Learn a Foreign Language As an Engineer? 1021
Ben B writes "I'm working on an undergraduate degree in computer engineering in the US, and I'm a native English-speaking citizen. In fact, English is the only language that I know. Maybe it's not the same at other schools, but for the engineering program at mine, a foreign language is not required. If my plans are to one day be involved in research, is it worth my time to learn a foreign language? If so, which one?" Learning something new is almost never a waste of time, but how much energy have others found worthwhile to expend with all of the programming/math/tech type courses to be had at a large university?
If you're going to live in the US ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're going to stay in the US, you might as well increase your value by learning spanish.
If you're looking at the EU, learn spanish, italian, german, french, or russian.
If you're looking in asia, mandarin.
If you're looking at india, hindi (or PROPER english).
How else are you going to meet girls (Score:4, Interesting)
Too Late (Score:3, Interesting)
It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you are younger. By the time you get to university the effort is probably not worth it from a career point of view, if you are an English speaker. English is the primary language used in technology fields world wide so you already know the language that almost all research is published in.
That being said, studying a foreign language is enjoyable from a personal enrichment point of view. I studied French in high school and hated it. But later in life I went to work for a French owned company that paid for French lessons - that high school stuff came back quickly, and it made the times I traveled to France on business a more enjoyable because I could interact more easily with the people and surroundings than if I had no understanding of the language. Because of that experience I now enjoy reading and watching French language books and movies.
Yo hablo, tu hablar, nos hablamos (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Chinese is an easier language. You don't have to deal with verb conjugation and tenses. Grammatically, it is a simpler language.
It is an easy language to learn. I went to China and saw little kids speaking it, therefore it must be easy.
Most definintely! (Score:4, Interesting)
Foreign languages are priceless in today's world of constant internationalization. I work with people form Germany, Russia, Japan, Norway and Brazil. I speak one foreign language and I wish I knew more. In fact, not knowing Spanish has bitten me in the rear because I could have advanced my career by moving to Latin America where I would fly up the corporate ladder. As somebody who got hired (at least once) for my foreign language and IT skills, I firmly believe that speaking a foreign language is a good career boost.
We have been in many situations were customers from Asia and other parts of the world love to pay extra big bugs for specialists who speak their langauge. It is not that they don't want to speak English, it is the fact that they prefer to deal with people who can speak English and their own language just in case. Technical people who know English + one of CJK or Spanish are becoming priceless because Latin American and Asia are booming. When our company was rapidly expanding, we could not hire enough engineers who were fluent in several languages. Those who got hired received more than generous packages and relocation opportunities. While this may not be appealing to a married person with a couple of kids, a young single college graduate will sure appreciate a six month gig in Japan paid for by an employer. This really helps if you end up working in a small (but well paid) field. You help your employer with building a new customer base in a remote part of the world and suddenly you go from a college graduate to a young professional who brought a company XYZ to a new country. As you can tell from my post, I am all about speaking as many languages as possible.
The bottom line is: Learn language if you would like to be qualified for more opportunities when it comes to travel and corporate mobility. If you believe that your current town/city/country is the best place in the world, then do not bother.
Re:If you're going to live in the US ... (Score:3, Interesting)
> If you're looking in asia, mandarin.
Hmmm ... I wouldn't say it's as simple as that. As an english speaker who picked up japanese so I could work in japan, I can say from experience that the chinese language speakers I had around me learning japanese had it tougher than I did, mainly because they were subconsciously trying to treat japanese as a dialect of chinese. It took them twice as long to get productive because of how much they had to unlearn, and they usually ticked off most of the japanese people they were trying to help them learn because of the chinese thing. The korean guys ? they picked up japanese *really* quickly. My guess is that their language is much closer (and they seemed to try a lot harder than the rest of us did).
I'd advise that despite what you might read in the media about "china being the next japan" economically, learning its language as a shortcut to other languages in the region is probably going to hurt you more than help in practice.
That said, mandarin does cover a larger geographic area of asia, so I guess the moral is that mandarin will help you if you land in a mandarin speaking country, but hurt you if you don't.
Chinese. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a computer scientist working for a major industrial research lab.
