Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

Totally makes sense, but Spanish is still one of the easiest languages for learn for English speakers. So if you are planning to learn a new language, do give Spanish a try. One of the best books for learning Spanish is - Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. French is a little more difficult, and German is way more difficult. Probably that's another reason for the difference in the returns over time?

I realize the article is pro-multilingual, but I disagree with the notion that time spent learning a foreign language is time not spent learning another subject.

My son was in Spanish immersion preschool from age 2 until 3 years 4 months. He can speak and understand Spanish and understands that he speaks a language that my wife and I don't. Then we moved and put him in Mandarin/English bilingual school. He's 2.5 months into the program and can already count, follow basic instructions, and make basic requests.

Learning a language at that age has basically been a free layer of learning added on top of his education and growth. To him, it's not even "learning" it's just talking and playing and singing.

There's no opportunity cost at that age to stacking blocks with English instruction or some other language. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that time in our kids' lives by immersing them in another language?

Of course it could just be that my son is the smartest kid in the whole world. That's probably true, too.

Yeah, Spanish is pretty easy for Anglophones. Afrikaans is super easy for Anglophones to learn also. The syntax and pragmatics of Afrikaans are nearly the same as English. There are some new words, sounds, and orthography to pick up, but honestly the orthography is the hardest part. There aren't nearly as many resources to learn Afrikaans as Spanish, though.

Edited to add: Most Afrikaans speakers will tell you that Afrikaans is a dying language. That didn't stop me -- it's not much different from a programmer picking up Modula-3 just for the fun of it.

I love the use of compound interest to increase the value, and I've never had the chance to reference an xkcd comic until now http://xkcd.com/947/

I took two years of a foreign language in high school. I only learned a little bit of vocabulary, and conjugation in only a couple of tenses. I don't think it much improved my ability to communicate with non-English speakers (and anyway, I haven't encountered any, so it's kind of irrelevant).

Then I had to take more foreign language in college to satisfy a graduation requirement. I'd already had it in high school; I'd already learned that I wasn't good at it and didn't enjoy it. Me sitting through that college class was an utter waste of time and effort for both me and the professor.

Not everybody is good at, or cares about, learning languages. If a student's had a few months of foreign language instruction at some point in their life, you shouldn't force them to take more.