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

I agree, your son could check out the teachers, and much depends on his ability to learn languages. My older DS opted for Latin in grade 5, although or perhaps because(!) I could help him with French and Spanish, but the Latin teacher was much more engaging than the other two were. All of his classmates had been taking Latin since 2nd grade, so he was a bit nervous. He caught up quickly with a teacher's support and did very well with it in middle school. Since then he's taken living language, but not faring as well as with Latin.

French is a world language, useful for understanding not only Europe but also swaths of Africa and some of Asia's colonial history as well. Spanish (and Portuguese) likewise open vistas onto different parts of the world. You can't really make as powerful a case for Italian in this regard.

There are different things to *enjoy* with each language. Your child might want to dip into some French or Spanish lit in translation and see if there are writers appealing enough to want to read in the original. There is some wonderful poetry in French. Italian is beautiful and fun.

Having any of these languages, it is not tough to pick up the others in any case.

DD has simply picked up enough Italian to read reasonably well even with some limited exposure to Spanish and Portuguese as a younger child. I think it's the classical musical training, myself.

She's studied German-- which I've personally found more useful than French as a scientist-- and plans to study French, which she picked up with relative ease even in two weeks in Paris.

She may not be most kids, though, and would like to study either in French-speaking Canada and/or in France at some point in her future.

Agree that French/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese are more or less interchangeable in terms of learning demand and ease of conversion.

Dutch and German share enough similarities that those two are similarly interchangeable.


My answer, in summary:

STEM? German.

Humanities? French.


(I say that having minimal competence in either one-- I've used them both, but in very different domains in my life.)

I think that Spanish is a good first foreign language because it is so easy. Studying Spanish first will make it easier to study French or Italian or vice versa. However, most high schools only offer up to 4 years of a language so they will likely make a switch at some point. For my DD, she will take 4 years of French because she wants to work in art and design and has expressed an interest in living in France at some point. Personally, I favor French and Italian for the cultural and literary aspects.

My brother is a high energy physicist and regularly goes to Europe to CERN. In our very small high school the choices were Spanish and German and he took Spanish. He says he regrets it now and wishes he had taken German because it would have fit better with physics.

Interesting, thanks. My father earned a PhD in physics in the 1960s, for which a reading knowledge of German was required. There were no foreign language requirements when I got a physics PhD in the 1990s. But it appears that math is different.

Exactly-- the place where I went to grad school was pretty old-school, but there was no FORMAL requirement. Still, there were some seminal papers in neuroscience and electrochemistry in particular which had never been translated from German-- and I could read them. It's been handy in pharmacology, as well.

My DH, on the other hand, does not have literacy in anything but English, and in MatSci, it's been fine for him.

I lived/worked in the Former Soviet Union for 13 years and only spoke English when I left the US. My Russian is ok now (I am clearly not great with languages and Russian is quite difficult), my wife speaks 3 languages (Russian/English/Turkish). I was fortunate to travel extensively (visited 35 countries) during my time there and having English is key as you can get by in most places pretty easily with it.

My son's first language is English but he can read, write and speak Russian very well. He must choose between French or Spanish for next year and I will encourage Spanish because it will be easier for him to hear/speak it frequently and I think this is crucial if he is going to have any fluency in the language.

I think French could be useful if you are going to work as a diplomat or work in Africa. English is all one needs for Europe and if working there were your goal I would go with German before French as a second language. I am surprised French is still offered as a choice in schools. It should be German or Chinese, in addition to Spanish, I think.

Lol. Honestly, those language requirements for maths haven't changed since I was an undergraduate, and they were ridiculously outdated then. You can tell how vital it is to know any of these languages to be a mathematician from the fact that there isn't a single one of these languages that the schools agree you have to know. It's a hurdle that's useful for filtering doctoral candidates, that's all. [ETA we all like a nice mixed metaphor, right?] By the time you might, very occasionally, have a serious need to read mathematics that hasn't been published in English, you'll be working in a department that has native speakers of the language in question, and you'll ask them nicely to help you. (And they, in turn, will ask you nicely to proofread their papers written in English.)

I don't know about the mathematics department at Chicago. But I am pretty sure Math can serve as the foreign language requirement in many other departments in University of Chicago.