fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2642 ]

[ SECRET POST #2642 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2642 ⌋

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[Homestuck]

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03. http://i.imgur.com/BVCZgbY.gif
[moving gif]

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[Michelle Lee]

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[Ping Pong the Animation]

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[Lord of the Rings]

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14. [SPOILERS for Pandora Hearts]

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15. [WARNING for sexual/emotional abuse]

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So I'm an American college student I'm debating which second language I should study (for gen ed, not as a major/minor). Spanish is obviously the most practical but I really want to take Japanese (yeah, I know, weeaboo alert). The local tech school offers Spanish night classes for anyone who would be interested in learning, while no one else here offers Japanese, so I could conceivably learn Spanish later on.

What say you, f!s? Also, what practicality vs enjoyability decisions have you had to make recently?

Frankly, as long as you know one foriegn language, it'll be semi-beneficial to employers or grad schools. I take Spanish currently, but I'd take Japanese just because.

Spanish. Definitely Spanish. Spanish is going to be really, really, REALLY big in America in the future. Your job flexibility after college will be made way easier if you learn Spanish now. And while you could "conceivably" learn Spanish later, I doubt you'll ever have a more convenient time or opportunity.

True.

Unless you plan on working on the west coast or Hawaii, take Spanish. You'll find it a lot more immediately useful.

You could also take French if you live in the NE United States.

Spanish. I had to make the same call recently, though I was tempted by German (I've always loved the sound of it, idek). Spanish is going to be far more useful, both employment wise and just....talking-to-people-around-you wise. Not to mention, it was a nice bonus when I was catching up with the previous season of Archer on Netflix.

while i love german, i'm not sure i would be learning this specific language if it wasn't so important in my field in my country

i don't what language i'd be learning if i had the choice tbh. czech maybe?

I tend to choose what will make me happy. That's just the way I work, and I know I'm fortunate to be able to make those choices, but I will always advocate for the thing that pulls you over the thing that makes sense on paper. I'm in the US and none of my first three foreign languages is Spanish. I wasn't interested. I'm finally taking a look at it now for practicality, but I had to follow what I loved first.

Japanese is useless unless you are planning on going to Japan, but if you think you'll enjoy it more, take it.

However, when I took a Japanese class in the US, it was full of people wearing cat ears.

Well, what's your purpose for the language? You said it's not a major or a minor, so what do you want to get out of it? If it's to fulfill a requirement and for your own enjoyment, taking Japanese! I mean, will you use it? Do you enjoy Japanese media - anime, etc? If so, it honestly might be more useful to you than Spanish.

Is Spanish a more useful language to actually communicate, get a job, travel, etc? Absolutely. Spanish is also a lot fucking easier, haha. But if you're interested in visiting Japan, like Japanese media, and you want to study Japanese - just do it.

I'm learning Spanish at my school because it's really practical (I live in L.A.). However, when I started at school I learned Chinese because it's much harder to find Chinese classes or teach yourself Chinese, and I really wanted to learn it. I studied a bit of Chinese, but it was bringing down my grade so I switched to Spanish. However, I still study Chinese on my own, with plans to restart it with actual classes down the road. (But then, I also study wee bits of Irish every now and then which has NO practical element to it whatsoever, just because I like it - but it takes a backseat to both Spanish and Chinese, both of which have more practical uses).

That said, there is also the matter of what you want/need to do with the language. If you are looking for jobs in a heavily Spanish-populated area, go for Spanish. If you plan to look for work internationally (especially in the tech industry) out of South or Central America, then go for Japanese.

In America, it's generally easy to find Spanish classes or self-teaching Spanish materials, so unless you really need to learn Spanish or need a job in a Spanish-heavy area, go for Japanese - it's much harder for native English speakers to teach themselves than Spanish, and much harder to find ways to learn it/people who teach it.

Japanese. I know a woman who studied Japanese in high school and college. She got a job at Canon as a translator. Granted, she told me they were a shit company to work for, but it is possible for someone living on the East Coast to get a job using Japanese.

Also? You want to take Japanese. Do what makes you makes you happy.

Spanish. I took Spanish all through high school and Japanese in college and I've retained more of my Spanish because I'm surrounded by it.

I dunno. Do you have plans to continue learning the language even after reaching the requirement? Assuming you just need the two years, from my experience, two years of college Japanese will not get you anywhere close to fluency. But if you have the motivation to keep going, self-studying is pretty easy nowadays and having the classes would make for a good foundation. Otherwise, Spanish would probably be easier and a better gain for the time spent.

I'm taking German because of family reasons. Most people take Spanish because it's objectively useful in the US and easier than languages like Japanese and Chinese. I've also known people who absolutely did not care so they took sign language.

I decided to skip a class today to spend more time with friends. Very unpractical, but incredibly enjoyable.

I majored in East Asian Studies, am currently JLPT N2-certified (I almost passed the N1 this year but not quite), and I've been working in Japan-related jobs for the past six years. There's plenty out there that you can do with Japanese-- many Japanese businesses have US offices and are always looking for native English speakers who speak Japanese.

I live in Washington DC, by the way, and I can vouch that there are a LOT of Japanese companies located in this area.

If it's what you want to take, go for it. I did, and I haven't regretted it for a moment.

Take Japanese. It will give you an intro to the writing systems, and you can study more on your own later. You're not going to learn enough in a couple of semesters to be fluent in either language, and you're right, you'll probably never have the chance to take Japanese again. It's easy to find Spanish language courses, plus it's the easier language to learn if you're an English speaker.

Go on and take the class you really want.

I think either option is fine. I studied Japanese to go with my Asian Studies minor. I did it because I knew I was going to study abroad there. If it's just for your gen ed you might as well do the language that you enjoy more. If you were looking to major or even minor in a language I would pick Spanish.

One thing people here have not mentioned: depending on your location, you might end up in a class full of native speakers of Spanish who are just taking the class to pass the requirement. That's why I never touched Spanish; because I knew I would be so behind everyone else. I took Russian instead, which is my passive language (parents speak it, I barely do but can understand some), and I did get something out of it; I learned to read and conjugate (and kept finding my parents giggling over my textbook). I only learned because in our classic way, 90% of the class didn't show up most of the time and the teacher just wrote them in. On test days or days when someone accidentally said they were going to have a test and word got around, that class was a zoo. No one would stop talking, the few non-native speakers were lost because the teacher resorted to talking in Russian, oh, and during the tests it would get so loud from the cheating that the teacher would have to shush us every ten seconds.

(And by the way, the cheating was mostly people asking each other what the English question on the test was.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2642 ]

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