As do I.

I can only speak English but I think its a good thing - the only issue is hat language - Spanish seems the next most widely used

Please enlighten me in the following context:

Autocorrect?

Absent mindedness?

Least u dn typ lyk dis.

Drives me nuts!

Totally.

My old boss in Frankfurt came from Romania, his wife from Holland and the Kindermädchen from Germany, His 4 year old spoke Romanian to his father, Dutch with his mother, English to both of them and German with the Kindermädchen.

I have friends in Munich, the mother's first husband was italien and 3 of the kids are his. They speak Italian, German and English.

Me? I never really studied French at school, even though it was compulsory up for 6 years of schooling. I took German for 1 year and never learnt much. It was incredibly hard trying to learn German once I got over here.

As to LU's "English is the International language," that it may be, but if you want to do business in a different country, you will need to speak the local lingo, if you want to succeed. The company might get away with having English as its internal language, if it is a multi-national, but it will need to speak the proper language with its customers and finding people to speak English to a good enough level is usually pretty difficult.

My German is now good enough that I can work in Germany. If I only had English, I'd exclude myself from over 98% of jobs over here. I'd have to stick to one of the major cities and I'd have to restrict myself to one of the multi-nationals there and hope I had a skills match. To put it into perspective, imagine trying to get a job in London, at one of the major banks or an oil company or a tabacco company and ignoring the hundreds of thousands of other businesses around. And trying to get a car, insurance, groceries, a flat etc. would be very difficult and much more expensive than if you spoke the local language. When I first got to Germany, my car insurance cost me around 2.5K€, once I could speak the language and I could shop around with insurance brokers that didn't speak English, it dropped to under 500€

Even for going on holiday, having the basics of the local language is very important. You can get a lot more help and good deals with a bit of broken local language than you can shouting at them, until you are blue in the face.

True as that may be Big_D, all of that only helps you in the country you intend to work in/visit. Learning German only helps you in Germany and surrounding areas, learning French only helps you in Metropolitan France, learning Swedish will get you by in Sweden etc.

English is the closest thing the world has to an international language, with Spanish coming second. Nothing else even comes close. English is now even commonly spoken in the boardrooms of French companies (and even features in internal memos), by way of an example. Some French companies even require their candidates to speak English. EU institutions have moved away from French and German in favour of English.

So if you want to teach school children Spanish then be my guest - it actually has a superior chance of being useful - but everything else should be ditched and you can learn it later, should you need to. The fact is the vast majority of British people will never have cause to speak a foreign language, and as such this nonsense is wasting valuable curriculum time which could be spent raising numeracy and literacy standards instead.

I learnt French at school.
Where did I go for my holidays every year?.....
Spain!

I think learning Spanish would help you enormously to learn Italian and French.

True, you wouldn't automatically be fluent in the other languages, but you'd have a point of reference to compare the new language to, the mechanisms and framework will already be in your head - you just have to pretty much fill in the gaps with the the new vocabulary - the second language would help you enormously even if it isn't the one you "need".

This. Don't most other countries teach foreign languages early on? Also private schools in England.

Learning French, German, Spanish or whatever is likely to be just as useful as socio-economic history from 1701-1800 or whatever it was that we did...

Also as others have said, learning any language increases your understanding of language in general. Hell, even if it's Latin or Greek. Actually it would be quite cool if everyone on the planet learned Latin at school.

Apart from a week and a half when I worked in France, Spanish would have been more useful for work too. There are a lot of Hispanics in the oil industry.

I don't really know, but I have heard that American Spanish and European Spanish are different enough that it really does matter which you learned. There are certainly different courses for each.

Personally I wish I'd paid more attention in French lessons, because my parents have lived there for 20 years now and I'm totally useless when I visit. There's next to no English spoken in rural France, especially amongst the older generations. The younger ones are a lot more willing to give it a go, but you really can't depend on it!

Google translate?

I once had a perfectly serviceable conversation with a Norwegian man using nothing but Google translate. I don't feel the need to go and learn Norwegian.

Not until roaming data charges come down a lot! It cost me about £2.50 in the 30 seconds it took to deactivate flight mode and turn off roaming last time I was there. I forgot to deactivate roaming when I left the UK, and the stupid phone won't let you change the settings while in flight mode...

Sounds more like correspondence than conversation.