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If you're in the US, studying French was the first mistake. Over time, it's increasingly struck me as negligent (in most US localities) to teach anything besid

If you're in the US, studying French was the first mistake. Over time, it's increasingly struck me as negligent (in most US localities) to teach anything besides Spanish. We've got a huge sub-population that faces all kinds of obstacles because the English-speakers can't communicate with them and we're fucking around with Latin? My extended family on my dad's side speak Spanish and I took Latin in high school? I can't talk with 3 out of 4 of the guys working on my house!

bobochan 5y ago
French instruction starts very early in our town in Vermont because there are over 8 million French speakers right next to us, including almost 2 million living right over the border in Montréal. The ability to communicate in French has been incredibly useful over the course of my career, not just in North America, but across Europe and Africa. There are 29 countries that speak French as an official language and about 274 million fluent speakers.
- anthk 5y ago
  Spanish has 4x more speakers and a far easier ortography.
FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
I work IT in a manufacturing industry. Over the last 10 years, the plant operations have moved to almost 100% Spanish speaking. There's also Portuguese, French (Haitians), Igbo, Xhosa, Swahili, Afrikaans, and whole host of indigenous languages spoke out there (Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, who knows what else) ...
JasonFruit 5y ago
Perhaps people learn French, Latin, and German because they want to. Who are you to say what they may or may not choose to learn? A diversity of education and knowledge is a good thing for a culture, and if it was not, people would still be justified in learning what they want to learn. Besides, that we have a sizable population that either has not yet learned English or has chosen not to does not create an obligation in others to learn their language. Are you certain it's more important to enable a sub-community that has not embraced the dominant language of the country, rather than be able to experience the thoughts of the ancients in their own Latin? To extend your argument, I live in an area with a large Hmong population that has not fully embraced English; should the schools here abandon education in all languages but English and Hmong?
- neutronicus 5y ago
  I do think English and Hmong should be mandatory in such an area, if the Hmong population is large enough I'm not against more languages as an elective, I just didn't manage to say so
- grogenaut 5y ago
  I took French because that's what my school taught. If I could have taken Spanish or mandarin I'd have been happy to. When I got to high school, the French (especially endless conjugation) made me so despise language class I didn't even try Spanish, just added more math / science. My HS offered Spanish, French and Latin. It was a prep school so they suggested you only took Latin if you were interested in Law, Medicine or the Clergy. It'd have been better for me to spend all the time in French class in France instead (eg instead of an hour a day for 3 years, 11 weeks, hell even a month). I've picked up more on Spanish and French in 2 weeks in other countries than I did in 3 years in a classroom. There's a full immersion school around me for spanish, that seems to work a lot better.
mejutoco 5y ago
People study languages for many reasons. I do not think it is fair to demand that people learn a language to „help” others. You seem to imply that some spanish-speakers can’t communicate in English in most US localities. Is this true? Do you have any data/reference on that? Assuming that is the case, surely English lessons (maybe sponsored or free) would be a more direct solution.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  Yes, there are many first generation immigrants in the US with poor grasp of English. There are many free ESOL resources; regardless, English is hard.
  - mejutoco 5y ago
    > (in most US localities) I agree, there are some, but is this in most of the US? That is what was claimed, without any backup. I do not think that English is harder than any other language, but it is always difficult to learn a new language. We agree there too. It seems to me the argument is a bit backwards. If the poster cares about promotimg language skills for integration, why not address that instead of moralizing on people for not learning the right language?
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    English is one of the easiest languages to become "understandable" in. Presumably because of how many people invaded England historically. When another culture invades, some of the language rules are adopted, but they are universally the simpler rules, and the more advanced rules aren't integrated. Spoken English, with it's reliance on word order, lack of genders, relative lack of verb conjugations and noun declensions make it ridiculously easy to be understood in comparison to other languages. You won't be Shakespeare, but you will be able to communicate. Written English, admittedly, is much harder (mostly because of the early standardization), but enough natives also have trouble spelling enough words that you can still be understood.
    - FabHK 5y ago
selimthegrim 5y ago
I believe Southwestern Louisiana might have a bone to pick with you.
Mezzie 5y ago
French was more useful to me. Our state shares a border with Canada and my own extended family on my mom's side is Quebecois. Or for speaking with sub-populations, Arabic would probably be the most useful here. US =/= California and the South
- xhevahir 5y ago
  Spanish is the most commonly spoken non-English language in all but a few states, not just the sun belt.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    Yeah I'm in a city in a mid Atlantic state and it's Spanish by a country mile here
xhevahir 5y ago
Most Americans who did study Spanish are hardly able to make practical use of it. Shit, I majored in it and I hardly ever use the language, aside from watching the odd TV show or reading a news story now and then. People mostly don't learn languages well unless they have to, and Americans at the moment don't.
javagram 5y ago
Studying latin in the way it's currently taught in schools does help with the SAT, supposedly (I got a good score!) That said, most schools have dropped Latin in favor of Spanish, French, or Italian for precisely the reason you state, especially in high school.
wolverine876 5y ago
There's much more to life than asking where the bathroom is. French and Latin (and other languages) open the door to universes of perspectives and knowledge outside the 21st century USA. Learning about other perspectives and cultures is essential to maturing as people and as a society. I can workaround the bathroom issue; I can't workaround the other.
jjtheblunt 5y ago
I respectfully think that teaching only Spanish would be a terrible idea, not because of Spanish or those speaking it. Teaching Latin makes many languages after Latin trivial: the case system and inflections on the verbs, adjectives, nouns reveal a common theme across many IndoEuropean languages. Russian would too, I believe, having had Russian after 4 years of hardcore Latin. Polish would do better than Russian in this regard, since Russian has simplifications of grammatical distinctions still present elsewhere. Not faulting any language, as English and Swedish, for examples, simplify things more complex still in German. I just think if only one language were to be taught, it would be strategic for it to represent more than one present-day set of simplifications of a richer grammatical past, one to which people might be exposed in other modern day languages. (Spanish and Italian, for examples, collapse/simplify some of the structure present in their main common predecessor. )
unmole 5y ago
> We've got a huge sub-population that faces all kinds of obstacles because the English-speakers can't communicate with them Maybe the solution is to teach said sub-population English?

