neither one, learn mandarin.

german, sounds more authoritative.

definitely german. french is for left-leaning liberal pansies that want to sound cool when ordering 'un cafe, si'l vouz plais.'

besides, all the good technical manuals are in german. and you might be able to swing an internship in a cool german firm. there are like 3 cool french firms. and they don't pay squat.

oh, and PJ read heidegger in german. and that's not easy.

french so you can read corbusier's writings in it's original form...

German

learn Swiss...the happy medium

Lern Deutsch Junge, dann wird das auch was mit Dir :-)

meta - so true.
a co-worker of mine (german) worked for dominique perrault on several projects for that exact reason.

lucky effin bastard.

German ... then Klingon

I must ask you for what purpose.

Both languages are equally usefull.
German is usefull for reading good technical manuals or magazines (like Detail).
French is usefull for reading manuals of history of architecture and if you want to pursue a life in academia.


Anyway knowing a second language doens't make you a better architect.

Matteo, learning a second language may not make you a better designer, but it will definately open up doors no matter what you do in life.

let's put it this way: knowing an other language adds elements that that language carries with itself just by being spoken somewhere in the world, and that for sure doesn't make you a worse architect, nor makes you better, but chances are that it might bring something intresting in the way you see things o r not?

Wow! Learning a new language does'nt make you a better architect????

knowing another language can make you a better person, thus it can definitely make you a better architect! Especially in this communication world we live in nowadays. And, isn't that what being an architect is all about, not only being a designer but an observer and translator of the world around us! A good architect has to be not only passionnate about the building, but life itself. Architecture is a "Global field" where someone needs not only to take into consideration structure and construction but the Human, the Society, the History, the Culture and the Nature...

You english people have it so easy! sorry to say.

My first german teacher once told me : you never really know about youre own language untill you learn another one... it helps put things in perspective.
Besides, there's nothing like opening yourself to other cultures... not only by travelling and reading about history and looking at maps, but by taking in their language, getting to know really how they think, their expressions, their swear words, the way they flirt and the way they tell someone they love them or hate them, basicly how they live and interract in their society.

I think you should look at what really attracts you into learning a certain language, the culture of the people, or simply the way it sounds so nice to your hear! I was always interrested in the german culture and always wanted to go to Berlin where I've been recently and it's one of the best places on earth! That's why I took those german classes, as simple as that! Learning one more than the other wont make you a better worker in the architectural world! As far as I'm concerned, you could learn Finnish or Inuit and it would be just as usefull. All I'm saying is, learn as many languages as you can... But then, that's just me and I'm really passionnate about languages.

Sorry for that!
Evanc, whatever you chose, 100% behind you...

yep, Andre 101, you´re definetly right, i sometimes wonder what would happen if i could speak german everywhere in the whole world and it would be the normalst thing at all.....
all you english speaking guys maybe dont know how easy its for you speaking your mothertongue everywhere.....
learning a different language pushes you forward and opens your eyes for different people and cultures

here in germany we learnt two different foreign languages ( french and english in my case), but i assume thats the same in the US ?!

beside learning german :-) mandarin could be also useful; thats were i have my own struggles with.....

i know french, wish i could learn german (i tried once... failed), in architecture-oriented-profitable way...learn GERMAN...

if you're going to travel in europe, learn french. all the germans will know english, and you'll get more respect in france if you speak the language.

that said, then go back and learn german as well. and mandarin. and spanish.

i'm a native spanish speaker, and also speak english from childhood, learned french in my 20's [not super fluent but i can read fine and understand most] and have started on deutsch in my 30's. i've figured i should learn a language per decade, how's that? let's see how far i get.

i've time still [just starting with the german], but not sure if i should go for italian next [as a spanish speaker, relatively easy but then i would have all that terragni, rossi, boccioni stuff, yum] or mandarin [i'm half chinese so it's a bit embarrasing, all these european languages but not my own blood].

I still say German ... there's something quite meditative about translating that language. At first, you could very well think that this "meditative" quality has something to do with the fact that it takes, like, an hour to translate a passage. However, it is quite a remarkable language: 14 articles, verbs occurring at the end of sentences, layers and layers of clauses ... you really get a sense of how rich and complex the German language is.

Learning languages is great ... it's akin to a type of mental calisthenics. I too am a native spanish speaker. I also took Italian and Homeric Greek in college. I found that Spanish got in the way of speaking Italian, although it is helpful for reading it.

as a background, i had some french when i was young, i could speak a decent amount when i was five... took spanish in high school, but i've forgotten most if not all of both of those languages. i hear german's pretty close to english, structurally, and i think it'd be interesting to approach from a linguistic point of view.

and dammit, it's about time i learn *something*

I think German is probably more helpful to architecture, specifically in regards to the modernists and being able to read technical essays, construction details, etc. French is probably more useful for theory/philosophy and history.

French is actually much closer to English. The Normans occupied England during 300 of the most intense periods of English language development, and as a consequence much of English--though its roots are in Anglo-Saxon--developed along Latin lines. You see it as you begin to study them.

However, that aside, I think German would probably help you more for architecture.

You're probably going to want both eventually, so it doesn't matter which one you start with.

ahh, the french language is very pretty. even the insults and the french kiss was a pretty important invention. but the germans ARE the PHILOSOPHERS

and we are the Perfectionists :-)

to just say that germans are mechanics and rational thinkers is a ridiculous stereotype.

practically, it is better to learn french, because then you get around in france easier; most people there do not speak other languages. in germany, much more people speak english...

Maybe it's more useful to learn german for architecture (I don't really understand why though, since germans are a lot better at speaking english than we are...) but nobody on this website has had the balls to name himself "german"...

Yeah honestly you should just learn both eventually, like agfa8x mentioned. French will most like be faster and easier, although I have met some people who for some odd reason simply took to german like a fish to water.

The language I most often curse myself for not knowing--when wanting to read architecture stuff--is Japanese, nowadays.

world's tallest is in Germany, think of the press you would receive:

^ what a small room... hee

german is a very poetic language.

I agree with Myriam, let's learn japanese! (actually, I'm learning japanese, I'm french and I speak german)

I cannot give you any other advise:
C'mon! Go to Europe, visit Paris, Berlin, the Austria, Switzerland, la Côte d'Azur, etc... And then, you'll choose what language you wanna learn!
Saying that frenchs are not good in construction could be true for architecture students BUT it's totally FALSE for engineers (Does someone know "les classes préparatoires"???) . And you can wait a long time before reading philosophers in german or even Corbu in french!

French.
You'll find plenty of Germans happy to converse in English but very few of the French will.
Btw, if you know a nice French girl who is happy to converse in English, I want to know, please.

"here in germany we learnt two different foreign languages ( french and english in my case), but i assume thats the same in the US ?!"

No, tempo01, foreign languages are optional in most US public high schools. In my school, however, we had to take 3 years of one language to get an "academic honors" diploma. I took four years of German, but the level was so terrible that I can't say more than a few phrases.

deutsch, ja?

Actually, German is more similar to English than French is. They are both Germanic languages, whereas French is a Romance language. I think it's just a misconception that German is a difficult language to learn. If you know neither French nor German, it'd probably be just as easy/difficult to learn either one.