German or Spanish

[Hoddy]

One of my grandchildren has to decide whether to study German or Spanish. She is already studying French and Latin.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how difficult or useful German or Spanish would be ?

Hoddy

[YCCMB]

My thoughts are purely personal. Spanish is a better "fit" with French and Latin, IMO. Also, if she is keen on languages and may want a career using them, then Spanish is more widely spoken than German and possibly offers more career openings when combined with French.

I've stuck my head over the parapet..I'm sure others will now be along to disagree.[:D]

[Quillan]

Well if memory serves there is something about Chinese being spoken by the most people in a single country, Spanish as the first language spoken by the most amount of countries and English being the most spoken second language. So based on that I would say Spanish which when conjoined with her native language should cover most of the world.

I did learn German at school and really it was a waste of time. Nothing to do with being in France now but back then French or Spanish would have been a better choice but then it was not me that did the choosing. [;-)]

[pachapapa]

German is more difficult than Spanish.

Spanish is more widely spoken but german is something of a "lingua franca" in eastern europe.

Unless there are particular career intentions spanish would be the rational choice.

[Polremy]

I'm so glad someone is still studying Latin.

If she is enjoying Latin more than French (as I did) and likes the grammar, then she will probably take well to German.

Spanish wouldl be a doddle at a later date if necessary.

[NormanH]

Spanish would be easier given the base of Latin and French since it belongs to the same family of languages. It is also widely spoken in Latin America as well as Spain and parts of The USA.

German would be valuable as a source of another non-Latinate vocabulary, and is important for technology and philosophy, although these areas are widely translated into English.

I have a personal preference for German, which 'sticks' in my head, whereas I can never remember Spanish to use it actively, although it is relatively easy to read.

I would recommend Spanish for the reasons above, although Chinese might be the language of the future..

[Clair]

I have done both and found Spanish easier than German.

But I would add that German should be easier with a grounding in Latin than without.

A solid base in French will help when learning Spanish.

I cannot choose one before the other for usefulness.

[YCCMB]

[quote user="pachapapa"]german is something of a "lingua franca" in eastern europe.

[/quote]

Not my experience at all. I work with Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians and Kazakhs plus the odd Latvian or Lithuanian, and none of them have ever spoken  more than a few words of German. Poles sometimes do, but if there's a lingua franca at all it's Russian, with English as a close second. Although perhaps I've just been unlucky and my experience of E.Europeans is too narrow.

[pachapapa]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"][quote user="pachapapa"]german is something of a "lingua franca" in eastern europe. [/quote]
Not my experience at all. I work with Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians and Kazakhs plus the odd Latvian or Lithuanian, and none of them have ever spoken  more than a few words of German. Poles sometimes do, but if there's a lingua franca at all it's Russian, with English as a close second. Although perhaps I've just been unlucky and my experience of E.Europeans is too narrow.
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_of_German_EU_map.svg

[JSKS]

Well, Spanish and French are both Latin-based whereas German is, er, German-based (as is English, incidentally).  So taking German would expand her knowledge of language families.

I always found German much easier than French, especially in terms of pronunciation being much closer to English and almost phonetic.

[YCCMB]

[quote user="pachapapa"]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"][quote user="pachapapa"]german is something of a "lingua franca" in eastern europe. [/quote]

Not my experience at all. I work with Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians and Kazakhs plus the odd Latvian or Lithuanian, and none of them have ever spoken  more than a few words of German. Poles sometimes do, but if there's a lingua franca at all it's Russian, with English as a close second. Although perhaps I've just been unlucky and my experience of E.Europeans is too narrow.

[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_of_German_EU_map.svg

[/quote]

Ah yes, of course...Wikipedia. Never knowingly undersold. Or is that John Lewis? As I said, not my experience at all. But hey. First-hand experience versus Wiki? Naturally, my personal experience is all smoke and mirrors, and Wikipedia is fact.[:D]

[pachapapa]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"][quote user="pachapapa"]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"][quote user="pachapapa"]german is something of a "lingua franca" in eastern europe. [/quote]
Not my experience at all. I work with Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians and Kazakhs plus the odd Latvian or Lithuanian, and none of them have ever spoken  more than a few words of German. Poles sometimes do, but if there's a lingua franca at all it's Russian, with English as a close second. Although perhaps I've just been unlucky and my experience of E.Europeans is too narrow.
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Knowledge_of_German_EU_map.svg

[/quote]

Ah yes, of course...Wikipedia. Never knowingly undersold. Or is that John Lewis? As I said, not my experience at all. But hey. First-hand experience versus Wiki? Naturally, my personal experience is all smoke and mirrors, and Wikipedia is fact.[:D]
[/quote]

But then Kazakhs Usbeks Tadjiks is pushing it a tad east of the Urals.[:)]

[Edward Trunk]

1st Man: Mein Hund hat keine Näse. 2nd Man: Wie riecht er?  1st Man: Schrecklich!

[PaulT]

I would say german but that is purely personal - I like the german language.

I suppose it would depend on where ones career was going, perhaps if technology german.

