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[orange]

While the forum discussion is largely in English, I wanted to discuss the merits (and potential negatives) of learning a second (or third) language.

Americans generally do not learn a second language (unless Spanish is their first, then they learn English).  I on the other hand learned/practiced multiple other languages while I was in Europe at various points in my childhood (French, Danish, and German - no longer proficient ).   My wife and I consider it sufficiently important that we occasionally try to converse in French (mine is rudimentary and I worry I am ruining hers) and encourage our young son to listen and learn some basics even now.

So, thoughts?

Do my fellow Americans think this is yet another area of our education system that is failing?

Do the Brits worry about learning French or German, or just assume that others will know it like Americans?

How important is learning English to the French and Germans, what about other languages?

For the smaller countries, do you normally learn just English or do you generally try to learn a third (and sometimes fourth) language?

Are we learning/teaching the right ones to kids?  Should Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) and Russian become more prominent in western schools?

Edit: Added (Mandarin/Cantonese) to Chinese question - thanks Lyn.

[Laurentis Thiesant]

Russian? No.

Asian languages, absolutely. Australian schools have placed priority on learning Mandarin, Indonesian, and Japanese for around a decade now. That comes from Asia making up the vast majority of our trade and also of course our geographic position. There is a lot that can be said from a diplomatic level about being able to speak the same language, same deal with operating in the business world.

That being said - it's not vital. I've recently been to events with delegates from both Indonesia and the PRC, and they all seemed to have a very good working level of English which didn't really get in the way of debate. So while languages have great educational value and are known to be good for the mind, it's not the be all end all of a country's education system - especially if it is struggling in more 'core' areas.

[Silas Vitalia]

My American brothers would be wise to learn Spanish, as we Latinos will soon outnumber you white folks in another generation or so.   

To the OP, it's always a good idea to speak more than one language.  Preferably as a child when it's much easier to learn more than one.

[Morwen Lagann]

Agreed that being multilingual, or at least bilingual, is a ridiculously good idea and that more people in the US should embrace that concept. I took Spanish for seven years in grade school, from fourth grade up through tenth. I enjoyed it, and while I wouldn't have said I was near-fluent yet, I would say I was at least on my way there given a few more years.

However, I dropped it in eleventh and twelfth grades to make room in my schedule for computer science courses I wanted to take for one reason and one reason only: everything else in my schedule I might have dropped (pre-calc in particular, since CS courses counted as "math" credit) to make room for it, I wasn't allowed to drop. But in those two years of not using it actively, I forgot the vast majority of what I had learned to the point that I simply wasn't going to be able to pick it up again and pass courses at the college level. So I've never used it since - I can understand a few written words or phrases here or there, or translate very simple things, but beyond that? It's gone.

If you asked me if I regretted the decision itself, I'd have to say no. I mean, I literally didn't have a choice, and since at the time I wanted to go into CS in college, getting some instruction before I got there was a very important thing to me. What I do regret is that it was a decision I had to make in the first place.

[Denak Kalamari]

Living in Finland, we're taught to be trilingual in throughout the nine grades of elementary school, first Finnish, then English starting at 4th and finally Swedish at 6th. Sweden is our close neighbor and we have a history of close trade relations, so learning Swedish and English is beneficial. People have been suggesting learning Russian as well, but that's probably far away from ever becoming a reality since people are already petitioning to remove Swedish from the school curriculum.

[Kala]

Definitely important, and the younger they are the easier it is to pick up.

Now that I Am Old, I find learning new things very difficult    (not that I seemed to have much aptitude anyways, mind)

Er.  As for Brits, we just tend to shout English loudly to be understood >.>

(Brits Abroad is one of the great awfulnesses of the modern age)

[Katrina Oniseki]

Do my fellow Americans think this is yet another area of our education system that is failing?

Yes, but there's a curious reason why.

As the dominant power in our continent, we've found ourselves in a position where the only other two countries the average citizen would need to deal with is Canada and Mexico. Canadians are taught English from an early age, so those in the northern U.S. regions often see no need to learn French-Canadian, even if thy're in Maine for example. Mexico is a bit different, and while Americans generally look down upon Mexicans, those living in the southern regions tend to be at least lightly versed in Spanish out of necessity.

Despite our world power status, Americans often don't find themselves in any situation where knowing a second language other than Spanish is essential. So, because of this perceived lack of need except in special or career oriented situations, schools don't teach any one language from an early age like European countries would teach English.

In short, we already speak (one of) the dominant economic language(s) in the world, and we're a bit too self centered to think we need anything else.

It's also worth noting that there is a feeling of "English is American", and some groups push the agenda that any other language is beneath us. Even in southern states, where doing business with Latin America is a huge part of our economy, citizens will push back violently against any measure to enforce or encourage learning Spanish as a part of the political controversy about non-English speaking immigrants. I've had family members gripe and whine about road signs having their message written in Spanish in smaller font below the main sign. This is common, and I would be willing to bet it's not unique to the South.

