Hail to the Victors!

As avid sports fans already know, the University of Michigan ended its relationship with the Nike company, and most of its uniforms, shoes, and some of its sporting equipment are now provided by the Adidas company which is - you guessed it! - a German company.

Studying at the University of Michigan

Surveying the different departments at the U of M, we find the following:

Chemistry: although the university's general requirement that a student take four semesters of a foreign language can be satisfied by studying any language, those who are majoring in chemistry take German, according to the department's web site.

Biology: undergraduates who want to go on and do graduate work in Biology are told to take either German, Russian, or French.

Engineering: working with the university's Center for European Studies, and with the university's European Union Center, the school of engineering a two-semester series of courses: German for Engineering I and German for Engineering II. Interestingly, there is no "Spanish for Engineering"!

Which Languages Should We Study in School?

From the September 7, 2008 edition of the Ann Arbor News - "If third-graders are to be taught foreign languages, Ann Arbor parents should be offered a choice of which languages their children will learn. In terms of what would be useful to our children, Spanish is a very poor choice. Spanish-speaking cultures and societies are neither economically vibrant nor socially and environmentally progressive."

The volume of business we do with the German-speaking countries of the world is far larger than the trade we do with Spanish-speaking counties. The amount of engineering and software development done in German is much greater than that being done in Spanish.

Let's Talk about Deutsch!

Well, why would anybody want to study the German language? Well, maybe because Microsoft writes and sells more software in German than it does in Spanish.

Or maybe because the United States does more business (measured in dollars of import and export) with the German-speaking countries of the world (Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Germany) than we do with all the Spanish-speaking countries combined.

Or maybe because most universities in the United States recommend German, not Spanish, for students who are seeking graduate degrees in Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Business, Economics, and other fields.

The real question is: why would anybody want to study Spanish?