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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 3675158" data-attributes="member: 5171">"Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Academic Achievers Messageboard. I know that all of you came here because you take pride in your academic accomplishments, and this entire organization is devoted to discussion of, and improvement of, everyone's academic life.Now, just to break the ice, I'd like to point something out. I notice that some of you are choosing to study French in school as your foreign language. I've thought about it pretty carefully, and, well, if you're doing that, then you're obviously not interested in real academics.I mean, seriously. French? Mandarin is the language of the future, quite frankly, in terms of where the big business opportunities are going to be, and if your school doesn't offer Mandarin (which, really, it should), Spanish is the next logical choice in terms of versatility and business preparedness. The very definition of Academic involves the root, Academy, and since academies are designed to prepare people for real-life business pursuits, only languages that further business interests can legitimately be considered academic in nature.Please bear in mind that I don't consider 'not interested in real academics' to be a value judgment. Some people like true and worthy academic endeavors, and others enjoy learning to conjugate savoir and trying to remember which verbs use "to be" instead of "to have" in their past-tense forms. Both pastimes are challenges, albeit in very different ways, but only Mandarin, and to some extent Spanish, offer a truly academic challenge, and it is improper to speak of anyone studying French or Latin as studying in an academic manner.I know that many people will incorrectly refer to people studying French as being academic, and I've made my peace with that. For the sake of correctness, however, I will be referring to them as pseudo-academics in my discussions. There is no reason for anyone to be insulted; despite the fact that this is a forum specifically devoted to discussions of an academic nature, people who study these pseudo-academic languages will, I am sure, still be welcome here."</blockquote>

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