Fluent or just basic? Personally I think it's not worth it unless you really commit to trying to get fluent. I "learnt" Latin + French at school and it's basically useless knowledge that's drifted away in the years, I can barely understand even the most basic French now.
As for knowing it fluently, my Mum and various of her friends are all Dutch living in the UK. Many of them earned some money from it in some way, including:
- doing translations
- getting jobs in the local port because they were bilingual
- teaching night classes in the language
- emergency translator for customs
And that's Dutch, where even 20 years ago a lot of them spoke English fluently. It can be useful.
My friend's wife is a US Bulgarian who speaks French and got a grant from her uni to go to Bulgaria this summer to interview Bulgarian software companies (I think including Chaos/XCom maker Julian Gollop who lives there now).
Then again I know others who never use their 2nd or 3rd language.
Basically, it opens doors to experiences if you want to leverage it.
As for knowing it fluently, my Mum and various of her friends are all Dutch living in the UK. Many of them earned some money from it in some way, including:
And that's Dutch, where even 20 years ago a lot of them spoke English fluently. It can be useful.My friend's wife is a US Bulgarian who speaks French and got a grant from her uni to go to Bulgaria this summer to interview Bulgarian software companies (I think including Chaos/XCom maker Julian Gollop who lives there now).
Then again I know others who never use their 2nd or 3rd language.
Basically, it opens doors to experiences if you want to leverage it.