Language choice.Follow

I was thinking of making this a poll, but I'm too cheap (and skint) to get premium right now and I think it's more important for me to find my own choice than to let others decide.

You can, however, possibly help me with that choice.


I am applying to a university that requires me to get a double minor in a subject I can freely choose and a language of my choice.
This is what I want, I know what my major (chemistry) and my minor (computing) will be, but I'm not so sure on the language.

The choices are Arabic, Dutch, French and Spanish.

An issue that needs to be considered is that I would want to maintain a GPA of 3.5 over the first two years due to scholarship stuff - there pretty much aren't any scholarships that are large enough for me to afford this that don't require a high GPA.

Arabic sounds interesting, and I've always wanted to give it a go. It might be very useful in the future, some pretty impressive research facilities have opened in the Arabic speaking part of the world in the recent past.
I don't think it will be very hard to learn, but it will require significantly larger amounts of study time outside lectures with my linguistic background than any of the other languages.

Dutch is obviously not very useful. There's two pluses to it, though, the first being that it is a language I absolutely adore, the second that the university in question is in the Netherlands, giving me some immersion, and that I already have a college-level qualification in it, which I passed with an A - choosing it would make that GPA of 3.5 much easier.

French is French. I've always sort of wanted to learn it but I'm not too motivated about it. I've got some very basic knowledge of it and 10 years of Latin under my belt, making it probably easier than Arabic as far as the volume of study time goes, but still harder than Dutch.

What goes for French goes for Spanish, too, except that it has more speakers. I think the difference isn't as large as far as publications in my field of choice go, but it seems a bit more useful. I do like it slightly better than French.

There is also the part about how the general public will view someone with university level qualifications in a certain language, and I am really not sure which one has the advantage in this. I'm also not sure how much knowledge they expect when I start the course.

I need to enter a preference in my application, which I plan on submitting within the next fortnight, so if you have any thoughts on this that might help me make a decision, I'd appreciated it if you shared them.

Go with Dutch if you're going to be there for 3-4 years. Otherwise, French.

Arabic is VERY tough to learn. My sister started as a tri-language major (French, Spanish, Arabic). She had no problem with French, and her work with that made Spanish pretty easy, but Arabic was hard. Even after studying abroad in Tunisia and Egypt, she still had problems with it. She changed her major to a double IR/POSC, and her minors to French and Arabic.

That said, Arabic is a huge plus today in some job markets, as is Spanish. Personally I found Spanish rather easy to learn - I got a Spanish minor with little effort, as I enjoyed the classes.

But if I had the choice in your position? Dutch. You'll be in the Netherlands anyway, and you have experience in it. Focusing on your work while trying to learn a language you have no background in whatsoever and no chance to practice is asking for trouble.

It's basically 100% of South America. Brazilians generally speak (or at least understand) Spanish in addition to Portuguese, as the two are very similar and they deal with their neighbors enough that it's in common usage in the big Brazilian cities.

Edit: Spanish is also spoken in all of Central America, so you'd have literally the entire Western hemisphere covered (except for maybe Quebec, but **** those guys).

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 10:54am by Demea

I'm fairly sure, given the content of the original post, that he speaks English too.

Please don't get Kali talking about how many languages she knows... At least not any more than she already has in the OP.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 11:14am by Belkira

For realz, yo.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 12:17pm by Shaowstrike

You get something like 400 points for getting your name right on the SATs. I don't think there is any expectation on word counts.

Chemistry, Computers, Arabic...this is going to end well. *popcorn*

I voted for Arabic because there didn't appear to be even a remote possibility you'd someday be beheaded as a result of learning Dutch.

Yea, they want approx 2 pages for the school's i applied to years ago. That's a long time ago though, so not sure where that sits now.

If your concerned about your GPA then take Dutch and move on. If you want a challenge then take spanish and work hard at it to get your grade. Arabic is a dream for you and you can take it later when GPA's dont have any meaning.