Learn Russian instead
This article in The New Republic is right on: having a subscription to the Times is so passé.
It's also true that learning Chinese or Russian (or Spanish or Arabic) makes more sense then learning German if one aspires to converse with a large amount of people, or power up one's CV. Clearly the world's corporations and entrepreneurs are not flocking to France or Italy to seek their riches.
When I elected to study French in high school in California, it had nothing to do with practicality, or facility, or even being able to communicate with a lot of the people in my town - it was because I enjoyed the sounds coming out of my mouth, and the possibility of reading Cohen or Voltaire as they were meant to be read.
The author's point about being able to practice Russian on Russians without being constantly, mercilessly corrected is also not lost on me. The French are notorious for exhibiting dramatic difficulty comprehending the gist of a speaker's thoughts if one word's gender is inverted.
And yet, if I could go back in time and revise my academic curriculum, I would still study French, but also add to that some Greek, Russian, and maybe Portuguese, simply because they all sound so lovely rolling off the tongue.
It's also true that learning Chinese or Russian (or Spanish or Arabic) makes more sense then learning German if one aspires to converse with a large amount of people, or power up one's CV. Clearly the world's corporations and entrepreneurs are not flocking to France or Italy to seek their riches.
When I elected to study French in high school in California, it had nothing to do with practicality, or facility, or even being able to communicate with a lot of the people in my town - it was because I enjoyed the sounds coming out of my mouth, and the possibility of reading Cohen or Voltaire as they were meant to be read.
The author's point about being able to practice Russian on Russians without being constantly, mercilessly corrected is also not lost on me. The French are notorious for exhibiting dramatic difficulty comprehending the gist of a speaker's thoughts if one word's gender is inverted.
And yet, if I could go back in time and revise my academic curriculum, I would still study French, but also add to that some Greek, Russian, and maybe Portuguese, simply because they all sound so lovely rolling off the tongue.
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