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Foreign languages as a means of competiti | ||
Tags: Jobs | Foreign Languages | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 9 of 16 31 January 2013 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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In most cases knowledge of languages is not more valuable than knowledge of the history
of the Middle Earth. Sornette, there are many foreigners in your country, does knowledge of foreign languages help them to find a job in France? Edited by Марк on 31 January 2013 at 8:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sornette Tetraglot Newbie France Joined 4580 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Russian Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 16 02 February 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
I have no idea. I don't live in France for the moment anyway. I've lived abroad most of my adult life. Thanks a lot to all of you for your replies. I realize that by asking this question on a language forum, I'll mostly reach people who are interested in languages and/or use it for their work. I wonder if the majority of people nowadays need a second language at work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5671 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 16 02 February 2013 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I used to do consultancy for businesses designing new computer systems. I worked in a large number of countries, and in every single case the only language that really mattered was English. It was quite eye opening just how many companies with international ambitions conduct all their business in English around the world.
Of course, it would help to have some knowledge of the local languages, but in every case they were far less interested in language abilities (other than at least C1 English) than your knowledge of the specialist field. For example, I worked at Banks in Switzerland, a financial clearing house in Luxembourg, oil companies in Saudi and the Emirates, and a university in China. In every case, if you could already speak English, you would be far better career-wise spending thousands of hours improving your knowledge of finance, oil, or engineering, then learning a language. Edited by Splog on 02 February 2013 at 1:03pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4653 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 12 of 16 12 February 2013 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Everyone says knowing more languages than your native one helps, but I'm not sure if it's true. It's like people saying 'it's better to be a [university] major in more than one thing' and then you have people with 3 majors, still unemployed.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 16 12 February 2013 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I have just read some part time time jobs advertisements (and responded to a few :-) ). A curious thing. A company was looking for quite the same job but! They were looking for one person to know English and French, one English and Finnish, one English and Polish. Another was looking for a few other combinations. It was all some office job, work with clients and bureaucracy.
So, I'd say another language widens the area where to look. But if the position requires another skill (like programming, experience with administrative work or being an architect) and English, other languages won't probably matter much. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 16 13 February 2013 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||
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why not just say they need ppl with a knowledge of English and one of Finnish/Polish/French?
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6087 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 15 of 16 24 February 2013 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, and it's almost as eye-opening just how much information is lost because people write very quick e-mails without checking their English. I see a lot of e-mails from businessmen whose foreign language is English (native languages: French, Polish, Mandarin, Portugese, Spanish) and they've all been hired for their skills in a particular field and English is considered a skill, but more like a "bonus". (What you say about the specialisation being more important than the foreign language is true.) Two engineers whose common language is English: The first engineer writes an e-mail: "Please send the actualisied data..." or "please tray to send" instead of "try to send" and the other technician who receives the message doesn't understand it and puts the message through his online translator. It comes out incomprehensible. The information is lost. This sounds simple but it happens all the time at the company where I do business. People do okay, but I think the company would prefer to be more efficient. It's my experience that people who are highly trained in a particular field don't speak languages well because they've never had the time to invest in languages. That's changing among the young people, because schools have started to realise that language is an important skill in today's market. The question is: do the schools teach languages well enough? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6127 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 16 of 16 24 February 2013 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a video game programmer in the USA. Learned second languages other than English have never mattered much in my work. Translation is contracted out to shops that specialize in this, and I think this is mostly done by native speakers of the target languages. The only interaction I have had is a few small issues, like some languages prefer a space before their period. I study language, but only for fun/obsession, really.
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