Hello all, I am a student of economics studying at university, and I plan on studying economics at the graduate level. Although the economics program at my school covers mainly neo-classical econ, I study the works of Mises/Hayek and the philosophy of Popper in on my own, all 3 writing origionaly in the German language. Its time for course selection, and I was wondering if it was worth it investing the time to learn an entirely new language in order to further my study of economics. The benefits would obviosuly be to study many of the great authors in the Austrian tradition in their origional language (as well as Marx/Hegel (ugh....I can totally emphathize with Hayek when he talks about being in pain when reading Hegel. There is something truly cruel that Austrians are forced to read, study, and refute the historicists teachings over and over again). Also, it would probably benefit me in the future as a scholar being able to read and speak German. However, many texts are available today in English. Any thoughts on scholarly benefits?
-Jacob
If I were you I'd stick to English, considering everything is translated nowadays. If you want to learn a new language, I would recommend Chinese Mandarin, although that's without a doubt much harder to learn than German. I've been struggling with it for some time now. Talking to 1.3 billion people seems like a bigger advantage.
I think if there are some faults with translations from German to English, then you won't make these up by learning a new language, since German won't be your first language, you'd miss the intricacies anyway, unless you dedicate a huge amount of time to it, but that just might not be worth it. I personally never did like German as a language. I prefer the latin-based ones (French) as opposed to the germanic languages (English is a mix).
I speak five languages: Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian and French
I will talk form the experience of what these skills gave me.
For being a researcher, the proficiency in the big three western languages is the best: English, Spanish and French. If it isn't translated to at least one fo them, it probably isn't worthy. Also, they got you covered for travelling and researching in all the Americas, Africa, a good part of Europe and a big chunk of Asia and Oceania.
If you are planning to learn a lot of languages, better start with Latin. It is a dead tongue but it gives you the basics for all romanic languages. This mans, you will learn the other ones faster.
German is the language of half Europe (not just Germany) and so it opens doors, but unless you are truly committed to be a high profile intellectual, you shouldn't take it. I would take it just for fun, but I don't advice it to you.
Nothing worthy is written in Mandarin or Arabic. The scholars of those languages who get something interesting write it in English.
Pity the theory which sets itself up in opposition to the mind!
Carl Von Clausewitz