Italian VS German

Take Your Pants Off

Basically I done both in my JC at HL and came up with a D with no study(because as English I have no interest in languages as well but I hate English more :P )

I decided to go ahead with Italian, 2 weeks ago I met with my JC German teacher and we went into a conversation and he was telling me of how Italian is only spoken in Italy while German is spoken in loads of countries now, that hit me really hard and I was thinking why am I doing Italian ???
Because its easy....for points

But is it worth it if I walk out with a C1 in Italian and know that that language is only spoken in 1 country :eek:
(I am only counting these subjects for my LC: Maths, Biology, Chem, Business, Economics, Ag, Science)(These are the subjects I am main focused on)

So any intake ??
Can anyone provide me with the leaving cert results statistics for these languages, I cannot find them
Thanks

spurious

The statistics are here: http://examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=st&sc=r13

A knowledge of Italian can help you with Romanian too along with many other Latin based languages.
Surprised at a language teacher playing the 'my language is spoken by more countries' game - sad.

ynwa14

At the end of the day unless you get fluent in the language or go on to study it at College I wouldn't even consider how many countries speak the language - LC subject choice should really be based on a) what requirements you need for further study if you're planning on it and what you're more interested in and thus more likely to work at so you can b) get the most points outta it you can. I did both those languages for my JC too because I was fluent in German and my school didn't offer it, so I went with Italian over French. I got an A in both at JC and when I moved schools I only had the option of doing German, and I didn't do Italian outside cause I was already doing 8 subjects. Personally I find Italian a nicer language and think I woulda enjoyed studying it but you could be completely different. I found German class difficult because it was boring and a drag as I had to learn all these rules that didn't make sense to me in applying to grammar sections because it'd just come to me naturally - so trying to say what part of sentences were in what tense or gender was actually difficult for me. I'm not sure if that means German grammar is more difficult than Italian which I had no problem with or if it was just the change in how I had to know the language. But I'm still in the mindset that Italians the easier language?

Take Your Pants Off

Yeah, after close analysing of the statistics it shows a greater % get better results in Italian then German.

spurious

However, much less candidates do Italian, so that skews things a little. Of the two languages, I would definitely say Italian is easier to get to a good standard in.

hfallada

There is a large amount of second generations in Ireland and a lot of them speak italian. There was lots of italians in my school. Probably one of the reasons why the grades are so high as they near native speakers.

German is the language of the EU. Its spoken by nearly 100 million people in Europe and lots of french, italians and eastern europeans also learn it. Most people in France on the german border learn german before they learn english.

Most importantly german is an amazing subject for university. Law and German is 515 points in TCD, but Law and French is like 560/570. Business and German is like 480 points, but business and french is like 530/540. Courses with german are a lot lower than french.

Plus German needs millions of workers in years to come because of its declining population. Thousands of italians are emigrating from italy because its economy which hasnt grown in nearly 15 year.

Canard

To be honest a lot of these points are irrelevant. Unless you're planning to get quite fluent in the language, LC German isn't much use, and Italian is more straightforward. If you were doing French/Italian I'd advise you to keep on both, but yeah, if you don't plan on doing any languages in college then Italian will be handier for points I'd say. I personally think German sounds lovely, but so does Italian.

Take Your Pants Off

hfallada wrote: »

There is a large amount of second generations in Ireland and a lot of them speak italian. There was lots of italians in my school. Probably one of the reasons why the grades are so high as they near native speakers.

German is the language of the EU. Its spoken by nearly 100 million people in Europe and lots of french, italians and eastern europeans also learn it. Most people in France on the german border learn german before they learn english.

Most importantly german is an amazing subject for university. Law and German is 515 points in TCD, but Law and French is like 560/570. Business and German is like 480 points, but business and french is like 530/540. Courses with german are a lot lower than french.

Plus German needs millions of workers in years to come because of its declining population. Thousands of italians are emigrating from italy because its economy which hasnt grown in nearly 15 year.

This is exactly what concerns me, but the only thing is I do no plan to study language in UNI, but however job wise I would prefer a language that is widely spoken

Just Like Heaven

Cannard is right, unless you intend to work hard after leaving cert and get the relevant cefr qualification, the actual level obtained in either language makes it not worth worrying about. Loads of people have A in honours French etc. on their CV but by the time they finish college they've more or less lost any functional ability in the language.

If you don't intend to study the language at third level and don't actually have a clear idea of how either of them will be any good to you when you finish just chose whichever you enjoy more and think you will get more points in.