What second languages do native english speakers have to learn in school?

[zapnic]

ha study finnish be a man

ha study finnish be a man
finnish is hardest language into wholo world
jep

[DRoseDARs]

Re: ha study finnish be a man

Originally posted by zapnic
ha study finnish be a man
finnish is hardest language into wholo world
jep

I've heard rumors about them,
I've seen people lament about their antics,
but I've never seen it for myself...
...until now.

The Finns are a strange people.

[Traianvs]

I had 8 years of French, 5 years of English, 4 years of German and another 4 years of Latin, and just one year of ancient Greek (i was supposed to do 6 years of those, each of them, LOL, luckily I gave up as soon as possible, which wasn't that hard, ... just never do homework and fail your exams ). All in all though i would have liked to finish those 6 years, when I look at it now...


Btw languages are great! Especially for Belgians..cos our country be so tiny... I can talk to any one of my neighbouring countries...which is nice!

[GePap]

Well, as a native Spanish speaker, my experience is not aprticularly what is aksed for, but as a kid, i went to a tri-lingual school (until third grade, then I moved to the US) were English and french were the second and third languages. Once in the US, for some reason, i chose to try to keep y spanish in working order by taking the offered Spanish classes in middle school (7th and 8th grade) intead of french (which led me to loose much of my french). Since high school (in which you had to study a second language, and which offered German, French, spanish, Latin, Greek, Japanese, perhaps russian and Chinese, not sure, and also perhaps Hebrew) I have had 4 years of German (3 in high school 1 in college and a trip to Vienna), but I don't classify myself as very god in german. I also studied a bit of Japanese (I have forgotten more language than retained ) for one short summer.

I agree with Dissident and DanS that foreign language study should be madatory for small children, and once I have kid, by God they will be bilingual at least: tri or quadrilingual would be better. Knowledge of languages other than your own imporves your own handling of languages (how many kids get tought what the accusative is in English, or the subjunctive?) including your initial one, and it does help greatly in finding employment, specially in the future.

[Drogue]

We don't. Well, we try, we have 3 compulsory years of French and German, and 2 more if you choose one of them, but it's appauling. I did German for 5 years, passed it with an A and I can hardly make up a sentance

It really is appauling. We don't even learn the accusitive case etc. in English. I fear the time when we actually have to speak another language, either the whole world learns English, or we're screwed I have great respect for anyone who can speak many languages fluently.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by The Vagabond


Surprised to hear that.

But the difficulty of the Russian alphabet is certainly exaggerated.

I don't speak Russian but I am aware of the Cyrillic alphabet, as I am Greek. They are both phonetic so once you have a feel for the letters you are fine...

Yeah, I learned French and German at school, and sat GCSEs in French. My French is so-so but I did nowhere near as much German, so it is virtually non-existent. Language teaching over here is apalling, they don't start until 11. With our lack of exposure to other languages, it should start a lot younger.

[Sava]

In Illinois, you're required to take 2 semesters worth of one foreign language, that's it. I took 2 years of Spanish...

[Anodyne]

In Finland we start studying English at 3rd grade (age 9), and Swedish at 7th (age 13)... and no matter where you study after elementary school, there's always mandatory classes in both, English and Swedish...

When I went to high school, I was also given voluntary choices in French and German (and sometime later Russian and Latin, as more people showed interest). I took none , mainly because I was already so extremely pissed off in having to learn Swedish, which I thought would never be of any use to me. Now I think about it differently, since I'm interested in studying/working/living in other Nordic countries, where Swedish is useful, if not as itself, then in learning other Scandinavian languages...

But I still feel it's wrong having to study Swedish here - it's like French in Canada, except that our Swedish speaking minority consists of 5% of the population, and they live in quite narrow coastal areas... it's quite rare to hear Swedish spoken where I live (I have never actually met a Swedish speaking Finn in my whole life ). I think it might be a better idea to have one foreign language mandatory besides English, but you could choose it from a longer list (like Swedish, French, German, Russian...).

Russian in particular will be quite needed in the future, I think. And Spanish is important when taken into account that Latin Americans seldom speak fluent English...