Best career language

KidKeith89

Hi guys,

I hate the fact that I only speak one language, so I've wanted to learn a second for quite a while now - not just so I can say I can speak two languages, but because it'd be a great advantage career wise.

What would you say is the best language to learn for a media professional? Preferably an EU language as you need two European languages to work in the EU (in most cases). I'd love to learn Spanish as it also opens up opportunities in South America, but I studied German in school in the 2000s - I think it would be a lot easier to relearn German than learning Spanish from scratch. Please advise.

sNarah

French will probably your best bet for EU based jobs, closely followed by German and Spanish. That's the 4 main languages (#4 being English) so with 2 or 3 of them, you should be good. That said, as a lot of "mainlanders" are bilingual at a minimum, mastering any of these is no guarantee for employment neither. And by mastering I do mean being able to speak - and certainly write - a fairly high business level.

Enkidu

KidKeith89 wrote: »

Hi guys,

I hate the fact that I only speak one language, so I've wanted to learn a second for quite a while now - not just so I can say I can speak two languages, but because it'd be a great advantage career wise.

What would you say is the best language to learn for a media professional? Preferably an EU language as you need two European languages to work in the EU (in most cases). I'd love to learn Spanish as it also opens up opportunities in South America, but I studied German in school in the 2000s - I think it would be a lot easier to relearn German than learning Spanish from scratch. Please advise.

Depending on your level of German, it may be easier to learn Spanish from scratch. That's purely linguistic though, I've no idea which would really be more useful in your profession.

RadioClash

Aren't English German and French the only 'working languages' of the EU? Spanish, Dutch etc being of secondary importance. Could be wrong in that. Saying that Spanish is very useful to have, even in the States you'd need it for a lot of jobs.

shrapnel222

if you're not daunted by it, learn Chinese. China will soon be top dog and western companies are and will be paying top dollar for people who can negotiate with them in their own language.

Aard

If you plan on becoming a translator/interpreter, you need to sit the exam in one of English, French, or German and it can't be your first language.

If you did German to LC level (especially if it was Higher), you might as well continue with it. And as Snarah says above, you really do need to learn any langauge to fluency to be taken seriously.

RadioClash

Aard wrote: »

. And as Snarah says above, you really do need to learn any langauge to fluency to be taken seriously.

This. A friend of mine speaks fluent German and almost but not quite fluent French, and he's frequently on interview panels for new hires in his company. He says the amount of people who chance their arm and claim they speak a language fluently is ridiculous, and it makes candidates look really bad if they can't even string a sentence together when put on the spot.

Always be honest about your speaking/written level on your CV.

population

It really depends on what you want to achieve. Why insist on a European language? As has been pointed out previously, languages such as Chinese are going to really be an asset for doing business further down the line. I speak Italian which I love as a language, but I know that in the greater scheme of things it is probably not that important of a language. Thus I decided to try study another language with wider business opportunities inherent and after a few false starts have started doing Arabic. It is tough, I mean REALLY tough, but I am enjoying it:)