Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Which European language to study?

Late to the party, but here are a few more thoughts:

- The value of Spanish in the U.S. goes way beyond dollar value. Increasingly there is social currency in being able to chat in Spanish, which has intangible value for your employer as well as you personally.

- Because English shares its grammatical structure with German, but its advanced vocabulary with French, German is easier to start with, but becomes more difficult, while French is the other way around.

- French is harder for an English speaker to hear. This is because (to a first approximation) English, German, Spanish and Italian are stress-timed languages, while French is a syllable-timed language. The rhythm is really different.

- Of the romance languages, Italian is the most regular. I've heard it said that if you know English, French, and Spanish, you get Italian for free. Just learn a few rules about word endings, and you can fake it.