English is still the primary language for technology research publications, and will continue to be so for the near future. So don't worry about needing to read foreign journals. Yes some French or German or Japanese might help you find a few more obscure things, but generally if the work is worthwhile it eventually gets published in English.
However, personally I think you should learn Mandarin Chinese. Why?
1) There's a gigantic pool of IT research talent in China that we're only beginning to tap. They publish primarily in English, but their spoken English is generally poor with some exceptions. It's a tremendous benefit to know at least some Chinese in order to be able to socialize with your Chinese colleagues at a conference or when visiting. And I'm fairly certain that if you make a career in research in the next 50 years, you will be visiting and possibly living in the PRC at some point.
2) Research isn't for everyone. If you discover this at an awkward time in your career, it helps to have other skills to fall back on. Being able to speak Chinese is already a significant career asset, and this is likely to continue.
3) Spoken Chinese is a great language to learn, because it challenges a native-English-speaker's conceptions of grammar and meaning. It forced me to think about language in a whole new way, similar to how Prolog completely broke my brain as a sophomore CS undergrad.
All that said, Chinese fluency requires 8+ years of intensive education and immersion to develop; you will most likely never become as proficient in it as you might in a Western language.
As one who's studied a few languages, (Score:5, Interesting)
I would recommend holding off on learning languages at the University unless you are either interested in the language or intend to pursue a career in a place where that language is spoken.
My experiences with foreign languages:
If you know what you are going to college for, then work towards that goal. Don't take a foreign language just because you think you should. It will usually end up being a waste of time. You will appreciate a foreign language far more if you actually learn it while living in the country where it's spoken, and you will retain it far longer than learning a language only from a book. There are great career opportunities overseas for engineers...always have been, always will be, and I strongly recommend pursuing one, even if it's only for six months to a year. Then, while you're there, study up on the language. When you're there, then it's incredibly rewarding.
Re:Too Late (Score:5, Interesting)
This is part truth and part old wife's tale. Yes, there are some things in a language that are more difficult to learn once you're older.
But no, the reality is that with proper immersion most adults can learn a new foreign language in twelve weeks or less (and in some cases depending on the language itself, that includes a rudimentary level of reading and writing in that language as well). Now how many 2 year olds, 6 year olds, or 10 year olds, do you know that can do the same in twelve weeks or less?
The truth is that with proper immersion, most kids will learn a new foreign language over a year -- or over several years, it's just that we don't really count their time -- the same way we adults count our own time (after all, we have things to do as adults, and them -- the kids -- the kids seem like they're wasting their time watching things like Pokemon). And it's also partly based on the fact that for those of us who did learn a foreign language as a kid, we didn't really remember how we learned it -- so we just assume -- that in hindsight -- it must have been really easy and really fast.
Re:If you're going to live in the US ... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm an IT professional. I have an M.A. in Asian Studies and an "ABD" (All But Dissertation) in Chinese literature. My undergrad degree is in
biology/chemistry. Don't ask.
The difficulty encountered in learning a language increases with age. (Babies learn any language equal ease.) Don't wait to begin studying a new language. A second language is an asset no matter what field you find yourself pursuing.
The language spoken by the greatest number of people as a first language is Chinese. China will soon be the world's #1 or #2 economic power. China has 1.2 billion people. While there are many dialects, nearly all Chinese can speak Mandarin, as it is the "official" language taught in schools both in China and in Taiwan.
The language spoken by the greatest number of people (as a first or second language) is English. Make sure that you are a master of your own language.
The third major language of the world to learn would be Spanish.
For strategic importance, you should also consider Arabic, Russian or Japanese.
I've studied Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish. From my point of view, Mandarin was the easiest due to its simple grammar.
For the fellow who dissed Chinese for having no cognates with English: were you surprised? English is part of the Indo-European language family. Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. While Chinese is distantly related to Navajo and Apache, it has no connection whatever with English. The only words in common English usage derived from Chinese are "ketchup/catsup" and "yen" (to desire strongly, as in "I have a yen for strawberry ice cream.")
Re:If you're going to live in the US ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Italian is only spoken in Italy and a tiny part of Switzerland. Spanish only in Spain, and Spain is more of a Second World country. Neither will get you very far anywhere outside of those respective countries. It's not like the in the Americas -- people don't speak Spanish much in the EU -- other than tourist Spanish anyway... There are more Poles than Spaniards, you'd be better off learning that than Spanish.