[Ché Biko]

Here's my view on how the Dutch teach and use languages:
Most dutch born after the 2nd world war have at least a decent ability to understand english, although their ability to speak it correctly varies a lot. Before 1999, English was mandatory all the way through secondary school, and the basics are taught at the final year(s) of primary school as well. French and German were mandatory in the first years of secondary school, and optional later on, although when you learn one, I think you also had to learn the other. Gymnasium students also had/have access to Greek and/or Latin.
Since 1999, English is still mandatory for all levels of secondary school, and Greek or Latin is mandatory for gymnasium students. Depending on the type of curriculum, students can also learn one or more additional languages: French, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Papiamento (A Dutch Caribian language), Fries (A language spoken in one of The Netherland's 12 provinces). Arabic and Turkish are there because we have a significant number of people with Marrocan or Turkish ethnicity living here.
Chinese is quite popular here, and increasingly so. It's not part of the secondary school curiculum yet (although some think that should change and some schools have started teaching it), but it's a popular part of the curriculum for post-highschool students, depending on how important languages are for their profession of choice.

The Dutch economy is for a large part depending on trade, and it has been like that for a centuries, so the ability to speak multiple languages is and was quite important for those in the economic sectors, and the increasing touristic sector has only added to the usefulness of being multilingual.
Thanks to the dominance of english entertainment in movies and games, to a much lesser extend, tv-shows (which, like movies, are subtitled. Movies aimed at kids are available in both english (with dutch subtitles) and dutch audio, tv-shows for kids can be either.) and games, it's easy to actually use your english on a regular basis. And more and more dutch words are replaced with english ones, because it sounds more professional or "cool", even if the words are very similar, especially in advertising and names of professions.

But for some reason, we still have Dutch versions of names for certain cities, even if, for example,  "Milano" is not harder for a Dutch person to pronunciate or write than our "Milaan", and it is a lot easier navigating across the european highways if people are familiar with the actual names of cities. The difference can be quite significant, like with "Florence" and "Firenze". And Florence sounds quite french to the dutch, so it makes me wonder why we say "Parijs" instead of "Paris".

To the surprise of my parents, I personally started to learn english well before I was taught the language at elementary, because I spend a lot of time watching BBC as a kid.
I did not like learning French and German when I was young, and dropped those courses as soon as I could. But now I generally like learning a bit of the language of the countries I visit, and have started to voluntarily learn Spanish recently, thanks to the Duolingo site. One of my siblings married an Equadorian indian, you see, and considering he was sort of a marxist rebel in the past, I would love to speak about politics and his experiences with him if I get the opportunity to visit them in Quito.

[Lyn Farel]

In France we have obligatory 2 foreign languages starting in secondary school up to the end of high school (from 6th grade and 8th grade respectively for english, and either german or spanish). Then two possible optional old languages like latin and anciant greek, as well as a 4th optional language in the few last high school grades (usually italian, but can also be russian or else at times), but those last 3 don't generally overlap well in terms of class hours.

But as much as the obligatory ones can teach the basics of grammar, they certainly won't teach children how to speak it. And most people in France really suck at foreign languages, probably due to an internal counter culture that systematically tries to translate everything, dub everything, and generally shield people from foreign languages in entertainement and the likes.

And yes, maybe chinese should be taught more. Mandarin, I mean.

[Victoria Stecker]

Getting to the point where I started thinking in spanish rather than english was awesome, if a touch unsettling.

I miss being able to use spanish conversationally. Almost enough to put in the effort to relearn it. Living in the DC area means I hear it all the time and can still pick up on snipits of conversation, but holy smokes am I out of practice.

A lot of my thoughts on the subject itself run into issues of American ethno-centrism. We've done such a fantastic job convincing ourselves that we're better than everyone else that we've extended that to language, telling ourselves (and sometimes others) that anyone who doesn't speak english isn't worth talking to, therefore we shouldn't put in the effort to learn another language.

This is, of course, bullshit.

I have a random, distinct memory of a conversation on the subject. A woman who already spoke something like five languages was learning Japanese. Someone asked her why, and she simply said, "So I can talk to more people."

All matters of practicality and value aside, isn't that the point? And isn't that pretty cool?

[Louella Dougans]

In Scotland, there are school exam courses for languages including French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian and Gaelic. Most schools only offer two or three of them, and usually, for subject choices for exam courses, there'll be a compulsory language, that is, in your "Pick 8 subjects" form for deciding which 8 subjects you'd study at ages 15 and 16, one of the 8 boxes will only have language options.

The European languages are probably more useful for most people, I think.

