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French or German?

Hey everyone :smile:

I'm set on taking A-Levels in Chemistry, History, Philosophy and a language, but am not sure whether to do French or German. Which is more useful from a linguistics perspective and which would be more likely to help me to get into a good university in continental Europe?

Thanks in advance!

Reply 1

Miss.Unknow

Hi! i was just wondering did you do any of the two languages as GCSE's in the past? :smile:

Reply 2

dragonkeeper999

Which one do you enjoy the most/ did you do best at in GCSE?

It doesn't really matter from a linguistics perspective as far as I know, although I would say that there appears to me more good/ cheap universities in Germany. I haven't done much searching on this though, so if it is important to you do some research.

Also, why not consider doing both (and perhaps dropping Chemistry - you aren't doing any other science subjects so won't be able to do a Chemistry/ science degree, and Chemistry is generally considered a really hard subject)?

Reply 3

Tarte Tatin

I personally do French and love it, but it is a difficult language to learn, and I've never done German so I can't really comment on that. According to Wikipedia, German is the 11th most spoken language in the world, whilst French is the 19th most spoken language, just in case this may influence your decision.

Reply 4

Kangie

I love French as a language but am probably biased because I learn it for IB so can't say anything about German. I have friends who do German though and they're doing pretty good in it - although whenever I look at their work, it looks like nonsense because hardly any of the words are similar in English. French makes sense though because a lot of the words are brought into the English language so you can learn the meanings quickly.

Reply 5

LinksRadikal

I'm sitting my exams in both this year and did well in both my mocks, though slightly better in French. I'm planning to drop Chemistry after AS and am just taking it because I love it.

Reply 6

AuC

I'm a German speaker from Austria living in London. I only grew up and was not born there and yet I do not only get flooded by language jobs agencies who want are looking to fill German-speaking call centre roles that pay £9p/h but I also get contacted for German-speaking accounting roles that are very well paying. Even if I did not have a degree and would not be working towards a professional qualification I could get a pretty neat job all because I can speak German.

Germany is the biggest economy in the EU and therefore the better choice. There's plenty of French jobs but not as many as German. Or you could just take whatever you find nicer and learn French because it's the "language of love" and all that crap or because "German is ugly".

Reply 7

lerjj

Not that I've ever taken French, but German is probably easier to pronounce and learn vocab. Just take whichever you prefer (I'm not sure any comment about how useful they are makes sense, everyone in Germany learns English for like 10 years).

Reply 8

AuC

Original post by lerjj

What's your point? You honestly believe because a country's education system is much better their language is irrelevant?
Germany is the strongest economy with very large companies such as Mercedes and many others. THese companies want to speak to other German speakers because of pride and this is why companies in the UK cater to them. Just like Chinese companies want to speak Chinese at meetings with international companies.

Reply 9

lerjj

Original post by AuC

as far as I'm aware most international meetings are conducted in English. Period. Now, if all the English who turned up could speak very good German, they might decide to change language.

I was just pointing out that you ought to study a language for enjoyment rather than utility, because the cases where you happen to know the necessary language to the necessary level of competence are rare.