Should I learn Spanish if already learning French?

I'm from the United States, and I'm a freshman in high school. I'm currently taking French I. I took Spanish A & B in middle school which is the equivalent of Spanish I. I hated Spanish. I think it was more the teacher and the class than it was the language. I'm absolutely in love with French, and I'm getting an A+ in the class. Recently I've been thinking about picking Spanish back up again. Not the class, but I have Spanish teaching CDs from Michel Thomas. Do you think that it would be wise to start learning again, or would it be not worth it and a waste of time?

(P.S. I'm in love with languages and language learning and I think I'd like to have a career in that field!)

If you're:

1) in the US

2) a language major and like foreign languages

3) already took some Spanish before

It seems like learning Spanish is a no-brainer.

I'm not a language major and I'm certainly not in love with foreign languages, but I always thought Spanish was structured a bit better than French, although no easier to learn, all things considered.

I am assuming you are monolingual English speaker, so...I would advise you to wait some time if you plan to take up Spanish again. You might end up confusing words between French and Spanish here and there, and, since they're both Romance languages, they have a lot in common. If you do decide to take it up again, try to focus on one variety so as to not become confused. For instance, it will definitely throw you off if one resource tells you car is 'carro', whilst another one tells you it is 'coche'. (Just for the record, 'carro' means cart.) Anyhow, good luck on whatever you decide to do.

P.S. By saying you are 'in love with languages', are you thinking of learning any more perhaps? :)

<<I'm from the United States, and I'm a freshman in high school. I'm currently taking French I. I took Spanish A & B in middle school which is the equivalent of Spanish I. I hated Spanish. I think it was more the teacher and the class than it was the language. I'm absolutely in love with French, and I'm getting an A+ in the class. Recently I've been thinking about picking Spanish back up again. Not the class, but I have Spanish teaching CDs from Michel Thomas. Do you think that it would be wise to start learning again, or would it be not worth it and a waste of time?

(P.S. I'm in love with languages and language learning and I think I'd like to have a career in that field!) >>


Not to sound negative, but I believe that you should not learn it. My reasons are the following:

a) You are from the USA, where foreign languages are not so essential.

b) You are a freshman in high school, and your French is not so good yet. You do not yet know the enormous amount of work required to learn a language. I won't tell you though, it's better if you don't know...

c) You hated Spanish last time, most likely you will hate it this time too.

d) You had a bad teacher in school, but don't think that you will have a good one at university or high school. There are more bad teachers than good ones.

e) You had a bad class, but bad classes are the norm.

f) You are in love with French, so why siphon off your strength to something you're less passionate about?

g) Your French will suffer if you start learning another language (opportunity costs).

h) If you are looking for a career in that field, it is more important to have deep knowledge than wide knowledge, at least for translation, and probably most things. No one wants a "Jack of all trades". Mastery is more valuable.

i) Your Spanish will interfere with your French.

j) Chances are, you will change your mind on what you want to do after high school, so don't waste all your time doing one thing.

k) Most likely you will never become fluent in French alone, so don't decrease your chances even further.

l) You already speak English, so most useful information is already accessible..

m) Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the USA, which means there will always be thousands who speak it better than you, so it won't be so valuable employment wise. Better to mix a language and some other skill.

n) If you learn another language, those thousands who are better than you will increase to tens of thousands.

o) The Spanish spoken in the USA is often not of a high standard, so you might learn a substandard variant.

p) If you do decide to learn two, and then later decide to drop one, you will feel ripped off, because the other will be at a much lower level than it would have been if you'd learnt only one, and then you'll give up that one too, and you'll feel doubly ripped off, like your whole life was a waste.

q) Even if you do learn Spanish well, you'll still never be able to compete with the myriads of bilingual Spanish-English speakers in the USA. Kids of immigrants who have two native languages are very difficult to top.

r) You could sell your Michael Thomas CDs and make a quick buck.

<<P.S. By saying you are 'in love with languages', are you thinking of learning any more perhaps? :)>>

Actually, I was planning on possibly learning German after mastering French and Spanish.