Gaelic is a political option, so that people can study all the poetry and dirges, about how poor Donald was taken by the sea, and now some poor woman will never get married, because poor Donald is drowned, and he was only going for the newspaper. Poor Donald.

Gaelic only allows people in Scotland to talk amongst themselves, about how tragic life is, and how oppressed by the Foreigner (Everyone else in the entire world including Lowland Scots), and so on and so forth.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

When I went to school, we had to take a secondary language from 5th grade onwards: Normally it's English, but in my case I started out with Latin - when I changed school after 1/4 year I had to switch to English though, asthe new school, as most schools, did only offer English as secondary language. Going to the Gymnasium from 7th grade onwards I had to take a tertiary language, which was Latin (with French being the other choice) for me, naturally. 9th grade offered the chance to take a quaternary language and I took up ancient Greek (with French again being the other choice together with Spanish). in 11th grade I had the opportunity to take biblical Hebrew as quinary language, but as I was the only one in our little town's Gymnasia to sign up for it the course didn't take off (I think 6 students would've been required formally and they were willing to start it with 4).

Back then all languages were teached with putting more emphasis on formal training then ability to speak.

Nowadays English is oftentimes started in elementary school and there are sometimesbilingual classes in the higher grades offered. Chinese is on the rise as an offered language. All in all, though, it differs from school to school which languages exactly can be offered - and which federal state they belong to also play a big role, as the federal states are responsible for school education. Lastly the ex-GDR states oftentimes offer still Russian as a tertiary language.

Imho learning languages is quite important for forming an open mind and developing mental abilities. You can't understand a people fully, imho, if you don't know a bit a bout their language.

[Arista Shahni]

As has been pointed out, in the US we're generally in public school given a choice between Spanish and French.  Private schools sometimes offer other choices.

At one point I was mildly fluent in Spanish as I had employees who spoke it as their first language and it made work easier, as we'd speak a mishmosh of spanish/english to each other.   Since I left that job and fell out of practice my fluency has dropped.  I can understand about 50% of it being spoken to me on an average day, if I spend a couple hours a day even just passively watching Spanish TV shows, my memory gets jolted and it goes up to about 80% or so.

How important it is, well, there you go.  I have no need to use another language do I don't focus on 'just in case's.  As the quote goes, "Your knowledge of Sanskrit will do you no good while trapped in a sewer". 

Online when I was GMing/Administrating servers and forums Google Translate was enough to help me stumble through communications with users (which was mostly German / Portugese.  For Russian and Filipino/Tagalog I has staff who were fluent or volunteer translators; our database guy was Pinoy, and the Russian translator enjoyed doing it as it helped him keep his fluency, as he wasn't using the language often enough living in the US.)

But generally living in the US, other languages are only spoke in 'mini' town locales (Chinatown, Little Russia (where I live) etc), and those people in them that I would interact with (such as shopkeepers) are bilingual.

[Makoto Priano]

As an American in the Pacific Northwest, I'm going to echo most other sentiments here.

On one hand, I really endorse the notion of educating people in another language, as learning another language helps with understanding grammar systems in one's primary language; aside from the Southwest, though, most Americans have no strong need for any language other than English.

That said, I took some German in high school and still recall enough that I can muddle through reading, and have taken some Latin for the lols, but please, gods, don't make me translate any more Cicero...

I'd love to be bi- or trilingual, but there's just no real reason to take it up when there are no nearby borders over which I can hop to speak it.

Now, if I were in England...? I'd love to learn some languages, as I could then pop across the channel.

[Lyn Farel]

Getting to the point where I started thinking in spanish rather than english was awesome, if a touch unsettling.

Ah, there is that too.

As much as I find it rather nice since that the most obvious and fitting word you are looking for will always come first, sometimes it will be in the other language. I find myself mor and more crippled in my own native language when english words start to come to mind instead of the one i'm really looking for. And english is richer for very common words, which doesn't make things easier.

Actually it's really frustrating because I find it regularly completely murdering my ability to speak fluently my native language at times. People just look at you weirdly when you are swearing before eventually giving up and telling them the word you are looking for is this or that in english, and that you can't find it anymore in french.

But on the other hand, you feel so much richer yourself when able to speak 2 languages... And even if I forgot most german I learned, I still can decipher the basics and remember a few things, as well as what I learned from latin (not the language itself per se, but the etymological roots... awesome language btw, with a very nice ring to it and very clean and cartesian, although completely demented with over complicated rules). It is a pleasing feeling and one of the things that makes you happy spiritually. Not sure how to say it though, but you feel brighter overall, be it the case or not. xD

Back then all languages were teached with putting more emphasis on formal training then ability to speak.

Same, to the contrary of english, incidentally, that was teached at start only as learning bits of sentences and stuff without any grammar. One without the other is completely daft.