So I have seen that a lot of the positions on offer in the UK require or prefer people with an additional European Language and I was wondering which you would choose. Just some background, my first language is Afrikaans so I can communicate in Dutch and Flemish (reading much, much more so than speaking and forget about writing). Afrikaans is a Germanic language, but nowhere near as complex as German, but German is a definite option for me, as is French. So what do you think?
Dutch should get you some mileage right out of the box. If you’re going to learn a language, then German wouldn’t be bad… shouldn’t be too difficult for you, and Germany is the largest european economy. Most professional Germans I’ve come across already speak English pretty well, but reading German can be useful for getting printed news from local sources and reading company documents that weren’t specifically intended for international audiences. French is always nice, particularly for impressing (non-French) women. 
(I am making a gender assumption here that may not be warranted)
Ha-ha, your gender assumption is spot on. Thanks for the advice, but what do you think about Russian?
The Scandinavian languages would be a piece of cake for you; they’re very closely related to Dutch. It would get you “some mileage right out of the box” in a couple of weeks’ time. http://ordbok.lagom.nl/obforums/viewtopic.php?id=205 Veele groeten,
Met al die pensioenfondsen die miljarden beleggen is vloeiend Nederlands zeker geen overbodige luxe. Dat doet de deur hier en daar vast wel open.
^^ IPE.com 25 June 2008 15:30: NETHERLANDS – Dutch pension funds saw the value of their equity portfolios drop by another 6% in the first quarter of 2008 because of continued unrest on the financial markets, the Dutch central bank DNB said today.
Russian is challenging, I’m still trying to learn it, though it admittedly hasn’t been a major priority. Russian is challenging because of the new alphabet, the fact that spelling is about as consistently related to pronunciation as English spelling, and the fact that it is an inflected language. Verbs are no picnyk either. Fortunately for me, I remember how inflection works from high school Latin, but I still never spoke Latin, so remembering to speak the inflections is still challenging.
I have no excuse to not be able to speak Russian. My mom is fluent (English was actually her 2nd language) and I could at one time understand a great deal. Speaking it is a different story.
I am a native speaker of Russian. I’ve learned English, Spanish and currently learning MAndarin. I’d say that Russian is by far the hardet language to learn. If mandarin did not have those stupid lil symbols (which you don’t need anyway for conversation), it would be a pretty easy language to learn.
miker2800 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am a native speaker of Russian… > I’d say that Russian is by far the hardet language > to learn. You can’t realy claim it… If you are a native speaker (I am too btw), you were never actually learning Russian from scratch as an adult… bchadwick: What do you mean by “inflected”? Is that because we change the words’ endings/prefixes to indicate past/future tense?
Actually I have…I was born there and moved to the states when I was 10. In order to to improve both my writing and advance my conversational skills, since I rarely spoke when I was in college, I took some advanced classes. My benchmark is English/Spanish/Mandarin, so not considering Spanish, which is actually deemed to be the easiest language to learn, I’d ray Russian is pretty difficult.
Yeah, Chinese grammar is pretty easy. For spoken Chinese the challenge is the tonality, and the fact that most words are only one or two syllables long, which means that the ideas come at you very fast, and you have little time to try to remember what a word means before the next 5 are said. The ideograms are really tough. When I took Chinese in college (one of the few languages I completely gave up on), I came to the conclusion that learning to speak and write chinese was like learning two separate languages that just happen to have the same grammar.
Yes, tones do make things complicated, but for the most part I’ve known of mandarine speaking natives that are almost monotone, but you can still undersand everything they say in the context of a sentence…either way I bet it makes for some lost in translation moments
krnyc2008 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > bchadwick: What do you mean by “inflected”? Is > that because we change the words’ endings/prefixes > to indicate past/future tense? Yes, that’s what I meant. I believe “inflection” refers specifically to the changes in noun endings, depending on how the noun is used in a sentence. Verbs also change endings, and a lot of european languages do that, but relatively few languages do it with nouns (German does a little bit, and even English (possesive, “John” vs. “John’s”) but not to the extent that Russian and Romanian do).
The one big ADVANTAGE of mastering Russian is that if you wanted to…you could pick up other slavic languages with absolute EASE!
miker2800 I’m a native polish speaker (admittedly a little rough now bc I immigrated young and lived in spanish speaking countries for years) and can pick up on russian if spoken slowly- what would you recommend I do to get a basic level of comfort in russian? Its always been useful everywhere I’ve worked, unlike the spanish. Portuguese is in high demand too, thats a relatively simple transition from spanish.
There is this program/book/CD… which has helping me make great strides in Mandarin… It’s called “Living Language.” They sell it at borders for all the more prominent languages. It’s under 30 and will vastly improve your speaking skills. You got a good foundation, being a native and all, and you will find it will come to you faster than you think…good luck
I’ll check it out- thanks! Might be a good way to kill my xtra “would have been studying for CFA” time
Yeah, I have the Living Languages edition for Russian, and thought it’s really well put together, particularly if you’re someone who likes to get the grammar hammered down before revving up the vocabulary.
anyone have a review for rosetta stone?