Well, 'a demotivator' does make some good points; however, you could always give it a shot. As for 'mastering' French and Spanish, it takes YEARS of studying to reach a native's level, and even then you will still need to be in constant contact with the language so as to not forget it. It is a challlenge, but if you are up to it, why not? German will seem pretty easy ti you after you have gotten through the grammar and all that fun stuff. :P

*ti = for
*gotten = gone

Talk about horrible typos...

By "mastering" the language, I meant being able to speak it clearly and correctly, not speaking it like a native.

<< Even if you do learn Spanish well, you'll still never be able to compete with the myriads of bilingual Spanish-English speakers in the USA. Kids of immigrants >>

-- This is the ultimate argument!

I can't give you specific advice, I can only tell you my experience.

I love languages. I want to learn several, I currently speak English and Serbocroatian and want to learn Spanish, Hindi/Urdu and Mandarin. When I switched schools I took the Spanish course and am now obsessed with the language. All though I have some background in Hindi/Urdu and Mandarin as well, I only know a few phrases and such. Now that I've been able to focused on Spanish (and since it's so similar to English), I feel that I've gotten past the comparatively boring part of learning basic prepositions, phrases, verbs, counting, etc. and gotten into the fun part of having conversations, reading and writing. It's also because I do 3:30 hours a week at school whereas at my previous school it was only 1 hour a week (not enough to really learn anything), so my new school has forced me past the difficult beginning stage into the fun advanced stage.

If you can study more than one language at school, go for it. However, I would only use home study to supplement the language you're learning at school, rather than to learn an entirely different language.

<<
<< Even if you do learn Spanish well, you'll still never be able to compete with the myriads of bilingual Spanish-English speakers in the USA. Kids of immigrants >>

-- This is the ultimate argument!
>>

Actually, this is a great argument for never studying any foreign language, since you'll never be as good as a native speaker. In fat, there's no reason to study English either, since you probably won't ever be able to write as well as Shakespeare. Same with math and science -- you probably won't ever be as good as Einstein, Newton, Darwin, etc.

Monolingual, and durned proud of it, too.

Spanish is ghetto language.

French is romantic and beautiful!

Vive le Francais!

<< Spanish is ghetto language.

French is romantic and beautiful!

Vive le Francais! >>

French is ghetto language.

Spanish is romantic and beautiful!

¡Viva el español!

See what I did there?

To me, they're both beautiful languages. However, I love languages in general. I don't think any language can be considered an 'ugly' language.

<<Actually, this is a great argument for never studying any foreign language, since you'll never be as good as a native speaker. In fat, there's no reason to study English either, since you probably won't ever be able to write as well as Shakespeare. Same with math and science -- you probably won't ever be as good as Einstein, Newton, Darwin, etc.

Monolingual, and durned proud of it, too. >>

This has to be a joke. Please tell me that it is.

<<a) You are from the USA, where foreign languages are not so essential. >>
This is going to change in the next few decades. Spanish will spread considerably, and China will become more independent and exert it's economic influence.

(Btw, "a demotivator", your name is quite fitting.)

<<c) You hated Spanish last time, most likely you will hate it this time too.>>
As he said, it was the teacher, not the language. There's no reason to make this assumption.

<< d) You had a bad teacher in school, but don't think that you will have a good one at university or high school. There are more bad teachers than good ones.

e) You had a bad class, but bad classes are the norm. >>
That's a terrible argument. You could use that to argue against learning anything in general.

<<f) You are in love with French, so why siphon off your strength to something you're less passionate about?>>
Definitely, I agree with this.

<<i) Your Spanish will interfere with your French.>>
My experience is that they compliment each other.

<<k) Most likely you will never become fluent in French alone, so don't decrease your chances even further.>>
He could easily become fluent so long as he goes to a French-speaking country for a few months after studying the language and then maintaining it by reading literature in the language.

<< l) You already speak English, so most useful information is already accessible..>>
So?

<<m) Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the USA, which means there will always be thousands who speak it better than you, so it won't be so valuable employment wise. Better to mix a language and some other skill. >>
Yes, and they can talk to those people. As I pointed out, in the next few decades this will change. Would you discourage an immigrant to the US from learning English because they will most likely never speak it like a native speaker?

