The I Studied A Completely Useless Language (for Medicine) Thread

[ahumdinger]

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Hey everybody! Simply having LEARNED a second (or 3rd/4th) language in your life, regardless of how "useful" the language may seem to be, will be a help in medicine. Medical school is like a language immersion course in itself, so if you're good at picking up other languages, you'll be spewing that med-speak in no time!

 

[Iamdumb]

How abt Cantonese, Mandarin and Swedish for useless?

et un peu francais mit deutsche to nihongo?

Hey everybody! Simply having LEARNED a second (or 3rd/4th) language in your life, regardless of how "useful" the language may seem to be, will be a help in medicine. Medical school is like a language immersion course in itself, so if you're good at picking up other languages, you'll be spewing that med-speak in no time!

 

[johnny pollen]

Ik spreek Nederlands.

That means, "I speak Dutch." Or, idiomatically, "I wasted a lot of time in Amsterdam."

You have no idea what kind of a hot commodity that makes me. Errrrrrybody wants a Dutch speaker.

 

[Iamdumb]

Ik houd van jou!!!

Ik spreek Nederlands.

That means, "I speak Dutch." Or, idiomatically, "I wasted a lot of time in Amsterdam."

You have no idea what kind of a hot commodity that makes me. Errrrrrybody wants a Dutch speaker.

 

[Doc Martins]

After time spent browsing languages on wikipedia, I've come to the conclusion that with English, French, and Spanish, one can communicate with people in *every* country in North and South America with the exception of Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. And with knowledge of Sp, Pr is only 25% as difficult to learn as it would be without. This will come in handy if you (like me) have interests in living or visiting counties beyond the US, but still within the western hemisphere. 🙂

Being that Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French, knowing both Sp and Fr would make it that much easier to communicate in Portuguese

 

[baylormed]

Being that Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French, knowing both Sp and Fr would make it that much easier to communicate in Portuguese

I agree. I speak Spanish and I can understand most of what is said in Portuguese. If it is written, even more.
Same with French. Even though I've never studied french I can understand a lot of it (though not as much as Portuguese) just because I speak Spanish.
Oh, I can also understand much Italian, too.

Knowing a Romance language IS pretty useful 😛

 

[geogil]

Hvordan gar det? hver hat tok norsk? eller fransk? I took 2 years of Norwegian for fun and majored in french (hence the post bacc....).. In my hospital work I've used french exactly once, and norwegian exactly once. (in 2 years). That having been said, I can get by in spanish based on my french which has been useful. French also has some utility in the roots of words which has been previously discussed.

 

[Kuba]

Esperanto.... I know a guy that actually learned it and spoke it fluently. If you guys have no idea what I am talking about - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

 

[quanct]

I can speak a little bit of LISP. The programming version and the Richard Simmons fruity tooty version.

 

[Kuba]

Hej Sloveni, jošte živi
duh vaših dedova.
Dok za narod srce bije
njihovih sinova.

Živi, živi duh slovenski
živjeće vjekov'ma.
Zalud preti ponor pakla,
zalud vatra groma.

Nek se sada i nad nama
burom sve raznese.
Stena puca, dub se lama
zemlja nek se trese.

Mi stojimo postojano
kano klisurine.
Proklet bio izdajica
svoje domovine.

wow, i didn't realize how similar serbo-croation was to polish. I understand the gist of all that.

 

[Kuba]

0111001010001011001100101000111001101001001001000011101010110100101010011100010101
I just spoke with your computer

 

[durfen]

Yo Durfen,

i hab Lust fuer Deutsch, aber i wohn in Oesterreich, in Tirol, wo die fasch kein Deutsch reden, sondern Dialekt. i schreib auf Tirolerisch fuer di wiel es so lustig ausschaut, aber i kann Hochdeutsch auch.

Verstasch mi? schon hab i dedenkt.

And yes, they do say gedenkt here, not gedacht, and no I am not kidding, read what I just wrote out loud and make it sound like you're choking and that's how people here talk! I can now speak 2 languages: High German and farm hick mountain Tirolean dialect...

