Today I went into my classroom and made the following list on the whiteboard. See if you can figure out what it all means.
International Cities:
Dubai, Budapest, Nurnberg, New York, London, Manchester, Paris, Lisbon, Bolzen, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Ancona, Milan, Sao Paolo, Dakar.
Professional Sports:
NBA, World Championship Sailing, World Championship Paratriathlon, Formula Indy.
Other Sectors:
Insurance, Toys, Tunneling, Engineering, Food and Bev, Wine business.
Did you get what they have in common?
My students couldn't figure it out either, so here the solution.
These are all of the cities (actually it is a partial list of just the sexiest ones) that I have visited for work in the sectors above (Formula Indy was not work but thanks to languages). I had all of these opportunities because I studied what other people called "useless languages."
The "useless" languages that led to these experiences were French, Portuguese and Italian. I have lots of others I am working on with varying degrees of commitment as well: Albanian (specifically Kosovan), Triestino (yes, it's a language), Wolof, Slovenian, and, most recently, Swedish.
What are your useless languages? Who knows what doors they will open for you.
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