Spanish

My son got the same information and in college has already found his HS spanish useful. He will be taking more spanish next year.

On a personal note, I am currently taking spanish for my work life. Global changes and developing markets is making Spanish no longer a luxury for me, it will be a neccesity to do my required business ...

I am wrting everything in spanish


telll puesto el corazón el corazón de breaky de acky

French, Russian and German are "out".

Spanish and Chinese are "in".

In the teens lifetime, it will be more and more a Spanish and Chinese world.

That is really interesting and seems like a very smart move.

Makes sense to me, with a little japanese to boot.

CV

I think I just found the reason that will resonae with my son about why he needs another year of spanish!

Really? Never heard of such a thing. I just assumed they would tell the Spanish speaking pitchers that sign with MLB to learn how to speak a little English? Whatever...I really don't see it as a big problem either way. I can remember in my younger days of crossing over the Mexican border into Tijuana while stationed in California. Even though I had never taken Spanish in school and even had problems with English class, I had no problem conveying information back and forth with the Mexican population. Some activities have kind of a universal language...I think baseball is one of those activities.
Fungo

It is not necessary to learn spanish to play baseball, most baseball academies in Latin America teach the basic english to their players, enough to comunicate during games and practice. And anglo players, after couple years in the minor learn enough spanish to comunicate with latin players, specially bad words. Agree with Fungo about sport have an universal lenguage that help also.
Anyways, to learn a second, or a 3rd, or a 4th lenguage is good for anybody specially for business purposes.

Learning a foreign language can be extremely helpful. with 10 % of the country speaking spanish and about 20% of MLB players speak spanish.Knowing Spanish might keep you out of a Tijuana jail

JUst can tell you from my experience as player coach in Germany. Very tough when you dont speak the language much and hardly anyone speaks english. I did pick up a little german by watching the american shows in german such as The Simpsons, Baywatch and James Bond films.

voda hat Martini nicht gerührt geschüttelt


Plus Bill Clinton was very funny in German
Ich habe keine sexuelle Beziehung mit jenem Frau Fräulein Lewenski gehabt

I've had this same discussion with my son - trying to convince him to take Spanish vice French. With a large percentage of Spanish speaking players throughout professional baseball it makes sense that a player should have a least a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish - and the more you know, the better you'll be able to bond with all the players.

While many players from Latin America are able to communicte using English, there are still many that struggle.

According to a Puerto Rico 2002 article[/URL], Tony La Russ believes "If you want do your job right, one of theings would be smart to di is pick up some kind of understanding of the Spanish Language." He was speaking of the benefits as a manager, but this has applications to the player.

Check out the article for an intersting read.


[URL=http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2002/vol6n29/Baseball2ndLang-en.shtml]

Between Spanish class and playing at a JuCo with 40% Latin players, my son has learned a fair amount of Spanish....unfortunately, most of it is 'baseball' Spanish, so he's ill-equipped to speak that language in polite company.

Along the way, he's found the language to be useful in baseball, not only for the consideration of speaking someone else's language, but when he was on all-Anglo teams, the Latin teams sometimes called out their signals, their readings on sign-stealing, etc, and his language skills helped to cross-up the opposition.

Knowledge never hurts you

Si.

quote:

According to a Puerto Rico 2002 article[/URL], Tony La Russ believes "If you want do your job right, one of things would be smart to di is pick up some kind of understanding of the Spanish Language." He was speaking of the benefits as a manager, but this has applications to the player.

Let's take that one step further. My son has taken 4 years of Spanish in HS, when he starts college in the fall I am urging him to take as much as possible.


WHY? Because with the changing demographics in America I firmly believe that being able to speak Spanish will be a required tool in doing business in the future.

For all you moderators and all members who doesn't understand Spanish the sentence write down by rdfrazier is a nasty and vulgar expresion that I wont even explain in English what is mean.

taken care of--it is gone

Folks
The more languages a person speaks the better prepared he or she is for life, not just baseball. While traveling in Europe I noticed that most people regardless of what country they were from spoke 3 or 4 languages. With the world becoming more intergrated with business,information systems and communications it is vital that we and especially our children speak more than one language.
Here in the US, in some communities, we are so concerned that English be the only language, that we end up doing a dis-service to our children, in not fully preparing them for life. The world has changed, businesses are conducting their activities internationally not just within US boarders or in English speaking countries.
All professions,medicine,engineering, comminications, computer science, etc... are being performed nationally and internationally. The more tools we give our kids the greater the chance they will succeed, and as a result the greater we will be as a country, even in baseball.