to be reluctant to allocate money for that.

[Ratatouille1977]

Dh wants to take some intensive course in French, it's almost 300 pounds for a term. It's supposed to be a investment into his professional future. He had many plans over the course of 5 years saying how he was going to increase his earning potential but nothing happened. I feel it and I don't feel it. Plus the course will be on saturday morning from 10 till 13.00. I'm working full time and I start at 8 and finish at 6 every day. What do you think ?

Sounds like a waste to me.

You being French has no bearing on his future professional aspirations, unless you plan to move to France, so I dont see how this is an investment in his professional future.

How will speaking better French benefit his career?

Can you not as a family spend 3 weeks in France next summer on a residential full time course? 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, is 45 hours of French, plus you are in France and hear the language around you.

So it's a specific "French for business" course?

Convenience aside, I don't really see how it would actually benefit him to the tune of £3000 in returns. What kind of projects?

£300 per term seems a lot tbh . Is it a private company ? Local Adult Ed or fe college will be much cheaper as it is govt subsidised to an extent.

I'd be delighted if dh showed that much interest in my native language. He's proved his commitment by doing a course. Can't you just find a better course such as the OU where he can study when it fits in with family. They don't usually cost as much. I done some , Im a big fan.

It will be with the french institut in London, and yes it is french business he wants to do.

Does he have any french business prospect?

Unless you are completely skint, I think it's mean to try and stop him from doing it. He's obviously keen if he's stuck to an online course.

Married couples are supposed to support each other in what they want to achieve, so if you can afford this, I honesty can't see why you wouldn't want him to do it.

Really don't see the problem. He wants to better himself which could improve his career chances. He might just want to do it. But again don't see the problem with that either?

If he really wanted to further his career, he'd be studying Mandarin or Arabic. I just wrote a much longer reply but the site went down (again!).

That's my thought, really. Unless there are specific francophone opportunities in his company (in which case his work might fund the course, as mine did for Spanish when they wanted me to deal with Alicante a lot), I genuinely don't see how this will benefit him professionally.

If he's jobhunting and thinks it will look good on his CV, as a skill but also proof of self-improvement and initiative, then maybe but that would be met by a cheaper course.

Hmm- is it an actual accredited DELF course then?

wibbly it would depend how many years you had. I decided to learn languages for business opportunities, and I didn't choose either of those, because I wanted to be able to get to an employable-level of fluency within 10 years of starting, and I didn't want to be spending each and every evening learning to write!

If you want to learn something for a job, you need full fluency, which means you need to be looking at what you can realistically learn. A French-speaking spouse is a huge pro in favour of French.

Mandarin and Arabic and a couple of others are ranked as the hardest languages for native-English speaking adults to learn. French is ranked amongst the easiest.

jellybeanz OU fees have increased somewhat. The modules are £1250 or £2500. The cheaper fees are for stage 1 modules, and I'm thinking he's likely beyond those two. The first stage 2 module includes a compulsory residential school in France.

If I thought fir. 1 minute that my oh was asking people's opinion about how I was to spend money I had earned I would go mental. It's not like he's using money to go out to lap dancing bars. £300 a term isn't that much really. You probably spend more on sky tv. ( not judging what you spend money on but thats an example)

TheBigJessie - Mandarin and Arabic and a couple of others are ranked as the hardest languages for native-English speaking adults to learn. French is ranked amongst the easiest - and that's precisely why Mandarin and Arabic speakers can earn mega bucks and there's very little money to be made through the so-called easier languages!

I did write more in my original post but having spent 5 years studying three languages at university and then working all over the world, trust me, I'm more than aware of where the big money is to be made...

holey moley no idea OU fees were so much now. I wish I could speak French.

It's a waste of time and money. He can get up to a good standard conversing with you, reading French online etc. if he has nothing lined up, the relevant business vocab will all be forgotten anyway by the time he secures something. If he already speaks French to a high standard but just needs to brush up on business vocab, that won't be a barrier when he's job hunting.

Funny that- I have acquaintances who have done those languages, and they think that no-one should do Chinese or Arabic for "megabucks".

Apparently the megabucks aren't exactly there, (especially if you're a westerner who wants to learn the language for money without the culture, and just magically get a job over competitors who speak Mandarin natively), it takes years (which you can only get through if you genuinely love the language) and Modern Standard Arabic is useless on its own, because you need a fluent dialect as well. Etc, etc.

But yes, some of them do earn money translating, before they've even finished at SOAS. Mind you, I have earned money for translating from my bog standard european-into-English before I'd even finished my A-level.

But perhaps more importantly to the OP's poor husband, where is the money going to come from for studying Mandarin?

Jellybeanz what about a GCSE French evening course? It'll probably cost £300 for the entire year, and it'll cover the same level as an OU beginners' French module.

So has he got a specific job / promotion in mind for which he needs business level French beyond what he's already capable of? If not then it doesn't sound that useful, especially not if money is tight. It also sounds as if you are fed up of hearing unrealistic plans from him, which is why you're not keen to take the risk.

Yes, why does he want to do this course? What's his end result? If it's to improve prospects, what exactly are those prospects?

If he's just got it in his head to learn it for no particular reason and you'd miss the money then it's not a good decision.

Can his company pay for it if it's that important for his work?

TheBigJessie - we're clearly in very different fields then! I know speakers of both who do in fact earn the big bucks. They're not translators either.

And sadly, GCSE French will get you precisely nowhere when you're competing for a job with people who learned the equivalent standard of English at age 5...

I think it's a bit extravagant for him to spend 300 quid on a course if you're a bit tight financially - he could do it with a cheap home study guide if he was really motivated...