Languages

[schmalex]

Hey, I'm planning on doing an Arts degree at Melbourne and tossing up whether to do a Diploma in Languages and if so, in what language. I'm really quite stuck on this. I plan to major in economics and will most likely minor in politics, or at least study quite a bit of it. My career aspirations are of the economics\politics orientation at the moment (but who knows what will happen.) The things is, the languages that would be most useful for a future career (Indonesian, Chinese), don't really appeal to me that much, and I'm afraid if I don't really enjoy what I'm learning I will just end up doing poorly and dropping it. I don't want to study 125 points of a subject I don't enjoy. I'd really like to study a language that has a really rich culture and history that I can get absorbed in. I'm not sure whether I'd actually like to use my language to travel overseas at the moment, but I think it would be a rewarding exercise to learn another language. At the same time as wanting to do something I enjoy, I don't want to spend all that time studying something if I know it will end up useless.

Here are the languages offered by the University of Melbourne:

Arabic
Chinese
French
German
Hebrew
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish

I think Russian or French would probably be the most interesting to me, but I kind of thought I'd like to study a country a bit more exotic than France, so I was leaning toward Russian, but I'm not sure when I'd ever use Russian? See my dilemma?

So if anybody would like to select a language and convince me to study it I would be very grateful.

Also, I studied Japanese in high school, and I really enjoyed it, but I don't want to study it at university because learning about Japan doesn't appeal to me at all. I kind of detest authority, social conventions, arbitrary ideals of honour, and basically everything the country holds dearly. Plus the only use of Japanese would be in a corporate setting, and although I'm majoring in economics, I don't intend to enter the business world.

Apologies for how long that ended up being (closest thing I could find to an embarrassed face)

[ariawuu]

I agree that it's useful to find a commonly spoken language and one that you should enjoy. France and Russia both have a rich history so maybe look at some youtube videos on french/russian tutorials to see if you can manage enunciating some phrases (i think french you need to do a series of tongue rolls so its a little harder to speak).

I hope this helped.

[echenzi]

Realistically, a lot of the languages you may study won't be used unless you put yourself into the situation (e.g go to country for holiday), since so many people can speak English nowadays.

I would suggest studying a language (and culture) totally foreign to you, it may just be rewarding. Of that list i'd be most wanting to learn arabic and culture. Just totally exotic.

Between french and Russian, i'd flip a coin

[IntoTheNewWorld]

Study Russian

screw usefulness - languages seem to be the first thing people drop subject wise. Ensuring that you maintain interest is the number 1 factor in my opinion, because Mandarin wouldn't be so useful if you hate it and suck at it.

[schmalex]

Realistically, a lot of the languages you may study won't be used unless you put yourself into the situation (e.g go to country for holiday), since so many people can speak English nowadays.

I would suggest studying a language (and culture) totally foreign to you, it may just be rewarding. Of that list i'd be most wanting to learn arabic and culture. Just totally exotic.

Between french and Russian, i'd flip a coin

Well Russian appealed to me because it is totally foreign: I don't even think I know what it sounds like. And I agree somewhat: if I studied Indonesian for ages and got a diploma in it, it could be useful, but there's a very good chance I'd never use it. Thanks you guys, I'm feeling a bit better. It's just hard being a soon-to-be arts student and tossing up between feeling like you're going to be studying useless things and feeling like you're going to be studying things just for their usefulness. Does that make any sense? Anyone else have this dilema?

[ninwa]

What kind of economics are you planning on if not corporate?

Yeah if you want Chinese to actually be useful to your career you'd really need to live in China, just studying it at uni won't grant you anywhere near the level of fluency required. That said it's probably the most useful language in that list to politics.

If it helps, the official languages of the UN: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish. So Russian isn't entirely worthless if the politics you are talking about is on an international level.

I don't really want to choose for you because I'm biased...

[IntoTheNewWorld]

It's just hard being a soon-to-be arts student and tossing up between feeling like you're going to be studying useless things and feeling like you're going to be studying things just for their usefulness. Does that make any sense? Anyone else have this dilema?

Well, a language is only useful at full fluency - anything under that is almost useless. And to get to that level of fluency you'd need to be pretty damn dedicated/interested in the language/live there and be forced to learn it.