Teach more languages

[Love365]

Should high schools and colleges teach more languages?

 

[PloverWing]

I think it's good for high schools and colleges to teach as many foreign languages as they have the resources to offer. My university offers courses in 11 different languages, in addition to English.

Is there a particular language you'd like to see taught more often?

 

[Love365]

I think it's good for high schools and colleges to teach as many foreign languages as they have the resources to offer. My university offers courses in 11 different languages, in addition to English.

Is there a particular language you'd like to see taught more often?

Communication stops wars from happening.

Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Korean

 

[PloverWing]

Communication stops wars from happening.

I'll say that good communication helps the peace process, but I'm not optimistic enough to say that it prevents all wars. Sometimes my country just wants something that your country has, so we invade and take it. Original sin, and all that.

Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Korean

A good list. My university offers Russian, Chinese, and Arabic, along with some other languages.

Chiefly, the major resource challenge is finding a native (or at least fluent) speaker of the language in question who is interested in teaching, along with having the funding to hire them as a teacher.

 

[Richard T]

Should high schools and colleges teach more languages?

No, there are apps that will be able to do foreign languages translation seamlessly. The only language skills that are really needed are ones where there will be significant opportunities to speak. Like Spanish if one is going to live in Miami or a similar place. Offering too many languages are probably a waste of the budget. If there is demand in colleges, though that is up to them.

 

[Love365]

No, there are apps that will be able to do foreign languages translation seamlessly. The only language skills that are really needed are ones where there will be significant opportunities to speak. Like Spanish if one is going to live in Miami or a similar place. Offering too many languages are probably a waste of the budget. If there is demand in colleges, though that is up to them.

Apps and computer programs are a useful tool.

But you still need human translators
who know what they are saying.

And can notice mistakes.

 

[Richard T]

Apps and computer programs are a useful tool.

But you still need human translators
who know what they are saying.

And can notice mistakes.

Yes, but Ai though is expected to be getting far better. Not everything needs to be super precise either. Here is one tough quote. "More than a third of translators have lost work due to generative AI, a survey by the Society of Authors (SoA) has found. More than four in 10 translators said that their income has decreased because of generative AI, while more than three-quarters believe the emerging technology will negatively affect their future income." Source: Survey finds generative AI proving major threat to the work of translators
On the other hand, language skills likely do have positive spillover effects. As a career choice it looks pretty bleak.

 

[Love365]

To improve relations between countries,
you need people to fall in love and get married.

They need to learn each others languages.

 

[keith99]

I think it's good for high schools and colleges to teach as many foreign languages as they have the resources to offer. My university offers courses in 11 different languages, in addition to English.

Is there a particular language you'd like to see taught more often?

I would go with German and Russian.

My high School only had Spanish and French. Being a techie German would have been much more useful.

In one of my Geology classes, we had to write abstracts for 2 papers in 2 different foreign languages. The Prof. for that class commented that no matter how many languages you learn the paper you need translated will only be in a language you do not know.

AI is not even close to being able to translate technical works. For that matter non-technical humans are not reliable when it comes to translating technical works. An example is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's biography by Bethge says his older brother split the hydrogen atom, at least in my copy which is in English. Any physicist would know that is garbage. I strongly suspect that the original word in German could be translated as either split or separated (and perhaps a couple more). A reasonable guess is that the older Bonhoeffer isolated deuterium and tritium. It is a good guess, but wrong. His work was with molecular hydrogen and dealt with spin characteristics of the bonds! AI is decades from getting that 'blind'. Perhaps much closer using cross referencing techniques. E.g. it would get this for Bonhoeffer now, but would not have before he published.

 

[Love365]

When I was in middle school they taught us the old Egyptian symbols.

They could have also taught the Arabic alphabet.

Or they could have taught the Russian alphabet.

 

[Love365]

When I was in middle school they taught us the old Egyptian symbols.

It was for Art Class.

 

[Lost4words]

I think it's good for high schools and colleges to teach as many foreign languages as they have the resources to offer. My university offers courses in 11 different languages, in addition to English.

Is there a particular language you'd like to see taught more often?

Barking should be taught. Its quite easy to learn...

 

[Apple Sky]

Barking should be taught. Its quite easy to learn...

Learn barking mad first, it's easier