French is widely spoken. German is widely spoken (in fact, it has the highest number of native speakers of all languages in Europe)(though not always welcome). Russian is rarely spoken outside of Kaliningrad and Karlovy Vary, but is widely understood (though rarely very welcome.)
Re:The language of engineers (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a German native speaker. I assume German to be a bit harder to learn than e.g. Spanish, but as a native speaker I can't really estimate this.
I wonder a bit whether you do not have learned any language at school? In Germany you *must* learn a foreign language (normally English). In high school ("gymnasium" - not quite as high school in U.S., but more or less similiar) people must even learn a second foreign language (often French or Russian). I personally have learned English, Russian and Latin at school as well as Swedisch at the University (just for fun, want to go to Sweden for a term).
Generally I assume that - while you don't really need another language besides English if you stay in western countries - other languages will make it easier to get into contact with local people.
From time to time one gets the (I hope false) impression that U.S. citizens aren't that aware of the world outside U.S. (e.g. surveys like "show us the U.S., the Iraq, ... on the world map and 40% of the U.S. fail). Maybe a foreign language can prove you to be "world aware" and ready to accept other cultures - besides U.S. and the language(s) you've learned.
For sure learning a foreign language is though work. Some of my friends do play the piano, guitar or do sing really god. All those skills are not required for business but are nice to have. I do anger a bit to have quit flute lessons early in childhood, because it makes live more cultureful and pretty. I am 23 right now - too old to start learning an instrument again. My opinion: start with another language. It can only be an enrichment to life. (and well, you can still quit in case it doesn't appeal to you.)
Re:The language of engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
Like most Europeans, two, three or more languages are very common. Most non English Europeans jump at the chance to talk to a native English speaker to help their English.
A lot of Americans seem to becoming somewhat bilingual with Spanish now, but they are a long ways behind the average European.
Unless china makes the world love it more than Elvis did, we are going to be speaking English as the world language for a LONG time. Its probably going to be bent some what towards foreign grammar, as most English speakers are secondary language speakers.
Welcome pig inglish :p
Re:Where are you planning on working? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that if you are planning on working in the United States, your time would be better spent focusing on your Computer studies. Most foreign engineers here speak English.
1) I strongly advise learning a foreign language just to make yourself a better person. My Mandarin is pretty good, and my Spanish is -- well, enough to get me in trouble when in Spanish-speaking environments.
2) While there are good reasons to learn foreign languages for business purposes, especially if you already have plans on joining the dark side and working for purchasing/marketing/logistics, etc., speaking from a CSci/Engineering point of view, English is the lingua franca of scientific work, and will probably remain so for some time. There are two up-and-coming economies, India and China. University-educated Indians speak English. Chinese for some structural reasons is not likely to become a replacement for English soon. I will explain.
One of the strengths of English is it's effortless ability to absorb foreign words when it becomes necessary to do so. Thus we have acquired cryptography (Greek Kryptos), carnivore (Latin carne and vorare), and otaku (Japanese Otaku), etc. etc.
Chinese cannot do that and maintain the "structural integrity" of the language. Chinese is written in characters. Characters generally apply to meaning. There is no katakana alphabet like Japanese to phonetically express words of foreign origin. While there are exceptions; "coffee" becomes ka fei and "Coca Cola" becomes ke ko ke le ("Happiness in the mouth". No kidding. The "bite the wax tadpole" of urban legend would be a completely different set of characters, and is seldom if ever used). More frequently, things and concepts become Sinicised. "Hard drive" becomes ying die (hard platter), "Printer" becomes yin biao ji (imprint display machine), and "postmodernism" becomes hou xian dai zhu yi (after modern period principle/ideology), etc. etc.
The end result of this is that most hardware engineering in China is done in English. There is generally no parallel chipset documentation put out by UMC or Taiwan Semiconductor documenting the timing and logic in Mandarin, as it would serve no purpose but to drive everyone insane.
If you DO learn to speak Chinese, you will get 50,000 cool points with your Chinese-speaking colleagues. Whether it will ever add a dollar to your bank account I can't say. It hasn't done anything for mine.
