Did you get a lot out of studying a foreign language in school?
And if it were offered, would you have tried out studying Arabic?
Cause Qatar sure wants Americans to learn. Long story short...
The Qatar Foundation gave $30.6 million over the past eight years to several dozen schools from New York to Oregon and supporting initiatives to create or encourage the growth of Arabic programs, including paying for teacher training, materials and salaries....After Spanish, Arabic is the language most spoken by students learning English as a second language at U.S. public schools, and the percentage of speakers is growing at a faster rate than other top languages, according to a review of data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
I've always wanted to learn Arabic, primarily to learn more about food in the Middle East and to learn about history and literature. That's a good enough reason for me to enjoy learning a language.
- What motivates you to pick up another language?
- Do you enjoy being able to see other people's worldviews through culture?
- What language did your grade school make you learn and did you retain any of it -- even gone further with it?
Feel free to share anything else. I was forced to learn Spanish and I kind of grew to hate learning Spanish because it was a dread for me in school, but I can admit I would gladly pick it up again just to go to Spain and Latin America! So much good food! Everywhere!
EDIT:
Just thought of another question,
What languages do you use in your finance jobs? Do you ever interact with clients outside of the English-speaking world?
Getting laid.
Absolutely, I gained so much from doing an Asia internship as well as learning a new language. It made me a different person, and if I had to advise someone I'd say that without going balls deep into learning a new language, one isn't getting the most out of the experience. You go to college not just for the piece of paper, but to learn a few things. Nothing crazier than learning a new culture. It opens dimensions of yourself that you may not have even known about.
Grade school: none. High school: Latin, with the option to transfer to AP Spanish if we wanted to take the easy way out (Spanish was my first language). I was an idiot so after 2 years of Latin I jumped right into that AP Spanish class. College: I chose Chinese.
I was once volunteered, in the middle of a meeting, to translate some 100 pages of Spanish legalese. True story: I wound up quitting my job over that one. My boss got pissed that I didn't get other work done and instead had to spend 8 hours on the phone with Mexico going over the translated deal documents. Fuck that place. Also used Chinese extensively during my China internship, and the network you develop is great. You think Jews roll deep? Wait until you make some Chinese friends.
Absolutely. I've traveled across most of the world, and surprise surprise, the best situations are the ones that are absolutely not in English. I've lived outside the US for almost 10 years because of my languages. I am having a major international sports star over tonight for a BBQ on our terrace in Spain because that's just the sort of stuff that tends to happen when you open your mind to other peoples' language and culture.
Middle school made me learn a language, I took Spanish. When I was 13, I got fired from KFC for talking crap to the Mexicans in the kitchen. Now I'm fluent, but then again I've also lived in EU for how long. In high school I took up to Spanish 5 but I didn't really progress until I had Colombian and Dominican friends in college. Then college I personally pursued Italian, Chinese, and later German & French because I got a job offer in Switzerland due to a study-abroad internship I had done. Chinese I remember very little despite spending 3 months in Shanghai, but what I can say, I speak clearly enough (tones etc.) to impress.
My Swiss M&A job was exclusively cross-border, so I have ended up using every language I ever learned except Japanese. English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Russian, Italian, Chinese and some Portuguese. The most useful it ever was to me was when we were doing a deal with ExxonMobil that had 80,000 pages of DD written in five languages (all incl. above) because assets were worldwide and contracts had been existed almost forever (I remember several contracts that were typewritten from the 1950s, priced in like Italian Lira and French Francs etc). Bid for the assets had to be delivered within 3 weeks. Client was American (read: "no language skills whatsoever"). Seeing as my skills encompassed the entire transaction, I was made VP and put in charge of the whole deal as a result. That was pretty sweet. Interact with non-English speaking clients? All day. On average I use about 4-5 languages a day.
Did you have a knack for learning languages? I struggle a lot and I've always felt like a huge part that stops people from learning other languages has always been the sheer volume of vocabulary that needs to be remembered, which is a major chore. How did you ever find the time to learn all of that??
How come you've managed to learn to speak such a staggering amount of languages fluently? What fluency levels are you at when it comes to most of them? C2? C1? It may be because I am 17, but it almost feels like there is no more 'room' in my head for French, having learned English, German and Polish (all C2 CEFR).
:( Sorry to hear about your shitty experience with a former boss.
I've always wanted to visit China, where was your internship? Anything cool you learned about where you went?
EDIT: Uh this was Kassad sorry Idk what happened to the formatting of the post... hopefully I wasn't replying to the wrong comment lol.
I interned for a strategy consulting shop in Shanghai. I learned quite a few things, and honestly don't even know where to begin. It changed my perspective on the world and I didn't even want to come back to the US once it was over. The knowledge that other people are living just as well as we are in the US is pretty eye-opening, and the subtle differences in lifestyle make it seem like you're living a different life.
The costs of things are different in ways that make it easy to do things you couldn't here. I went to play paintball while there with a group of 50+ expats and locals, and since you can drink in public we brought a ton of beer to essentially "party" right there on the train ride to the park. We took cabs that would normally cost $100+ in the US, and even in RMB the cost wasn't insane. It's socially acceptable to buy fake stuff at fake markets (a girl might buy a gucci bag for 200 RMB that might normally cost $500), TV isn't as much a cultural mainstay, and routine is so much a way of life that you don't feel like just an office person the way you might in NYC, where every day you'll see groups of 20-somethings going out to drink while you languish away behind your office window. Club life out there is really nice too. Overall, I still want to go back.
What motivates you to pick up another language? -Force to learn by parents. Pick up so that I can cover foreign markets. Definitely not to get laid.
Do you enjoy being able to see other people's worldviews through culture? - Definitely.
What language did your grade school make you learn and did you retain any of it -- even gone further with it? - Born to Middle School: Thai, English, Chinese (Mandarin) - High School: French - College: Japanese, Korean and Chinese (Cantonese)
What I use at work everyday? Thai, English and Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) Chinese was particularly useful since I need to deal with clients and investors who are from China and Hong Kong.
I got my first real job at an investment bank in New York because they needed someone to cover Chinese market and they can't find someone who can read Chinese news and speaks to Chinese clients fluently.
How can you go about getting a job in Europe as an American? From my knowledge, it is very difficult to get a Visa to work in the UK so it might be easier to move to another country given your language skills are competent enough for the business world. Any suggestions?
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