The Language of Fashion: Which language is best to study?

[Dulcisima]

I would say Spanish! cause its music to my ears and I love it!
But i honsetly think that nowdays in the fashion world they are alot of new emerging fashion designers from different countries...and people now are looking for the next new fashion designer...yes you got ur basic old fashion well known houses the french balmain, the italian versace and the american ralph lauren, but you also got new emerging ones from Netherlands, Belguim, Japan, India, Malaysia...and i feel that you need English cause these new designers wouldnt emerge without knowing english to communicate with the market etc...but the old established designers dont really need other than their mother tongue...the market communicates with them in their language!! so its safe to say that English, but I would defintely aim at learning more different languages...besides what is there to lose?

 

[navarro]

English and then... you can contract a translator. If you learn a new language you'll realize you need another one and that's always the same story. It depends on you! I love learning languages so I'm trying to study more and more.

 

[MissAlexis]

I have just been reading through and am very interested to find that this subject conjours many opinions.

I have decided on French for my class, I have the basics from school and enough copies of French Vogue to keep me busy outside the classroom! As for Mandarin Chinese it is definately something I want to start learning in the future. Anything that gives you an avantage when graduating in a recession is time well spent I think.Thanks all.

 

[Elegance.Is.Refusal.]

when i was at graduate fashion week at group of us standing at our stand were approached by a very lovely designer for the life of me i cannot remember his name which is a shame, but he gave us some great advice and the two languages he suggested we learn because we will need them alot was spanish and mandarin chinese. im sure he meantioned another language but i cant think of it i do really have a bad memory and it was the gala show so we were all too excited for the celebs and if anyone from our uni was going to win anything.

 

[mahreez]

i think french is a good option as it's used in other countries also. if you'd be working with suppliers for sure a lot of them would be from china anyway, and it helps a lot esp. in bargaining if you could speak mandarin.

i'm studying mandarin at the moment, although, i must say it's more difficult to learn than french, as the books in "pinyin" are limited and i couldn't read chinese characters.

 

[tigerrouge]

I spent seven years learning French - some time ago - and have always found a use for it, whether its reading classic novels or talking to people from Canada or Africa. It's not all about Paris, the Francophone world is more extensive than you first imagine.

 

[Hemmy]

I would say English first after that

Spanish it's a nice language, it's also the world's second most spoken language in terms of native speakers. However, it is fourth in terms of total speakers.

Once you know Spanish it's easy to go to either French or Italian, even Portuguese!

About Chinese (Mandarin) I think Russian and German are really more helpful, just because it's the most spoken language, it doesn't mean its going to be the futures language.

I mean Hindu/Urdu (2 most spoken) and Arabic (5 most spoken)are really important languages, but you don't have to learn them for study.

 

[lemon.mermaid]

I would agree with Chinese. My former professor encouraged us to study the language since China is great when for sourcing out of materials and manpower.

 

[Shoezz]

Where every clothing is worn...Learn the Language

 

[miss_coutureland]

I have been learning Japanese for two years and its a difficult language to learn, theres romanji, which is like japanese english such as Konnichiwa, but theres also Katakana and Kanji which is the symbols, and theres hundreds of them.
They also have a different grammar system to as, which makes it complicated. But if you learn languages easily and have good memorising skills then Japanese is a really fun language to learn.

 

[Party.in.Paris]

French is my mother tongue
I speak English
And I took Italian and Japanese for four years !

I think those four languages are the languages of fashion (not especialy in that order though) !

Italian and Japanese are very interesting not so many people speak them (compared to french) it's spoken only in Italy and in Japan and yet those languages are important, because Italy and Japan are important in many fields, and of course in Fashion !
My favourite countries and languages

 

[Hei Hei]

i would probably say english first, then french, italian,japanese,spanish.

i am a chinese native speaker, my major is business english,and i have learnt japanese for almost one year and a half.

although there are some similarities between chinese and japanese, i still find it is difficult to learn japanese quite well, especially those grammars.

besides,i have been thinking about studying french for a long time,but french is really difficult for me

 

[Cicciolina]

I've seen a lot of ads for buyers asking that French and/or Italian is highly recommended (in addition to English of course).