And German is def not useless, if you even wanted to do a program in Europe, you could go to Germany, Austria or Switz (Although you won't understand anyone in Austria or Switz unless you have been here for like a year already...) and do an internship or something. And my sis is doing all of med school in Heidelberg, and will be able to practice anywhere in the EU when she is done, speaks fluent German, so the question of what's useless is relative anyway.

Ja, ja, aber ich hab' keine Zeit um nach Deutschland zu fliegen. 🙁. Viele Doktor hier kommen aus Oesterreich und der Schweiz, und ich kann ziemlich verstehen, aber nicht viel.

And I don't know what verstasch means.

 

[durfen]

0111001010001011001100101000111001101001001001000011101010110100101010011100010101
I just spoke with your computer

00111001110010110110111011010101010010100101101110011011111101001? (Really?)

 

[Wackie]

I live in Texas.


parlez-vous français?

It was my "going against the grain" thing I did in highschool. Everyone took Spanish so I had to be different. 🙄




My major requires a foreign language. I'll be taking espanol this time.

 

[xx216xx]

Latin here, taking my last semester of it right now. I really wish I would have taken a spoken language, it really is useless all around. I can recognize very few latin stems in medical terminology because most latin that is translated comes from catullus or virgil and all they talked about was war, sex, and love so there really isn't much in all that that would be seen in medical terminology. Besides, latin is about 75% latin-english dictionary work and 25% knowing declensions and conjugations. I regret latin everytime I go to class, but I am going to teach myself Russian for when I get that bride in the mail. 😛

Zdrastvuyte. Kak vas zavut?

 

[signomi]

Latin for 4 years. Plus some Greek...hence my name.
Currently studying Arabic through DVDs and books.

 

[xx216xx]

And because I'm a latin dork, durfen, I'm pretty sure that "Videtis illam spirare libertatis auram" translates as "You all recognize that wind of freedom to blow." For it to translate as "Recognize that the wind of freedom blows" it needs to be "Videte auram libertatis spirare." 99% positive. And just because I'm in latin mode "Nullus vir magnus umquam moritur."

 

[Vox Animo]

My reasoning for taking 4 years of latin in high school was that most of the spanish teachers at my school sucked. Some didn't speak english to well so people would spend two years at a language and not learn a damn thing.

Even though im 4 years removed from latin, every time i speak spanish, when i don't know a spanish word i subconsciosly use a latin word with realizing it.

Thems the breaks.

Intelligitimus non carborundum.

 

[Vox Animo]

At least Latin give you a hand for new terminology in medicine.

Try Irish. Conas a ta tu, mo chara?

Irish sounds bad ass though.

A female with a brogue is probably the hottest thing in the world

 

[Rafa]

^ It's even better when she's a redhead.

 

[MedSchoolFool]

I learned Chinese Mandarin in the military and also took it in college. I think it is a pretty useful language, and as time goes on it will probably become more so.

 

[TCIrish03]

I took French throughout highschool and did pretty darned well. I ended up going to the same undergrad as my mom, and the same guy who taught her Russian (she was a government and intl relations major....keep in mind the cold war) was still teaching Russian 101. He was hard but funny and fair supposedly, so I figured why not?

Well, apparently he got extremely crotchety in his old age. At Notre Dame, there are 2 lakes (full name is Notre Dame du Lac..."Our Lady of the Lakes") on campus, and he told us after our first test "I want you all to take a long walk around the lake and ask yourself why you are here...not in this class, but at this University". You know it's bad when your language is your msot time intensive course and you still get a C. I still can't speak a word of Russian beyond "zdrastvichya".

If I could do it all over again, Latin or Itallian.

 

[durfen]

And because I'm a latin dork, durfen, I'm pretty sure that "Videtis illam spirare libertatis auram" translates as "You all recognize that wind of freedom to blow." For it to translate as "Recognize that the wind of freedom blows" it needs to be "Videte auram libertatis spirare." 99% positive. And just because I'm in latin mode "Nullus vir magnus umquam moritur."