Either a Latin Language, or a "Weird" One (Score:5, Interesting)
I took both Japanese and French. Ramifications:
With Japanese, I understand i18n issues EXTREMELY well (word order, multi-byte charsets, the horrific beast that is iso-8022-jp, input methods, etc, etc).
With French, my understanding of English grammar and its idiosyncrasies was much improved. As an added plus, my wife thinks it's sexy :-).
Neither is probably an optimal second language for an English speaker, but they illustrate two goals that are different from the one you imply (i.e. to understand stuff written in a different language).
A language that has some similarities to your native tongue will grant you a much better understanding of your native tongue (plus it will be easier to learn because of cognates, etc).
A language that is radically different from your native language will open your mind to very different patterns of thought (without the flashbacks ;-) ). Particularly for i18n code (and everyone's writing i18n-friendly code, right?), this is a big deal.
I won't be reading any heavy tech papers in either language, but the experiences have been invaluable.
My suggestions: Spanish for the Latin language, maybe Mandarin or Japanese (still) for the "weird" one.
Re:Depends on what you want to do (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Suggestions... (Score:2, Interesting)
That "faux immersion" is the best thing to ever happen to language teaching. Your first paragraph confirms it.
Re:Suggestions... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Suggestions... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you're not alone in thinking full immersion classes are stupid and ineffective. I think it's part that you're an engineer (i'm projecting here), so we tend to classify things in our heads. If you can't classify things then it becomes MUCH more difficult to retain the information.
In the silly total immersion method of teaching you must figure out what/how a grammer point is from the examples before you can classify it. Whereas the engineer in me wants to classify it right away and THEN "test" how well that classification works against the example use cases to find out where it differs from my expectation. Other people might be able to pick it up the other way, but it would take me 3-5x as long to do that.
I'm currently living in Japan and have been for about the past 2 yrs. Neither my wife or i spoke a lick of Japanese when we came over here and now we're both basically understandable for most commen things. I'm taking a mix of classes some of which are entirely in japanese and tutoring where I can speak english. I try to learn all the new stuff in the english tought japanese class so I'm not lost and confused during the full Japanese class. I find it works much better that way.
don
Re:The language of engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
In contrast to the French, Germans are actually welcoming, friendly and understanding towards people you don't speak their language fluently. Most people there speak English as a second language, so if you ever go there, you will be able to settle in gracefully.
Please! We the french are actually welcoming, friendly and understanding towards people who don't speak french fluently... in fact we love when people try at least to say 2 or 3 words in French.
And more and more French people speak better and better english.
Are Americans understanding towards people who don't speak english? Most of the time, the question doesn't even apply: don't they take for granted that anybody will speak english, anywhere?
See: "a foreign language is not required"; "English is the only language that I know".
In France, a good english level is a requirement for most engineering schools (a low grade at TOEIC may prevent you from being graduated), and learning other languages is strongly promoted (German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese...)
So, if you go to France and assume that anybody will answer when you ask a direction in english, you are certainly wrong. But if you ask at least "do you speak english" (or better, try a bit of polite french), you will be suprised that many people will kindly answer you.
Of course, this does not apply to Parisian waiters, for whom rudeness is a necessary job skill :)
Re:The language of engineers (Score:4, Interesting)
In contrast to the French, Germans are actually welcoming, friendly and understanding towards people you don't speak their language fluently.
[sic] I beg to differ. Two examples:
Anyway, that's just anecdotal evidence and it's too easy to fall into flamebait territory. I was in Germany last week and people were quite nice (but the food was awful as always).
Knowing more languages makes your memory better (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out this essay - "Mnemonic chains" [railean.net], I explain how knowing multiple languages can help you memorize something that you hear easier.
Basically, when you hear some information (audio input), you transform that input into another language before writing it down - this way your brain makes several passes over the data - so more of it is cached (or dumped to the archive).
I speak Russian, Romanian and English fluently; I always think and write in English, even though everyone around speaks one of the other two languages. I also find myself translating my thoughts from English before speaking - maybe this is somewhat slower, but as this is another chain in the data processing - I get yet another chance to review my thoughts before making them public.
The essay provides more details, and explains which other techniques can be applied to enhance the effect.
Re:Suggestions... (Score:3, Interesting)