Vietnamese or Spanish

[Ollyollyoxenfree]

Hello, Everyone!

I am a pre-nursing student in San Diego planning to minor in Anthropology and focus on transcultural and/or public health nursing. My goal is to work in a medically underserved, low-income community and I'm having a hard time deciding which foreign language to study. I don't know for sure, but being in So. CA, I imagine lots of nursing school applicants speak Spanish and that there must be a much greater demand for nurses that speak Vietnamese. Besides the fact that I am particularly interested in SEAsian culture, I am thinking that studying Vietnamese will also be a way to stand out in a sea of very qualified applicants when the time comes to apply to nursing programs... Any thoughts?

Admittedly, I am concerned about how difficult learning Vietnamese will be on top of my pre-requisite coursework. The tonal nature of the language seems much more complex than Latin based Spanish.

What foreign languages are other Californians taking?

[LiuSu]

How about learning Chinese?i heard that's a good choice,anyone have any idea?BTW I am also in San Diego,if you interested in Chinese,I may can help for practice!:)

[Cali_Nurse_209]

In high school I took Spanish for 2 yrs,so when I entered college I wanted to take Spanish again but I didn't have time because it wasn't a required class and I didn't have time with my pre nursing classes. Now I've been accepted to the BSN program and I really won't have time to take it. Eventually I'd like to take some kind of Spanish refresher course because I live in the Central Valley of California and Spanish is widely spoken here and it would be very beneficial.

[Bobmo88]

This is extremely biased coming from a Mexican-American whose 1st Bachelor's degree was Spanish but I'd go with Spanish if you plan on living in Southern CA. I was born, raised, and currently work at a hospital in So Cal with a large immigrant population and I use Spanish every single shift I work. I've only run into a few patients who speak Vietnamese or even other SE Asian languages. It all depends of course because there may be a large community of Vietnamese speakers in your city. To me Vietnamese is hit or miss as to how useful it is but you're more likely to run into a Spanish speaker here.

[pinayluv78]

Nurse2b209: what program r u going into? I live in the central valley, too & will be starting in August at Fresno State. I agree, around here, Spanish is the language to learn.

[Cali_Nurse_209]

Nurse2b209: what program r u going into? I live in the central valley, too & will be starting in August at Fresno State. I agree, around here, Spanish is the language to learn.

Hello, I live in Merced and I'll be starting the BSN program @ CSU Stanislaus this fall.