[nomoss]

[quote user="Edward Trunk"]1st Man: Mein Hund hat keine Näse. 2nd Man: Wie riecht er?  1st Man: Schrecklich![/quote]

[:D]

With good O levels French and Latin as a basis I found Spanish fairly easy to learn in my early forties without formal lessons.

I find neither French nor Latin helps much with German, and I feel embarrassed at how little I know on the odd visit I make to Germany.

I wish now I'd done German instead of Greek, which I dropped anyway.

[andyh4]

As a reasonably fluent German speaker I would suggest that Spanish will be the easier to learn and is more widely understood - although perhaps not in Europe. 

 

As for PPP's wiki link, the fact that it shows over 10% of British with German knowledge shows just how low the "knowledge" bar is being set - most Brits I know get stuck after Achtung, kaput and Kindergarten (and they probably don't lknow the latter is German).  The smart ones have heard of Schadenfreude.[:D]

 

I am very much with Betty on the Eastern European slant - and despite the wiki map.  My experience is that relatively few under 70's speak much if any German - of course just about everyone over 75 in these countries does speak (or at least remember) a little German.

 

Kazakhstan has a sizable bit of its land mass west of the Urals so quite appropriate to quote it therefore as an Eastern European country.

 

JS - English is a Germanic language?  Well yes - but actually no.  Neither Germanic nor Latin but a mongrul hybrid of both following the successful invasion by "French" speaking Normans of a "German" speaking Saxon country.

 

Most languages have around 200.000 base words.  German is relatively poor with around 180.000.  English has around 400.000 base words due to this mixture of the two bases.  Over time words that essentially meant the same thing in the French and German base have split their meaning, and the most obvious example of this is with food.  Normans would eat the meat that was grown by Saxons

 

So we eat Beef (Boeuf) but keep a cow (Kuh), eat pork (porc) but keep (well used to keep) swine (Schwein), eat mutton (mouton) but keep sheep (Scharf).

 

But back to the original question.  In my experience many more Germans speak English - and good English at that - than Spaniards - away from the resorts that is, so while a good knowledge of German might be a useful thing to have it will not necessarily bring many advantages unless you plan to live somewhere where German is the native language. 

 

 

 

[pachapapa]

@ A4

Agreed on english with it's joint latin-germanic roots. But the latin part of the spectrum tends to be more frequently used by the better educated. In general the latin words will be sufficiently obvious to trigger comprehension in french or spanish. I did latin to "O" level and found it of scant use in learning french or spanish. In fact there are more words adopted from arabic than latin in spanish; in effect most of the law and military terms. I learnt spanish at the Escuela Central de Idiomas in Madrid and later spent time working in Spain and South America. Whilst I have spoken french for many years I first studied it formally much later at the now university of wolverhampton, rather than do french and spanish, I chose to do french and german. I found german more difficult than french.

I remember as an engineer that german was used by engineers and other technical professionals in eastern europe, particularly in Silesia, also for example at the auschwitz-treblinka complex in 1970, the site is not far off the road between the mines of silesia and Crakow. OK at the time this was very much behind the Iron Curtain and the imposition of russian was well in hand.

But my choice of Spanish is supported by the ease of later learning Portuguese and Italian; for anyone contemplating South America take a look at the size of Brazil, the population and the fact of being the economic power house of latin-america.

I watch spanish and german TV about the same amount, but less than french TV since the arrival of TNT.

Go for Spanish!! 

[brianagain]

However learning German means that it should be a lot easier to move on to learning Dutch.

I found that recognising German nouns using the Michel Thomas idea of substituting d for t, t for s, etc, very useful in reading German and being able to get by on holiday there.

Brian (again)

[JSKS]

[quote user="brianagain"]However learning German means that it should be a lot easier to move on to learning Dutch.

I found that recognising German nouns using the Michel Thomas idea of substituting d for t, t for s, etc, very useful in reading German and being able to get by on holiday there.

Brian (again)

[/quote]

And also Danish.  All the Ds really: Dutch, Danish and Deutsch.

[andyh4]

[quote user="JK"]And also Danish.  All the Ds really: Dutch, Danish and Deutsch.[/quote]

 

All the D's - as in Doesn't anyone else in the world speak these languages?[;-)]

[JSKS]

[quote user="andyh4"]

[quote user="JK"]And also Danish.  All the Ds really: Dutch, Danish and Deutsch.[/quote]

 

All the D's - as in Doesn't anyone else in the world speak these languages?[;-)]

[/quote]

If we're going for volume then Mandarin or Cantonese are the obvious choices.

French comes WAY down the list!

[pachapapa]

Spanish completes the journey began in 1492.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16809053

[KathyF]

 

My vote would certainly be for Spanish in terms of future usefulness and I gather it's also a much easier language to learn. My school didn't offer it, so I took German as my second modern language and loved it, finally specialising in it at university. When in Prague I noticed how many menus were given in Czech and German, even when not in English, but I think this was for the benefit of the many German tourists rather than the natives. [:)]

 

[Hoddy]

Thanks to everyone who responded. My grand daughter has now read this thread and is thinking that she'll choose Spanish.

Hoddy