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Best languages for new Journalists? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5464 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 11 23 January 2012 at 11:13am | IP Logged | ||
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My wife is a political journalist. She is constantly flying to different countries reporting on unfolding political events. She is a native speaker of Czech, but speaks close to native English. She tells me that English is the only language you need for international politics, since most high fliers in the political world now speak it, and local translators are always on hand if needed.
Assuming you can speak English, then studying another specific language is helpful if you want to focus on a particular region (we have a friend who speaks fluent Mandarin and is always flying off to China for work). However, far more important than any language (apart from English) is knowledge of the subject domain. Considering the thousands of hours you have to put into learning a language, a journalist may be better off spending those hours immersing themselves in politics. As an example of this last point, my wife spent three weeks studying the history of political parties in Taiwan. When it was time to interview a leading Taiwanese political figure, my wife was sent to do the work and not her Mandarin speaking colleague. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5880 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 10 of 11 23 January 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
what a great anecdote for this thread! thanks for posting this Splog! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4727 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 11 27 January 2012 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I think studying language pairs like English - German, English - French, English - Spanish etc is pretty demanding for a journalist. There are so high number of practically bilingual people that language skills below C2 are not really useful.
On the other rare pairs like Japanese - English, Korean - English, Arabic - English can provide more professional advantage. But in general Asian languages are hard to learn. In the same amount of time (3100 - 4500 hours of study) that takes to achieve JLPT N1 in Japanese, typical English speaking student can learn several European languages to C2 level. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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