Absolutely not. You just substantiated your point with two countries who combined don't add up the the total Oberfläche of Arizona, and whose linguistic presence is isolated within them. Using English doesn't even begin to draw a fair comparison because it's the global lingua franca who is dispersed far beyond Native Anglophoniq but gewissermaßen as an Amt und die Verkehrsprache der Welt.
Again, German is not an international language. It's a (the) working language of EU, it's of course the Amtsprache of the Germanophone countries. But by fact, simply a fact, not an international language like Spanish, Portugese, French and English are.
you specifically mentioned in your previous post, though, that german is not a practical language outside of "central" germany (this statement really puzzled me -- why only central germany anyway? why not the rest of germany?) which is inherently wrong.
and now that i see you elaborating on your post i believe by "international" language you actually mean a world language. you could argue that german is not a world language because it is not spread out widely across several continents, but you simply can't argue that's it's not international. the word international, by definition, means pertaining to two or more countries. german is an official language in seven.
you could say for example that polish isn't an international language. it's only spoken in poland except for small minority groups or immigrants, and it's only official in one country: you guessed it, poland.
This doesn't reduce the inherent quality of the languages or whatever you want to say, of course not, but when the end goal doesn't involve extended stays in Germanophone countries or a career in Engineering then there is little pragmatic use unless you want to read German literature or really like Tatort, which i assume isn't the main reason Retorno is considering German.
i find that most people (even german-speakers) tend to underestimate the importance of german as a major human language. i don't think it right that someone be discouraged from learning it because it is not globally widespread (not calling you out here, i've noticed people tend to discourage
themselves from learning german for this reason). for me, it doesn't seem like some sort of limitation just because it's not like spanish and i can't take off to another continent and speak their native language. i look at it like "hey, i speak german, so i have the opportunity to work and live in numerous beautiful, fascinating countries where it's an official language." knowing german opens up opportunities, it's up to the person learning it to decide whether or not they are the opportunities that they want!
And clearly German and French aren't related, but French and Spanish are, and as i said before, the amount of effort needed to become decent at German far exceeds a comparable effort for French even without previous Romance knowledge, and with it it is almost a cake walk and a matter of rearranging puzzle pieces. Again, I'd rather spend a year on French and get great and then have that under my belt before i tackle german, then slog through german for years. I personally don't regret my decision in any capacity, but when he is choosing between the two, French is the way to go in my opinion.
i understand totally where you are coming from, but my point was that the easiest path is not always the right one! it may be really easy for him to learn french, but you could argue that that's a good reason for him to learn it later on in life, and he should focus on the difficult ones while he's still young
and don't forget, some people like a challenge. if i didn't like a challenge i wouldn't have studied japanese first which, in comparison to german, is waaaay harder for an english speaker to come to grips with.
