French vs German vs Spanish? Difficulty & Usefulness?

RapHaElLa   Sat Jan 13, 2007 10:41 pm GMT
spanish after english
From Spain   Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:14 am GMT
My Chinese friend says: "Hispanic Population would be on the increase or decline. Population is NOT a vital and crucial element. Thanks!"

I agree with my Chinese friend and this is exactly why I will never learn Chinese. How many speakers? If I have to trade with China they will answer in English and I would imagine that the great Chinese culture isn't a vital and crucial element at all. I have met quite a fre Chinese people in Spain coming from China and they all had some knowledge of Spanish. I think they knew they were coming!


One should learn a language he loves. If you are surrounded by people who speak a minority language, learn that minority language. If I chose to live in a place where the last tribe speaking a language was the majority I would learn that language.

Since I'm moving to the German-Dutch border I have decided to learn Dutch. People on both sides speak very much the same dialects (closely related to Standard Dutch) although Standard German is the only official language on the German side.
Guest   Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:24 am GMT
Quite a few of you have said:

1. German is the most widely spoken language in Europe.

No true. German is the most widely spoken language in German speaking countries where there are huge colonies of other people speaking other languages as their first language (example: Turk, Arab or Italian in Germany).

The most widely spoken language in Europe (even if it's as a 2nd language) is English. The second most widely spoken language (including 2nd language speakers) is French and the 3rd is Spanish.

That includes "all generations". In the much younger generations Spanish is becoming second (one of the reasons is that Spanish is very popular with young people in France whilst very few young Spaniards learn French! They all learn English!)

German is hardly taught at all in Romance Europe (except for some parts of France close to Germany or speaking German related dialects at home like Alsatian.)

A similar situation as Italian nowadays.

English and Spanish are now the two most important "foreign languages" taught in European Primary and High Schools.

Over 1,5 million Brits own a house in Spain and over 1 million Germans also own a house in Spain. 17 million Brits and 9 million Germans take their holidays in Spain. Almost 9 million French people also take tjeir holidays in Spain.

Speaking of Europe, of course, it would seem Spanish is more necessary, nowadays, for communication than French or German.

Still I would add English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and all the other European languages (including Catalan or Welsh and other non-state languages) are great languages of culture.
ZhongGuoRen   Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:14 am GMT
From Spain:

My Spanish friend said: ..this is exactly why I will never learn Chinese..
Yes, I partly agree with you, though I'm native Chinese (Mandarin Chinese).
In fact, as yet, I don't have any plans of immigrating to Europe or USA.
Only in Mainland China, frankly speaking, more and more young people has begun to learn Spanish as their 2nd or 3rd foreign language, and once, even I did, too. To tell the truth, Spanish is really easier than German, Italian or even French, but later I found that Spanish is less used than the other ones in several large cities of China, especially less used, just when searching a good job or related affairs. So I said that the increase of Population is not the most important thing, just because of the experience and practicality. Don't be angry please, my Spanish freind, I just told you the true status.
Guest   Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:18 am GMT
English and Spanish are now the two most important "foreign languages" taught in European Primary and High Schools.

That isn't true!
From Spain   Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:21 am GMT
The fact is, my Chinese friend, you and I communicate in English and we don't need either Chinese or Spanish , which are, after all, among the most important world languages. Not only because hundreds of millions of people speak our languages as native but also because we have made huge contributions to World Culture.

Why should we need French or German or any other "third" language?

When learning a 3rd language, I agree with you, it has to be either for finance reasons, because once needs that language being surrounded by people speaking it (even if it's "a small tribal language") or because one is in love with that language (I can quite understand people loving opera learning Italian, German to read German philosophers in their original or even Occitan should one decide to study the Troubadours and the origins of Contemporary European poetry; it's as simple as that.)

I'm not annoyed with you at all and as you can see our English is quite good considering we are both "non native".
From Spain   Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:50 am GMT
From quite a clear and long European Union report:

Just a summary.

Even though the number of native speakers of languages such as Russian and German outnumbers English by far, it is accepted that English is the most important language of communication in Europe.

Margie Berns states that "87% of European school age children stud[y] English as their first foreign language" (Berns 1991: 7).

The figures show that beside English it is difficult for another language to gain independent status as an international language of communication. A 'niche' is to be sought in the regions of Europe rather than competing with English on a wider scale. The figures also show that only German has a real chance of gaining a certain significance as a Language of Wider Communication, yet only in parts of Europe. French, however, is far behind. It only enjoys a higher status in Romania, where there are more than two million learners of French, and in Bulgaria, where it is far behind English, yet preceding German (Santner 1995). Apart from those two Eastern European countries French is still prevailing "among middle-aged functionaries and intellectuals" (Fishman 1995: 68) in Spain and Italy


The results mentioned shed an interesting light on the language preference of young people in today's Europe. German once again is superseded by Spanish in the world-wide context. The younger generation clearly gives priority to English over French and German, whereas the older generation, represented by the civil servants of the European Union, still prefers French to English. These results will be confirmed by the analysis of the language use in international youth organisations in Europe.
ZhongGuoRen   Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:06 am GMT
From Spain

Thank you very much for your replies and information!