But I think Chinese would be so important, especially dealing with the wholesale side, or nowadays, the whole "burgeoning Chinese market" (I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about that!)

Fashion is a global business (relatively), I think it'll be an asset to speak almost any language really.

 

[cygnenoir]

I think it depends on what you plan to do with your degree and where you ideally want to live. I would spend some time really thinking about that!

If you think the majority of your work will be in, say, Los Angeles, I would say Spanish. If you plan to work in Paris, Toyko, or Shanghai, well, then it's a given.

But more importantly, you should study a language you enjoy. I just helped a designer with some manufacturing in Vietnam and you know what? I had a translator!

 

[LucieRibbons]

I've got French and English as joint first languages and I found Spanish pretty easy to pick up. I also do Latin at school and it's close enough to Italian to get by a little.

I want to learn Portuguese because apparently if you speak French and Spanish there's not much to it. Although my Spanish isn't amazing. :/

Japanese I would say is important for fashion and is (apparently) easier than Mandarin.
Russian has a groovy alphabet and sounds pretty but I think it's not a major priority if you're only planning on learning one language.

 

[sqekcx]

Japanese I would say is important for fashion and is (apparently) easier than Mandarin.

I don't think Japanese is easier than Chinese. Both languages are difficult to learn. There are tones in Chinese, and there are no letters, unlike Japanese, which has hiragana and katakana, but Chinese uses Subject Verb Object word order, which is similar to English, and it doesn't have a complicated structure. It's easy to progress too. There are several ways of making character, and two of them uses the method of combining different characters or different roots which make up the meaning of the whole character. Some words are made up using this method as well, combining different characters that make up the meaning of the word. You don't need to know every character to read.

I don't like the idea of learning a language because it helps with your career or anything like that. If you're not interested in something, it's hard to force yourself to study it.

 

[Katie123]

I've got French and English as joint first languages and I found Spanish pretty easy to pick up. I also do Latin at school and it's close enough to Italian to get by a little.

I want to learn Portuguese because apparently if you speak French and Spanish there's not much to it. Although my Spanish isn't amazing. :/

Japanese I would say is important for fashion and is (apparently) easier than Mandarin.
Russian has a groovy alphabet and sounds pretty but I think it's not a major priority if you're only planning on learning one language.

True, portuguese is my main language and it's almost the same as spanish, honestly. i've never learnt spanish but i can understand everything and if you speak some "portunhol" (portuguese with some basic spanish words in between) you can get anywhere! i know for a fact as i've been through some hard times in argentina
and french and italian were SO much easier to understand because i speak portuguese.

 

[LucieRibbons]

I don't think Japanese is easier than Chinese. Both languages are difficult to learn. There are tones in Chinese, and there are no letters, unlike Japanese, which has hiragana and katakana, but Chinese uses Subject Verb Object word order, which is similar to English, and it doesn't have a complicated structure. It's easy to progress too. There are several ways of making character, and two of them uses the method of combining different characters or different roots which make up the meaning of the whole character. Some words are made up using this method as well, combining different characters that make up the meaning of the word. You don't need to know every character to read.

I don't like the idea of learning a language because it helps with your career or anything like that. If you're not interested in something, it's hard to force yourself to study it.

Sorry about my judgement but I based it on what my friend said about learning both simulatenously. She said that she found Japanese easier because it was so different that most of the structure was new and she didn't try to apply any rules to it until she'd learnt them. But with Chinese (I think she struggled a lot with speaking in tones) but aside from that she always tried to apply rules that she knew that didn't necessarily fit so it seemed irregular as it followed some patterns she knows but not all.

 

[MakeupYourStyle]

I would say, french, there are a lot of talented designers but for some reason I feel that french would be a staple in that business

 

[BetteT]

I agree. I think, if you read through this thead ... that for working in the fashion biz ... French and Chinese comes up the most (after English, of course, which is pretty much the language of business everywhere).