French or Chinese

My daughter needs to register for 9th grade on Monday. She is torn between choosing French or Chinese for her language requirement. She is a smart kid who wants to be an Opera Singer or a Lawyer. I can make good arguments for either. Any thoughts or suggestions

For a 9th grader, I'd recommend French.

And thats worth it, in it's own special way :-)

There are a hell of a lot of Chinese operas out there, a lot more than have been written in French or just about any other language, including Italian. But I can't say that I really appreciate them.

definitly chinese. I know its certainly a "different" thing to do and she will probably be more interested in it since it is so alien to most latin based langs. Besides her goals may change after a while...she is only in the ninth grade afterall. I don't even know how many times my friends an i have changed majors!

I chose Japanese after taking a few years of French. This was back in the 80's when Japanese was first offered at my high school. Loved Japanese! Went on to major in it in college and lived there for years. I still use it today, I'm married to a Japanese citizen. :)

French would definatelly help her there (latin based), since a majority of operas are in Italian. If she wanted to know more about the world and expand her views of non-western worlds, then Chinese.

She'll be more likely to use and master it than Chinese. Chinese is amazingly interesting, but my two cents sticks with French.

Also, the available literature in French is more abundant and relevant. She'll get to read some major classics ranging from Voltaire to Hugo to Camus. The only Chinese lit I can think of is To Fu, Tsun Tzu, Confuscious, and Li Po.

You say she's a smart kid, she might appreciate the challenge Chinese presents. Speaking either language well would be a plus. $)

I love Georges Bizet's Carmen. Rent the film version of Carmen, with Placido Domingo that is entirely in French and play it for her. It may convince her. I studied both French and Chinese. I speak, read and write French, but never quite mastered Chinese. Chinese is a far easier language than French for the grammar. But Chinese (Mandarin, to be more precise) has the problem of four pitched tones and a "toneless" tone. Mandarin has very few possible syllables (about 400) whereas English has about 12,000. Having far fewer different syllables than English results in many more homophonic words in Mandarin, (the same sound expressing different meanings) which can only be distinguished one from the other by different pitches (i.e. rising tone, falling tone, sustained high, dipping low tone, etc.). Learning to hear those pitches requires a maximum amount of time actually listening to spoken Chinese, in context. Also, reading and writing Mandarin written in Chinese characters requires a great deal of discipline and more than one or two years of study. I personally love both languages but found Chinese to be far more challenging than French, although, as mentioned, Chinese grammar is very, very simple. It's sad to think that someone will spend time studying a language but not go far enough to actually see results. Unless your daughter goes to China, spends hours and hours in language labs, or marries a Chinese speaker, it may be wiser to choose French.

High School is hard...there is no reason to make it harder.

Because of globalization Chinese will be in great demand in the following years.

He speaks French (his and my native language) and he has a good practice of English. The official language of his company is English now. Just because the Chinese managers are fluent in this language and they are conscious that only a very little part of the planet will be able to speak their language a day ! He has been happily astonished to see many Chinese speak French very well. (a very, very, very low percentage of the 1,5 billion :) )

Your daughter is smart and if she wants to spend many hard years to learn a very hard language, she can. But, I think, she is lucky to be born in a English language country and her second language learning could be only for the pleasure

More peple speak Chinese than French, statistically speaking.

One this year and one the next.

Assuming that they are both still offered.

It would be well worth trying though, and it's far better to start learning it young.

The problem with Chinese is that it is a tonal language, and Western people have real difficulty even HEARING the different tones, let alone trying to reproduce them.

Then you have the problem with the writing system not being phonetic, so you have to remember what the symbols mean and how they sound by heart.

However, a knowledge of Chinese is far more likely to be a marketable skill than French, especially as China opens up more and more to world trade.

Basically, Chinese will be FAR FAR FAR more difficult to learn and involve a lot more work - after all, if you look at a page of French you could read it aloud reasonably accurately provided you already read and speak English.

I take it you're talking about Putonghua (Mandarin) Chinese, rather that Cantonese? The same problems apply, but Cantonese is spoken in the Canton region and by most Chinese people who have left China, but in theory Putonghua should be understood by anybody from anywhere in China.