im stuck in a dilemma and i can't decide which language course to take as an elective for Eng I, so i was wondering if you were to pick any of the three which would it be? Russian, Italian, or German? I have no prior knowledge of any of these

Btw, whats the last day to drop a course without financial penalty?

January 11th's the course drop/add deadline.
After that, you have until March 11th for a partial refund

Beginner language courses are full year though... I don't think you can register for them this term (unless you're thinking about taking them next year).

Russian is actually two 3-unit courses, unlike the other intro language courses which are a single 6-unit. Russian is supposed to be a very difficult language to learn, but I enjoy it, and I also 12'd the first course last semester... so...

i would think italian would be easier to learn.. some of the words might be similar to english/french

Originally Posted by ninjamachete

im stuck in a dilemma and i can't decide which language course to take as an elective for Eng I, so i was wondering if you were to pick any of the three which would it be? Russian, Italian, or German? I have no prior knowledge of any of these

Btw, whats the last day to drop a course without financial penalty?

I studied Italian for 7 years it is a great language and easy to learn. Most of the grammar has rules which can easily be applied.

I don't know why you would want to learn Russian. You won't achieve anything with it unless you are planning to move to Russia.

I never studied German. I wish I did and I will probably take some night classes after I graduate. It looks like a fascinating language to learn. It is most certainly harder than Italian but I can see it being easier than Russian. Also German would help you a lot of you decide to move to Germany once you graduate.

Russian could be useful outside of Russia, too. Maybe not as much as Italian or German but still, there are a lot of Russian scientists and engineers out there. That was a big part of my decision to take Russian - lots of software engineers and computer scientists come out of Russia, so speaking their language could be useful :p

I took a beginner's german course in highschool and I absolutely loved it. It's definitely not easy to learn, but I would say it's a little more difficult than Italian. German has a lot of patterns with root words and such, so I thought vocabulary and such were pretty straighforward. Although pronounciation takes a while to learn, especially with longer words. I loved both though. I think any beginner's language course is easy enough if you're interested in that language and you put in enough effort to learn the grammatic rules and whatnot.

i think i'll go with Russian for now. No reason, just my instinct.

Originally Posted by ninjamachete

i think i'll go with Russian for now. No reason, just my instinct.

Good luck with that, because it is very different from English. If I were you, I would take German, Spanish or French. And in that order for easiness. German resembles English in a way, some words do sound alike. French is much harder to learn than Spanish.

Honestly, Russian reminded me a lot of French. I didn't find it very difficult at all.