Re: College Preparation

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> > Also, I have a choice of only two
> > languages at either of the schools I could go to (they
> > dont offer German:-( ). French & Spanish.

German is harder than French and Spanish together. :-) This holds even for
scientific papers where you can guess all the scientific words anyway -- 
though note that very few scientific papers are nowadays published in
German. For example, Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie hardly
ever publishes in German, and Zoologischer Anzeiger never does.

> > Which would be preferable?

I'd say, if you don't have a strong preference about where you want to work,
French could be preferable. French is more derived (from Latin) than
Spanish, so re-engineering French words to find Spanish ones looks to me
easier than the other way around; and heaps of words are spelled identically
(or almost) in French and English, so you might find the vocabulary easier.

Spanish is said to be very easy at the beginning and very difficult when it
gets more sophisticated. But I haven't tried to learn it.

> Both are also used in producing scientific literature, so it would be good
to
> know how to read both.

I know enough French to survive 3 weeks of digging there. I don't know
Spanish. But I can almost read the description of *Losillasaurus*. :-)
        (Though I have another unfair advantage... I know Latin, and when
you know both French and Latin, Spanish vocabulary becomes really easy.)