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French and German are only taught for a short while, after that you can drop them in favor of other classes. Most people are pretty crap at French and German.
I had French for a few years, but we never got to the past tense for example. It was all basic stuff and I have forgotten most. My pronunciation is pretty good so I can still fool people I can speak French. I even fooled some real French, which is a bad idea because they'll start to talk French very fast assuming I understand it.
The other poster mentioned learning 2 systems. I don't think it's a good idea, because the metric system is logical, easy and everybody knows it. Why learn a second system nobody uses and is very difficult to use? If I mention any empirical unit the first thing people will ask me is to translate it in to metric.
It has its charm I guess, but nobody has any feeling with it, nor does anyone use it.
Well, we do use it when it comes to computer screens. But when someone says he has a 22" screen and you have a 21" you know his is bigger, but you have no idea how much or how big your screen is in centimeters.
A while ago someone told me she has a 30" screen and I thought, WOW! That's big! How big? I have no idea.
And inches for screens are also informal, at manufacturing everything is done in metric anyway.
Like naming of floppies ...the "3.5" and "5.25" inches bays aren't precisely of that dimension, they are actually in the closest metric size.




Member since:
2005-06-29
It's actually four languages: Dutch, English, French, and German. Or, if you go to Latin/Greek school like I did, you also get Latin and Greek.