Chile Forum

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I was frankly (bad pun) surprised to see these Sernatur tourist-origin numbers for France and Germany for 2010

Dentro del mercado europeo los principales países emisores de turistas hacia Chile
fueron: España (61.485), Francia (60.777), Alemania (58.369) e Inglaterra (42.310), cifras
que en general mostraron una baja en el flujo de turistas, en relación al año 2009.

I understand that OP asked about French and German but that may be due to not knowing the local market. But if OP wants to choose just between the two languages mentioned, then the numbers are about equal for both.

I don't think any of the above really make sense from an employment stand point to make a diffrence in choosing one over the other. the tourism markets are just too small.

why not do both?

speaking both languages would go a long way to making you a a more atractive employee for any tourism related biz.

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Down here in the patagonia, German is often mentioned after English as a desired skill for the tourism industry. French, much less often. But the kicker is that "anything German" has a certain respect and admiration in much of Chile, while anything French, well, it just lacks the same cachet.

patagoniax wrote:.
Down here in the patagonia, German is often mentioned after English as a desired skill for the tourism industry. French, much less often. But the kicker is that "anything German" has a certain respect and admiration in much of Chile, while anything French, well, it just lacks the same cachet.

Years ago we stayed in some cabins outside Frutillar. The owner's surnames were something like Muñoz Schreiber; one German surname. He said that he was considered lower down the social scale than someone with two German surnames. I suppose it is the old 'descendant of first settler' thing. The older descendants of the English in Argentina were the same. Then they all had their English bank accounts frozen during, and years after, the Malvinas/Falklands war and rethought things a bit. They were the generation who were punished for speaking Spanish even on the playground and even people who were third generation born in Argentina had trouble stringing a sentence together in Spanish.

Thanks guys, for your posts. My grand-mother used to talk to me only in German when I was a child and also had German lessons in high school, but basically haven't uttered a word in German for 15 years. The same with French, I used to live in France and even cranky French found my French skills good enough, but again I haven't used it for more than 10 years.

As to Portuguese, although I never learnt it, being more or less fluent in Spanish I occasionally read Portuguese papers (once even a book that was available only in Portuguese), but I don't understand much when they are talking to me. And because Portuguese is a stress-timed language I find it much more difficult than Spanish.