<p>I am wondering what the practical value is of knowing a second language. Aside from Spanish in areas with a lot of Spanish-speakers (or any other language in an area with a lot of immigrants who speak that language), and aside from being able to converse with natives while on vacation (or if you want to live in a foreign country), what are the practical advantages of knowing a second language? (I don’t mean this question to argue that there needs to be a practical value–I believe in learning for the sake of learning, for sure. Just wondering if there is a value beyond that for foreign languages.)</p>
<p>In our neck of the woods, a very diverse and international city with very strong ties to trade with Asia, having a second language is a giant asset on the job market. It comes up all the time, and I see those with one language as having a real disadvantage. But it probably very much depends upon where one lives and the industry in which one works.</p>
<p>I agree with starbright, it really depends on the person’s situation. I personally use my second language skills (French) for better understanding topics where a lot of the vocabulary is in French (film, literature, fashion, etc.) and also for reading food packages and directions when I don’t feel like reading them in English.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that for English speakers, fluency in another language is associated with a richer English vocabulary. I can’t remember the source, though.</p>
<p>My daughter is planning on using her fluency in Spanish in the medical field. She will be able to translate for nurses, doctors, etc. She is planning on nursing or pharmacy. This should give her a leg up for job prospects.</p>
<p>I would agree with fabrizio for one thing.
But for another, English speakers, and particularly those who live in North America, are some of the very few peoples on the planet that only speak one language. If you can master one romance language, mastering the others is a much easier task, giving you access to people, travel, literature from a large portion of the world. If you ask a head hunter, they would tell you to have your child learn Chinese, as in any business related venture it will surely be needed in their lifetimes. If you can speak and read a language you can understand other people and their perspectives. IMHO the gift of fluency in more than one language is immeasurable.
just to give you an idea : [Top</a> 30 Language Spoken in the World by Number of Speakers](<a href=“http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm]Top”>Top 30 Language Spoken in the World by Number of Speakers)</p>
<p>Despite being an ethnic Chinese fluent in Mandarin, I’m actually a bit torn on the business practicality of learning Mandarin.</p>
<p>On the one hand, it’s pretty well-established that an easy way to win the hearts of mainland Chinese is to speak Mandarin well. Mark Rowswell, also known as Dashan, is a great example of this; he’s definitely a house-hold name in China. Thanks to him, it is now relatively common to see foreigners fluent in Mandarin host shows on Chinese state broadcasting. You can tell the audiences really appreciate these young men and women.</p>
<p>Yet, on the other hand, lots of mainland Chinese are learning English, and more importantly, they want to show off their English. As a second-generation American, I frequently find myself in an odd position where I want to practice my Mandarin with Chinese international students, but they want to practice their English with me, and for whatever reason, a Chinese / English dual-language conversation where I speak Chinese and they speak English never pans out. The point I want to make is that even if one learns Chinese, there’s a pretty decent chance that aside from introductions and a “哇，你講得很不錯啊!” (Wow, you speak really well!), the conversation will quickly switch to English.</p>
<p>I thus agree with a recent New York Times letter to the editor that if you want to account for the possibility that business with China will lead to great economic opportunities for Americans in this century, the best way to do that is actually to learn about Chinese history and culture as opposed to the Chinese language. If you’re going to be speaking English anyway because Chinese people want to show off their English skills, you might as well wow them by showing your knowledge of Chinese geography, the poetry of Li Bai, and so forth.</p>
<p>I’ll confirm that what fabrizio says doubles for Indian immigrants. As for going to India, anywhere that an American would go to do business in India would find tons of people speaking English.</p>
<p>Fabrizio, your experience is so interesting. I live in a city with about half of Chinese decent, and no one wants to practice their English. The Chinese foreign students refer back to their native language with everyone able to speak it around them since they have such a critical mass. Whole suburbs are streets and shops and malls all in Chinese-- no English to be found. Now our city will be offering elementary school in Mandarin (for those that already speak it at home). Even the kids in private suburban schools who have spent most of their lives here are speaking Mandarin with one another.</p>
<p>Most well educated(well to do) Chinese in China, Taiwan, HK know how to speak English. Even Europeans speak to each other in English when conducting business.</p>
<p>starbright,</p>
<p>I acknowledge that it could be different if I lived in a city such as yours. There’s a sizable number of Chinese international students at Georgia Tech, but it’s nowhere near half the campus, though some may feel it is ;)</p>
<p>Truly practical benefits are hard to come by. I negotiated a deal once in Spanish, with Spanish-language documents, but that was over 15 years ago and I haven’t had another real chance since.</p>
<p>However, my reading speed in Spanish and French is a lot slower than my reading speed in English. Now that Amazon has made untranslated Spanish and French books much cheaper and easily available, I spend less on books than I would if I read only English, because the books I read in French and Spanish take a lot longer to finish.</p>
<p>I seem to not have communicated well in my mother tongue 
My point was that learning another language and becoming fluent in it is truly the best way to learn another culture, to understand what is important in it, the way people are greeted, family members are named, introductions are done and history is discussed all tell us more than we realize. It is also a window into how other people speak English as a second language, when they retain grammatical and structural roots of their native language.