I remember, Videte is imperative. Sig duly changed. btw, that is stanford's motto (which is actually in german but comes from this latin phrase that Luther said at some point).

 

[xx216xx]

I remember, Videte is imperative. Sig duly changed. btw, that is stanford's motto (which is actually in german but comes from this latin phrase that Luther said at some point).

Hoorah!!, my two years of latin have finally paid off. 😛 But yeah, no need for illam because it's an indirect statement and all with the infinitive. Oh my God, I actually know this stuff.

 

[Psychoanalyzed]

didn't know so many SDNers understood Deutsch! Das ist sehr gut!

 

[annamoo]

Hey Durfen,


In Austria they have this insane dialect where the "du" conjugation sound at the end of the verb, which would normally sound like "st" and the "du" itself are all mixed together and come out as "sch"...not kidding...they sound like they're choking over here, but that's Tirolean dialect. All the other Austrians think it sounds really nuts too, really throaty and they have to subtitle the Austrian skiiers for the German TV stations... in High German or they wouldn't understand...

Verstasch mi means Verstehst du mich? - the "sch" is the "st" on the end of the verb AND the "du" itself. Weird, no?? (I'm spelling this all phoentically, as I hear it spoken, but you can spell dialect different ways)

And they do that with everything...."Wo bisch'en her" means "Woher bist denn du?" "Hasch a?" means "Hast du oan (oan = ein)?" etc etc "Geh'ma do owie" means (don't laugh, I know its really hicky) "Gehen wir da hinauf" "i reuf di'um" means "Ich rufe dich an", etc Its really like a different language, and one of the politicans here tried to get it recognized as that a few years ago, but failed, so it is still seen as a dialect of German. And each valley in the Alps has its own dialect, they hardly even understand each other a lot of the time, making it all verrry interesting for me, the foreigner. I've been here 2 years now, but when I first came......

oh and in Upper Austria, they say in their dialect "arschlings" for "rueckwarts" which I think is HILAROUS....it means "ass-ways" which is what they say for "backwards"....and for forwards they basically say "breast-wards"

 

[MossPoh]

I speak Portuguese because I lived in Brazil for 2 years. It also is kind of a useless language unless I learn spanish (which is similar, but still very different).

There are technically more Portuguese speakers than french speakers in the world...since brazil is so frickin huge. I took German but I don't see it as useless...it actually taught me better ways to study and learn as well as given me the ability to read great literature and get news from different perspectives...also took French and a tidbit of russian.

 

[Church]

I liked Spanish so much, I made it my undergrad major. Exceedingly useful here in Georgia, and scored big points with the ER docs for translating whilst volunteering at night. That, and I got to read El Quijote in the native 🙂

Now, I need to decide whether to take the "medical spanish" class that MCG offers.

On the other hand, I'll be happy just to get started on classes.

 

[TM2006]

Middle Persian.

 

[durfen]

Hey Durfen,


In Austria they have this insane dialect where the "du" conjugation sound at the end of the verb, which would normally sound like "st" and the "du" itself are all mixed together and come out as "sch"...not kidding...they sound like they're choking over here, but that's Tirolean dialect. All the other Austrians think it sounds really nuts too, really throaty and they have to subtitle the Austrian skiiers for the German TV stations... in High German or they wouldn't understand...

