| Topic Name: |
languages |
| Message Name: |
Level 2 |
| Date Posted: |
02/28/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
I speak Russian proficiently ( i think its impossible to speak another language fluently, considering we dont even speak our own language fluently) and was considering a dialect of Chineese as a second language. I am wondering though, is it better to spend my time perfecting my Russian or learning a second langauge, in which case i will probably not be fcompletely fluent in either |
| Message: |
At an info session, they said that in terms of bonuses that are given for critical languages, you only have to be level 2 "fluency". For the high priority languages (Chinese and Russian amongst them, and I think JP not too far behind) can earn an entry bonus of up to $30K. I also heard that they give you time (a year or so) before you have to test for it to earn the bonus, i.e. you don't have to be conversive right away. Obviously, we're not going into these jobs 'for the money', but it all helps with those student loans right? I would recommend picking up a second language in addition to Russian (or Chinese).
Japanese is similar to Chinese only in terms of the kanji characters, and then only in terms of recognizing visually. It's certainly a step up since you only need to learn the different (oral) readings instead of learning a whole writing system from scratch. However, the grammar syntex of Chinise is more similar to English than Japanese, which has the verb at the end of the sentence - confusing at first!
Anyway, definately good to pick up a second language - makes you more attractive as a candidate not to mention more useful.
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