Korean Job Discussion Forums

[crazylemongirl]

Maori if I was still in New Zealand but since I want to go live in western europe and canada for a while it will be french.

CLG

[mokpochica]

I said other because I think it depends on where you live.

I'm biased toward Spanish because that's my other job (teaching Spanish). It is a very useful language to have in the States.

Once upon a time I really wanted to learn Mandarin. In fact, instead of coming to Korea I almost did the intensive Mandarin course (FALCON at Cornell), but ended up here instead. Now I just want to concentrate on learning more Korean and work on picking up a 2nd Romance Language someday (so much easier to learn!).

I don't really think that Mandarin will become as important or useful a language as English. I say this because it is a tonal language and there are very few languages that are, which makes it even harder for most language learners to pick up than English. Also, many Chinese people already speak English pretty well and use it to communicate with international visitors.

[bucheon bum]

[GirlFromMars]

Portuguese is damn hard to learn if you don't already know Spanish! It is also around the 5th most spoken language in the world, if you include all the former colonies.

[andrew]

*****

[jg]

[Tiger Beer]

[Zyzyfer]

Where's Swahili? I vote for Swahili. Where is it?

[Homer]

Outside of English (if it is not your second language) I would have to say French.
Then again excellent point was made about location. If you live and work in certain regiosn then other languages become much more handy. In Africa for example, French would be quite handy.
Also, it depends on your concept of "usefull".
For me, Korean (my 3rd language) is quite practical because I can communicate better here. I,also enjoy speaking it when going home when we visit the little korean town in Toronto.
Of course it is not what you would call a "uselfull" language but i do enjoy being able to speak it.
The ame goes for my brother who speaks japanese fluently. He uses it in his daily life in Japan but it is not very "usefull" when he travels to europe or even other asian countries....
Its all very relative.

[Cedar]

I don't think Portuguese can be that hard, cause my little bro learned it, and even writes and reads email in it, no problem (though considering his English spelling, who knows if it's a problem for the people reading it). He just spent two months, a year later two months, two years later three months in Brazil and he is for all practical purposes fluent. And that's his FIRST foreign language.

As for me, I find that the more foreign languages I learn the easier it is to do it! French wasn't that hard in high school cause it's not soooo different from English, but after learning Korean, Chinese is so easy! So either Chinese is an easy language, or as I prefer to think, it's easier to make my mind catch different sorts of sounds and grammar patterns the more of them I've already been exposed to.

[the_beaver]

[Tiger Beer]

[Tiger Beer]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

I voted for Chinese because:

There are over one BILLION Chinese speakers on Earth.

'Nough said.

[GirlFromMars]

but they're all in one place