<<n) If you learn another language, those thousands who are better than you will increase to tens of thousands.>>
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Learning more than one skill means that there are more people who are better than you? Wow, this is some pretty twisted logic.

<<o) The Spanish spoken in the USA is often not of a high standard, so you might learn a substandard variant.>>
This is entirely false. Prescriptivism in language is bunk. All language is equally good. The Spanish of Northern Spain (generally thought of as being "the best" Spanish) is completely mutually intelligible with Mexican Spanish. The differences are minimal, stuff like jitomate/tomate and carro/coche.

<<This has to be a joke. Please tell me that it is.>>

I wouldn't call it a joke, but my post was trying to suggest that it's still useful to study things, even if someone else will know more about the subject than you when you're done.

I really am monolingual, though, as opposed to being bilingual, trilingual, etc. I'm not equally at home in two (or more) languages.

Well, your responses may be legitimate, I don't deny it. I just try to show another perspective to the typical happy-happy-languages-are-so-beautiful-and-enriching-and-oh-isn't-it-all-wonderful-you-can-do-anything-your-life-will-improve-you-will-make-so-many-friends-so-much-amazing-culture-you-can-be-fluent-so-fast-the-more-languages-the-better sentiment that you usually get, especially on sites populated by poeple who are seriously biased in favour of learning languages. Because while some may get lucky, the vast majority of language learners never reach anything near fluency, never makes many foreign friends, never gets a high enough level to enjoy the culture, never becomes a translator, and quite often never even gets any enjoyment from it....

So go for it, but know that success is far from guaranteed, and that most likely your journey of discovery will be a story of disillusionment.

Having said that, I may as well counter a couple ofthings:

<<This is going to change in the next few decades. Spanish will spread considerably, and China will become more independent and exert it's economic influence. >>

Maybe, but not until at least 20 years. You'll be 20 years older, chances are you will be married, have kids, be engrained in a typical office job, be depressed and have long since stopped being interested in languages. Or if the changes are such that it really will come sooner, then I'd rather not have the changes, because that means turmoil and suffering (no superpower ever falls without a lot of victims), and then there's a good chance you won't even be alive by then to exercise your skills.


>><<c) You hated Spanish last time, most likely you will hate it this time too.>>
As he said, it was the teacher, not the language. There's no reason to make this assumption. <<


Well, there's no reason to make the opposite assumption either.In fact, as he said, it was the teacher, not the langauge, so that means that all you need is another bad teacher and you'll hate it again, and you WILL have another bad teacher, it's practically guaranteed...


>>
<<i) Your Spanish will interfere with your French.>>
My experience is that they compliment each other. <<


My experience is that they interfere massively. Emmanual also said so, so that's 2 against 1 so far...



<<He could easily become fluent so long as he goes to a French-speaking country for a few months after studying the language and then maintaining it by reading literature in the language. >>


This is an illusion. See the "Memorizing vocabulary" thread by wolf727 to see that living in a country is in no way a guarantee to getting fluent. Many people even get worse while they're living abroad, because they stop studying.


>><< l) You already speak English, so most useful information is already accessible..>>
So? <<


It means there is no point in learning another language other than to be able to use another "code". What is the point? To feel cool? Once you become fluent it doesn't even feel cool any more so you're bound for disappointment there.


<<Yes, and they can talk to those people. As I pointed out, in the next few decades this will change. Would you discourage an immigrant to the US from learning English because they will most likely never speak it like a native speaker? >>


Indeed, I wouldn't encourage them to learn any further than being able to hold a decent conversation. No need to get native or anything.


<<This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Learning more than one skill means that there are more people who are better than you? Wow, this is some pretty twisted logic.>>


If you're planning to become a professional, that is. You will always be worse than those kids who have 2 native languages, the late start is critical. So you will never get the best job there is, you'll be stuck teaching night classes or translating instruction manuals for garden hoses.


<<This is entirely false. Prescriptivism in language is bunk. All language is equally good. The Spanish of Northern Spain (generally thought of as being "the best" Spanish) is completely mutually intelligible with Mexican Spanish. The differences are minimal, stuff like jitomate/tomate and carro/coche. >>

I'm talking about Spanglish.