French or Spanish?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

German. Good luck with that one, far more difficult than either French or Spanish.

Ach Du lieber! Dass stimmt nicht!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

German. Good luck with that one, far more difficult than either French or Spanish.

Ach Du lieber! Dass stimmt nicht!

No, it's correct. State Department teaches French and Spanish for 6 months before sending people out, German for 1 yr, same as Russian.

(And who says "Ach Du Lieber"? Nobody German!)

[Anonymous]

(Old German people say Ach Du Lieber!)

As for German being harder than French or Spanish -- for an English speaker, I assume you mean -- that is surprising to me, and I have learned German, French, Spanish as well as Japanese. I am shocked to learn that the FSI thinks it takes students twice as long to be come proficient in German and in French or Spanish! Really?

According to this information, Spanish, French and German are all classified as "easy"

Which Are the "Easy" and "Hard" Languages?

Group 1: French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili

Group 2: Bulgarian, Burmese, Greek, Hindi, Persian, Urdu

Group 3: Amharic, Cambodian, Czech, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese

Group 4: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean

http://www.pimsleurmethod.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-a-new-language.html

[Anonymous]

Go with Spanish. I speak Spanish and have made several trips to Latin America and Spain with my sons who took Spanish and it immeasurably enhanced our enjoyment.

More people speak Spanish than French.

And besides, I found I was able to get by in France by speaking Spanish with a French accent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
German. Good luck with that one, far more difficult than either French or Spanish.

Interesting take, as English is basically a Germanic language with a lot of French influence, rather than being a Romance language like French and Spanish.

One advantage to learning French, even if your DC never goes to a French speaking country, is that it makes reading older English literature a lot easier. A basic understanding of French made reading Chaucer in original Middle English almost bearable.