today’s word is actually a phrase, or rather, an idiomatic expression:
Poderoso caballero es Don Dinero.
(literally: Mr. Money is a strong cowboy)
which in English translates to the idiom, Money makes the world go round! {Idioms are not supposed to be literally translated, I just thought you might want that for vocab purposes.}
I’d like to think it’s love that makes the world go round, but hey, I didn’t coin the idiom… and Moondoggie does think I’m a bit of a hippie… so anyways…
Bilingual Chiquita Update
Not a whole lot to report this week… but she’s improving gradually all the time. A couple things of note, when I say, “Dime por favor” (“Tell me thank you”), Chiquita will enthusiasticly sign “please”- this is pretty cool. She’s also started doing this cute thing with her hands where she turns them up, as if to say “Where is it?” and she does the same “sign” when I say, “¿Dónde está?” She’s also saying her own version of agua interchangeably with wa-wa, probably because they sound so similar (more on this next week).
Thoughts on Language Learning
Since I’m talking about money this week, I just wanted to briefly touch on how this topic fits with bilingualism. There are so many benefits to learning another language, some of them cognitive, social and cultural, but there are even financial benefits in this day and age to knowing another language.
I did a quick search on monster.com for jobs with the keyword bilingual and over 5,000 came up (it didn’t specify how many over 5,000 but just read >5,000), then on careerbuilder.com I did the same search and came up with 10,579 jobs. Now with the economy the way it is, that in and of itself should be enough evidence for the benefit of learning a second language, especially at a young age when it will really sink it, and achieve the most fluency.
So let’s say you learn a second language as a child (or even later in life, which while harder, is still valuable!), and you get a job that was listed as a bilingual position. Well, chances are, you’re going to be making more money, than the average monolingual employee.
For aspiring businessmen & women, an article I read by Laura Morsch of careerbuilder.com stated that 31% of executives speak two languages and 9% speak four. Morsch goes on to report cite salary.com saying that
On average, bilingual pay differentials range between 5 and 20 percent per hour more than the position’s base rate.
Can I get a “wow!”? Learning another languages can open up a lot of doors for our children, and the time and effort spent now and throughout their education teaching and/or encouraging them definitely has the potential to pay off.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
you know, way back in jr. high when i started taking spanish, my teacher told me about how much interpreters made for a living and i thought it was a fortune. alas, thought i, i will never master spanish enough to be a bilingual worker.
shows how much i know, in my current job i work in spanish about 40-60% of my day and i provide interpretation quite frequently. i am not paid more than my co-workers cause they are bilingual too (you can only get my job if you are!)
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@myste, that’s a good point. The higher salaries are probably more referring to jobs where there are both bilingual/monolingual people doing the same thing. The article by Morsch points out that it’s not just being bilingual but finding a position that is a bilingual position vs a similar one that is not bilingual.
Very good post! Knowing another language will certainly open more doors – it has for me. I want the same for my children.
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