[The</a> Advantages of Being Multilingual: How Proficiency in Multiple Languages Increases Adaptability](<a href=“Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try”>Suite 101 - How-tos, Inspiration and Other Ideas to Try)</p>
<p>S1 speaks both German and Italian fluently. In his field, a lot of literature comes out first in one or the other of these. He has found that often time he can get a jumpstart on some of the newest ideas in his field because he can read stuff long before his friends who have to wait for the translations.</p>
<p>I think being fluent in another language has definite benefits. If you’re going into the medical field, working knowledge of a Latin-based language gives you a better grip on medical terminology and helps you communicate with foreign patients… Also, it would help you with business, and you learn things about grammar that you never would have learned in an English class. I never knew about the subjunctive form of grammar until I took French. Also, being bilingual is basically a given in all European countries, it’s really only in the U.S. where people are so opposed to learning another language. French, Spanish, and Chinese are spoken all around the world and learning one or more of those languages definitely gives you an advantage, no matter what the situation, over people that speak only one language.</p>
<p>I spent five years working in an architectural office in Germany. I wasn’t completely fluent when I started, but I was by the end. The fact that I could speak German meant that I encouraged rather than discourage my dh from getting a post-doctoral fellowship in Germany. On the other hand I’ve never found any real use for French, though I like watching French movies without the subtitles and I’ve helped my parents out when traveling in Francophone Africa and I can read the French bits in War and Peace without looking at the footnotes.</p>
<p>It is a different experience to travel if you speak and understand the language of a country – even if a lot of people there speak English. In certain subjects, it opens academic doors and sometimes it opens professional doors. Each of my parents spoke three languages and it’s hard for me to fathom why people feel that one is enough. I wonder if one of the reasons my mother married my father is that he spoke her native language. I’m betting that made him attractive to her.</p>
<p>My D taught herself German and a bit of Dutch & other bits of language because it was FUN to read comments about singers she liked in Europe. She also liked being able to understand what they were singing about. It was useful in giving her a leg up when she took language over the summer & fall, to get her foreign language requirement in a very short period of time.</p>
<p>I took Spanish for many, many years, including several years in college & all thru HS. Have not found it particularly helpful, for the most part & it’s gotten rather rusty. I CAN tell when the translator is saying things that totally differ from the conversation being conducted in English, but have not had much need to use it in my home state. </p>
<p>I wish I were more fluent in Spanish. I know S was able to understand things when he travelled in the orient because he had taken years of Mandarin (tho he was not comfortable speaking much).</p>
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<p>Imagine being able to read the entire book in its original language 
Well worth the trouble of learning Russian.</p>
<p>I will never forget the joy of reading my first book in English. It was Anne of Green Gables. Of course I knew the story, but the book in its original language was suddenly making much, much more sense.
I will sometimes stop reading the book if the translation is horrible. I think that people speaking only one language don’t have problems like this ;)</p>
<p>Life is full of actions that open your door of opportunity a bit wider or close it down a tad.</p>
<p>Learning another language is an example of the former.</p>
<p>Those widened opportunities can show up in many places:
- expanded work opportunities
- richer travel experiences
- more opportunities for friendships
- positive changes in your brain from learning
- appreciation of other cultures</p>
<p>Those opportunities cannot necessarily be predicted ahead of time, so those who think in terms of “opportunity costs” may choose to spend their valuable time taking advantage of other opportunities that they believe are more closely tied to their professional life and/or have a more certain ROI.</p>
<p>But you might miss meeting your future spouse :-)</p>
<p>Kei</p>