Good luck and all the best!
From Spain   Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:29 pm GMT
Dear Chinese friend,

Both Spain and China share "common sense", the least common of senses. We are also very polite and although we don't need to brag all the time about our former empires (in your case in a great part of Asia and in our case in a great part of the Americas) we know of the importance of our language, culture and civilisation and what it stands for. For example, few people seem to know that Spanish is also spoken in parts of North Africa, Guinea and that it was official in the Philippines for 400 years and still spoken by some over there. Spanish is making a comeback among the Filipino elites.
Just one question. I trust "nativee minority languages" in China (other than "Mandarin", like Tibetan for example) receive the same legal rights that native languages receive in Spain.
I live in Catalonia and, more and more, young people tend to be trilingual: Catalan (our native "co-official" language), Spanish (fully bilingual in the State language) and English (the most important planetary means of communication). It isn't compulsary to learn a 4th language and only a few do so for professional or family reasons.

A few others decide to study a 4th language and Chinese would be an excellent choice if you start young. I know you can learn Chinese in some Spanish universities and I have chinese neighbours and the sound of the language is beautiful

A lot of the immigrants keep their heritage languages (Arabic, Berber, Romanian, Russian and others in Spain).

In the tourism industry you'll also find professionals who speak French or German if they receive lots of people from those places.

I also know people who speak German and Spanish fluently (or French) because they have one parent Spanish and one parent German or French.

My parents learnt French at school since English wasn't taught back then. Now French language "groups" are very few in numbers and a lot of the old French teachers have had to learn and teach English instead to keep their jobs!

No German language groups at all (I don't know of any in my area) in Spanish High Schools.

The other thing is that Spanish Schools teach British RP English and not American English. We get millions of Brits every year and very few Americans!
curious   Sun Jan 14, 2007 3:55 pm GMT
"but also because we have made huge contributions to World Culture."

Dear Spanish guy/or girl,

tell me something about Spain's huge contributions to the world! I'm just curious...

"we don't need to brag all the time about our former empires (in your case in a great part of Asia and in our case in a great part of the Americas)"

Do you really think there is something to brag about what Spain did to the natives of the Americas?
From Spain   Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:02 pm GMT
Study all the arts including Mathematics and see how they entered Europe through the Spanish Islamic population and medieval Christian Kingdoms of Spain, for example. We even had Roman emperors born in Spain, as you probably don't know.

Regarding "fine arts" what can I say of the importance of Picasso, just to name a 20th century genius; regarding literature, what can I say... I mean being curious is one thing being absolutely ignorant is quite another.

There is a lot to brag about and a lot to be sorry for regarding the European conquest of the not so new world (the Americas) and just about every continent (including the Indian and the Pacific oceans). The list of virtues and sins include the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the French, even the Italians in some remote African colony.

Tell me one European power who did absolutely everything wrong? Perhaps Germany in the 2nd World War?

And regarding the present day where do the good and evil come from?

Anyway, I'm pleased that people don't always represent what their governments do. Neither then nor now.
curious   Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:01 pm GMT
"There is a lot to brag about and a lot to be sorry for regarding the European conquest of the not so new world [...] The list of virtues and sins include the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the French, even the Italians in some remote African colony."

I still don't think that the "European conquest" is something to brag about... but then, we might have a different view of the world.

Regards
Ignorant   Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:23 pm GMT
Spanish people are very proud, we all know that. Only the reasons for this is unknown;-)
Gallophile   Mon Jan 15, 2007 2:43 am GMT
"In any part of the world, Spanish is nowadays chosen as the 2nd language. Either in Iceland, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt or Canada. I mean, this is from information on the internet. German and French are not as they were before. You should comment based on statistics, and where can u find them? On the internet.

"... and French has maintained its status as the 2nd most widely studied foreign language." It's not true anymore.

"...Outside US Spanish is a behind French and maybe even German, Italian, Russian." Whaaaat?

Well, my Chinese friend, choose whatever you want, but nearly more than 80% here thinks Spanish is the best choice. I HAVE READ ALL THE OPINIONS HERE so far."

To pyaarxto: Well it seems that you are not knowlegeable when it comes to the status of these languages.

"In any part of the world, Spanish is nowadays chosen as the 2nd language. Either in Iceland, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt or Canada. I mean, this is from information on the internet. German and French are not as they were before. You should comment based on statistics, and where can u find them? On the internet. "

Answer: Since this is internet it's synonymous to virtual reality. Any misinformations can be posted or uploaded like what you posted. The statistics that you view here in the internert are unreliable and purely lies. The authors of those that upload data here in the internet do not have the discipline of the book authors. Don't be so GULLIBLE! In NZ and SA French is required in high school. SA needs it to because of Francophone Africa. As for Egypt, French is widely spoken there even though it came under British rule and in fact it is a member of Francophonie and check if it is also a member of the British Commonwealth. You mean to say that the other official language of Canada is not French but Spanish? That is the silliest thing I've ever heard and you must be so obsessed with Hispanic culture.

If you want accurate information, go the foreign schools all over the world language even in school and ask the administrators which foreign language has the most number of enrolees and they will answer you French. And if you go to bookstores all over the world even in India and you proceeed to the foreign language section you'll notice that books that hve something to do in learning French books occupy more than one level of the entire bookshelfs compared to Spanish with just one level and if you ask the marketing manager of the bookstore which foreign language is the most saleable in terms of books sold again he/she would answer you it's French.

Here's an a make believe information that I have gotten here on the internet. It says that India, Spanish is taking over as its official language and replacing vernacular languages as the native language spoken.

One thing more, I'm not a Chinese.
matti   Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:19 am GMT
spanish sounds better than either german and french and we all have to recognize spanish is right behind english .