, in all the World organizations, universities, travel agencies and export departments there are some people that study/speak English and French or Spanish.

For example, in United Nations and all other organizations, where you can work, English is compulsory, and French or Spanish are almost compulsory. On the other side, German even is not official in World organizations.