Burning Down

I think it depends what kind of career you want. I want to be a teacher, so in Ontario where I live it's beneficial to be fairly fluent in French. It opens more job opportunities because learning basic French (at the very least) is a requirement for students here, so they need people to teach those courses.

I'm not sure what the prospects are like for someone who wants to go to another country to work. I imagine that just turning up in a country to look for work wouldn't do much good, because I'm betting that most local companies would prefer to hire a native speaker. I think your best bet would be to look for career opportunities at multinational corporations or NGO's in your own country to begin with, because they usually look for people who are bilingual or even trilingual and then they can send those employees to offices in other countries.

I know that in Canada, job prospects for ESL immigrants are pretty decent if their English is good. My boyfriend's English is excellent overall and that means his chances of getting a good job are high, and he'd really like to stay here to work. But yeah, I'm not sure about non English speaking countries.

Paul Smeenus

Not as long as I'm alive he wouldn't

Cuthbert

Yeah makes sense, thanks Burning Down. Don't most people in Canada speak both English and French then?

Zaqarbal

Yes, some Andalusians are almost impossible to understand.

That kind of problems happen in all languages, though. I mean, on one hand there are several local varieties. But, on the other hand, there is always a standard language, the common norms. So usually there are no difficulties when talking with an educated person. For instance, there are many different traditional dialects in German. But there is also the Standard German (the so-called Hochdeutsch), which is used in mass media, business, science, humanities, etc.

And fortunately, very few people are like Professor Higgins:



There are many factors to consider. In Europe, as Unknown Soldier said, German is a top language. For instance, due to the economic crisis, in Spain we're suffering a brain drain now. And many university graduates are going to Germany. A lot of Spanish engineers and other highly skilled workers are learning German at the moment.

However, from a global point of view, other languages are also important. And there is an interesting thing regarding language families. For instance, once you have learned Spanish, then it will be much easier for you to learn another Neo-Latin language (French, Portuguese, Italian, etc.). So finally that sum (let's say, Spanish + French, two major global languages) could be a strong point in your CV.

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Burning Down

Most people only speak English, since Quebec is the only province where French is widely spoken (and a lot of them are bitchy about having to speak English - they don't even teach it in school anymore there). When kids are in high school, if you're not at an all French school or in the French immersion program, you have to take a certain number of French classes that count towards your diploma. These are more basic classes - an introduction to the language, basically. French is the other official language here, so you need to learn a bit of it in school.

The French spoken in Canada is a whole lot different than French in France. Especially the accent - I think if I went to France and spoke they would laugh, lol. The slang is also different and Canadian French is heavily infused with English loan words as well.

Eleonoora

I speak Finnish as my first language. I've studied English since I went to school, eleven years. I think I got really comfortable with speaking it two or three years ago, like I can say in English whatever I want. But I want to get better in it, it's one reason why I came to this site. I have problems with abstract words, they just don't stay in my head. I suppose that native speakers find many little mistakes in my writing.

I've studied Swedish for five years and Spanish for two years. Swedish is quite easy, but I don't have much motivation to learn it and I can't say I would speak it fluently. Spanish is something I really really want to learn, but it is so new language to me that I can hardly speak it at all. Writing is much more easy, but I don't know enough words so I always need dictionary when I'm using Spanish.