Verstasch mi means Verstehst du mich? - the "sch" is the "st" on the end of the verb AND the "du" itself. Weird, no?? (I'm spelling this all phoentically, as I hear it spoken, but you can spell dialect different ways)

And they do that with everything...."Wo bisch'en her" means "Woher bist denn du?" "Hasch a?" means "Hast du oan (oan = ein)?" etc etc "Geh'ma do owie" means (don't laugh, I know its really hicky) "Gehen wir da hinauf" "i reuf di'um" means "Ich rufe dich an", etc Its really like a different language, and one of the politicans here tried to get it recognized as that a few years ago, but failed, so it is still seen as a dialect of German. And each valley in the Alps has its own dialect, they hardly even understand each other a lot of the time, making it all verrry interesting for me, the foreigner. I've been here 2 years now, but when I first came......

oh and in Upper Austria, they say in their dialect "arschlings" for "rueckwarts" which I think is HILAROUS....it means "ass-ways" which is what they say for "backwards"....and for forwards they basically say "breast-wards"

Ok that's it, I'm gonna plan a trip next summer.

No wonder I can't understand Austrians. I have a Swiss friend, he uses a mixture of german (wie geht's), french (wie), italian (ciao)...can't understand him at all.

In response to MossPoh: I didn't say deutsch was completely useless, just not very useful in medicine, since most germans that I will meet will speak passable English.

 

[MossPoh]

Ok that's it, I'm gonna plan a trip next summer.

No wonder I can't understand Austrians. I have a Swiss friend, he uses a mixture of german (wie geht's), french (wie), italian (ciao)...can't understand him at all.

In response to MossPoh: I didn't say deutsch was completely useless, just not very useful in medicine, since most germans that I will meet will speak passable English.

Just depends on the age and where you are too. While in Berlin central Berlin and well West Berlin a lot more people spoke English..but as soon as I stepped over the line of where east berlin was and travelled around eastern Germany they had pretty bad english if any..especially if they were in school before the wall came down. Also, a new movement in Germany recently is for students to not want to take English.....it is kind of a rebellion against the U.S. I guess. Spanish is a little fad language since it has no true usage there, Chinese is getting very popular, French is still second It hink, and Latin is still really popular. With Russian I think following all of those up..English is still number one but it is dropping fast. Schwitzer deutsch..they have to dub that on t.v. usually..when they try to speak Hochdeutsch it is hilarious. There are numerous austrian dialects as well....My favorite is where they all speak German like Arnold. The lingo is hard to understand but go to any area and it is like that...especially if you hangout with blue collar people. Schwaebisch, Hessisch, Plaat Deutsch, all are crazy...dialect in Hamburg sounds more like Dutch than German sometimes.

 

[annamoo]

If you go to a technical school or vocational school in Austria or Germany they might only have time to learn one language since they spend so much time in workshops, and that one lang will be English. In 2 years in my Fulbright teaching program I have taught in 3 schools (2 per year, and one I stayed in for 2 years) one was a private Catholic high school, where all the students have to have Latin and English, and then they can choose to take a 3rd lang if they want among other electives, and it is either French or Italian. IN the other 2 schools, one was a high school for hotel management and tourism, cooking, etc and they all had to have Eng and either French or Italian (based on who comes to the hotels in Tirol, etc) and in the other school it was a high school for glassblowing and glass art, and they only had time for English. I find the level of English among German speakers who are educated to be quite high, esp if they went to college, but even if they didn't, if they went to high school till age 18 or 19 which is normal here, they are much better than most Amis who took a lang in high school

As for fromer East Germany, forget it...the Eng is not good there, a friend of mine here dated a workman in Tirol (Austria) from former DDR and he had not one tooth on the top row and spoke not one word of Eng, so we had to speak German to each other in front of him, which German speakers will do for you in Eng if you are the only one who doesn't speak German, so we were glad to do it but it was annoying sometimes

As for a trip....do take a trip Durfen! I can recommend a lot of places to see in Austria and Europe, I just got back to Innsbruck from a 3 week trip, my other posts were written from Paris where I was sick in bed at a friend's place, I was also in Scotland, London and Venice...visiting friends except in Venice, which is just my fav city here except for Prague, I go to both places as often as possible and have for the plast 2 years...

BUT I would say in general in Europe...going to smaller cities is better than going to huge ones, you cannot see everything and it is overwhelming and so fast-paced, so in Austria I would say go to Innsbruck (ok I am biased but it is truly the most gorgeous place in the world) and maybe Salzburg, Vienna is nice but huge and not mountains, South Tirol in Italy used to be Austria...I rode the train through there yesterday and it is a beautiful ride coming up to Innsbruck...and I flew over the Alps from Paris to Venice the other day and it is friggin beautiful. I would say come to Austria and hang out here and in Bavaria for a few weeks and have a nice chilled out time....Venice is only 5.5 hours from here and if you know how to get the cheap tics it is only 29 euros one way...

So I wouldn't say German is useless, it just depends on where you want to live..I will now drive Ass-wards into my parking space. Kidding, I don't have a parking space or a car. I just like saying that in German: i fahr jetzt do arschlings einie.

 

[MinnyGophers]

There are technically more Portuguese speakers than french speakers in the world...since brazil is so frickin huge. I took German but I don't see it as useless...it actually taught me better ways to study and learn as well as given me the ability to read great literature and get news from different perspectives...also took French and a tidbit of russian.

I don't know about that... You should also include the French speaking colonies in Africa, Belgium, Canada, Algeria, heck even Indochina.. 😉

 

[Rafa]

^ He's right. There are around ~120 mil French speakers v. about ~200 mil Portuguese speakers globally.

 

[notdeadyet]

I don't know about that... You should also include the French speaking colonies in Africa, Belgium, Canada, Algeria, heck even Indochina.. 😉

No, it's true. Portuguese has about 210 million native speakers, while French onoly has about 120 million native speakers. Taking into account those who speak each as a second language, you still have 230 mil for Portuguese and 190 mil for French.

Suprising though, no?

 

[MinnyGophers]

No, it's true. Portuguese has about 210 million native speakers, while French onoly has about 120 million native speakers. Taking into account those who speak each as a second language, you still have 230 mil for Portuguese and 190 mil for French.

Suprising though, no?

Wow it is. I had no idea. So that includes all the African colonies? Woah.

 

[MossPoh]

I was very surprised when I read that too....I was looking up the most spoken languages worldwide and read that. It is funny because I run into a LOT more french speakers than portuguese everywhere I go....but then you look at the Brazilian population (the large chunk of speakers) and it makes sense....There isn't TOO much of a middle class there. People are either in poverty or pretty well off. My friend from Brazil said they had 3 houses when they lived in Brazil and were considered nothing special....The cities are just huge there though. The metropolitan area of Sau Paulo or whatever is like 20 million+ people

 

[MinnyGophers]

I was very surprised when I read that too....I was looking up the most spoken languages worldwide and read that. It is funny because I run into a LOT more french speakers than portuguese everywhere I go....but then you look at the Brazilian population (the large chunk of speakers) and it makes sense....There isn't TOO much of a middle class there. People are either in poverty or pretty well off. My friend from Brazil said they had 3 houses when they lived in Brazil and were considered nothing special....The cities are just huge there though. The metropolitan area of Sau Paulo or whatever is like 20 million+ people

And Portugal is also a larger country than France.. makes sense..

 

[DanZeccola]

Man I think I can take the cake for most useless, medically unapplicable language spoken. Mine is Luganda, a tiny tribal bantu dialect in East Africa, well, its not tiny, theres a good 3 million people who speak it but they all live well off the beaten path. Maybe I could get bonus points just for being so remarkable useless.

 

[DrZee]

Middle Persian.

whats middle persian? I speak the modern variety spoken in Iran, but can also understand the afghan, tajik, and multiple other varieties of regional farsi accents cuz their basically the same language. Whats middle persian though? Is that the one written in cuneiform or something cuz Im pretty sure farsi as is spoken today hasnt changed in over 800 years or more because the poetry written back then is still pretty clear to me minus a few words here and there.

Yea, Im too lazy to google this myself. merci.


I think Spanish is the most useful 2nd language in the US and German is extra helpful in Organic Chem due to its location of origin, Latin in medical terminology, and french in literature.personally, persian/farsi is pretty cool to know but thats another thread already on SDN.
Arabic is also good to know as some 400million+ ppl worldwide speak it, I think? Chinese and Hindi are also good to know as about half the worlds pop live in asia so theres a good chance they will get used sooner or later in metropolitan areas in the US. The less useful languages to learn as 2nd languages, I would think are dutch, norwegian, swedish, danish, finnish, german, and other european languages where the native speakers are more than likely fluent in English as well due to high levels of secondary education and more. I took a class in world languages and linguistics from a professor of Dutch and Afrikaans at UCLA, he was really depressed about the future of his beloved dutch and his departments ability to recuit students in the future. It was sad to learn about the death of so many languages out there.

 

[durfen]

Man I think I can take the cake for most useless, medically unapplicable language spoken. Mine is Luganda, a tiny tribal bantu dialect in East Africa, well, its not tiny, theres a good 3 million people who speak it but they all live well off the beaten path. Maybe I could get bonus points just for being so remarkable useless.

Well it's ok if it's your native language. Mine is Tamil, only a little less useless than German, since the Tamilians I will meet would prefer English when talking about medical issues.
However, if you actually went out of your way to learn it, then yes, you're useless.

 

[durfen]

whats middle persian? I speak the modern variety spoken in Iran, but can also understand the afghan, tajik, and multiple other varieties of regional farsi accents cuz their basically the same language. Whats middle persian though? Is that the one written in cuneiform or something cuz Im pretty sure farsi as is spoken today hasnt changed in over 800 years or more because the poetry written back then is still pretty clear to me minus a few words here and there.

Yea, Im too lazy to google this myself. merci.


I think Spanish is the most useful 2nd language in the US and German is extra helpful in Organic Chem due to its location of origin, Latin in medical terminology, and french in literature.personally, persian/farsi is pretty cool to know but thats another thread already on SDN.
Arabic is also good to know as some 400million+ ppl worldwide speak it, I think.

I was the last class in my highschool to take German. They phased it out. Must be because CIA recruiters no longer need German speakers.

 

[DrZee]

oh , btw, I believe all languages are equally wonderful to speak but my previous posts judge the value based on the possibility of those being most useful to physicians in the future so if anyone knows dutch, you are welcome to come along with me to amsterdam and belgium when I visit next year 🙂

 

[lostsnowbird]

Okay, try OLD NORSE. The only place you'll find it are the original, broke-ass texts of Icelandic Sagas... 🙂

 

[dopaminesurge]

Oy, Japanese. Why did no one tell me I'd grow interested in medicine in college? All my friends were in Spanish. Would have been a blast.


BTW, everyone who's saying French - I have a friend specifically studying French because she plans to work in Africa. It's far more common there that Spanish. It's a sell, if you're devious.

 

[tncekm]

I speak Portuguese because I lived in Brazil for 2 years. It also is kind of a useless language unless I learn spanish (which is similar, but still very different).

Everyone I know from the US that spent 2 years in brazil is LDS...u? 😀

 

[BMEkid09]

Took Spanish for 5 years...only to major in Engineering in college and be exempt from the language requirements. Surprisingly, i remember it well enough to speak almost fluently.

 

[notdeadyet]

Everyone I know from the US that spent 2 years in brazil is LDS...u? 😀

You also have lots of folks on the run from the law. There are some pretty sweet lack of extradition laws between Brazil and the U.S.

 

[NYCKnockOut]

I speak korean and spanish fluently, in addition to english, of course. I was born in Korea but I was raised in Argentina from 2 to 13, and then came to the US. I actually focused pretty strongly on this multicultural, multilinguistic aspect of my personal background in my application... I hope it helped, cause my earlier-undergrad-years-GPA sucks. What do you guys think?

 

[jocg27]

German is extra helpful in Organic Chem due to its location of origin.

Huh?

I've taken German and Organic Chem, and never noticed much of a link...I guess I squandered my advantage of knowing German while I studied chem...