bobochan 5y ago

French instruction starts very early in our town in Vermont because there are over 8 million French speakers right next to us, including almost 2 million living right over the border in Montréal. The ability to communicate in French has been incredibly useful over the course of my career, not just in North America, but across Europe and Africa. There are 29 countries that speak French as an official language and about 274 million fluent speakers.

anthk 5y ago
Spanish has 4x more speakers and a far easier ortography.

FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago

I work IT in a manufacturing industry. Over the last 10 years, the plant operations have moved to almost 100% Spanish speaking. There's also Portuguese, French (Haitians), Igbo, Xhosa, Swahili, Afrikaans, and whole host of indigenous languages spoke out there (Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, who knows what else) ...

JasonFruit 5y ago

Perhaps people learn French, Latin, and German because they want to. Who are you to say what they may or may not choose to learn? A diversity of education and knowledge is a good thing for a culture, and if it was not, people would still be justified in learning what they want to learn. Besides, that we have a sizable population that either has not yet learned English or has chosen not to does not create an obligation in others to learn their language. Are you certain it's more important to enable a sub-community that has not embraced the dominant language of the country, rather than be able to experience the thoughts of the ancients in their own Latin? To extend your argument, I live in an area with a large Hmong population that has not fully embraced English; should the schools here abandon education in all languages but English and Hmong?

neutronicus 5y ago
I do think English and Hmong should be mandatory in such an area, if the Hmong population is large enough I'm not against more languages as an elective, I just didn't manage to say so
grogenaut 5y ago
I took French because that's what my school taught. If I could have taken Spanish or mandarin I'd have been happy to. When I got to high school, the French (especially endless conjugation) made me so despise language class I didn't even try Spanish, just added more math / science. My HS offered Spanish, French and Latin. It was a prep school so they suggested you only took Latin if you were interested in Law, Medicine or the Clergy. It'd have been better for me to spend all the time in French class in France instead (eg instead of an hour a day for 3 years, 11 weeks, hell even a month). I've picked up more on Spanish and French in 2 weeks in other countries than I did in 3 years in a classroom. There's a full immersion school around me for spanish, that seems to work a lot better.

mejutoco 5y ago

People study languages for many reasons. I do not think it is fair to demand that people learn a language to „help” others. You seem to imply that some spanish-speakers can’t communicate in English in most US localities. Is this true? Do you have any data/reference on that? Assuming that is the case, surely English lessons (maybe sponsored or free) would be a more direct solution.

jnwatson 5y ago
Yes, there are many first generation immigrants in the US with poor grasp of English. There are many free ESOL resources; regardless, English is hard.
- mejutoco 5y ago
  > (in most US localities) I agree, there are some, but is this in most of the US? That is what was claimed, without any backup. I do not think that English is harder than any other language, but it is always difficult to learn a new language. We agree there too. It seems to me the argument is a bit backwards. If the poster cares about promotimg language skills for integration, why not address that instead of moralizing on people for not learning the right language?
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  English is one of the easiest languages to become "understandable" in. Presumably because of how many people invaded England historically. When another culture invades, some of the language rules are adopted, but they are universally the simpler rules, and the more advanced rules aren't integrated. Spoken English, with it's reliance on word order, lack of genders, relative lack of verb conjugations and noun declensions make it ridiculously easy to be understood in comparison to other languages. You won't be Shakespeare, but you will be able to communicate. Written English, admittedly, is much harder (mostly because of the early standardization), but enough natives also have trouble spelling enough words that you can still be understood.
  - FabHK 5y ago

selimthegrim 5y ago

I believe Southwestern Louisiana might have a bone to pick with you.

Mezzie 5y ago

French was more useful to me. Our state shares a border with Canada and my own extended family on my mom's side is Quebecois. Or for speaking with sub-populations, Arabic would probably be the most useful here. US =/= California and the South

xhevahir 5y ago
Spanish is the most commonly spoken non-English language in all but a few states, not just the sun belt.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  Yeah I'm in a city in a mid Atlantic state and it's Spanish by a country mile here

xhevahir 5y ago

Most Americans who did study Spanish are hardly able to make practical use of it. Shit, I majored in it and I hardly ever use the language, aside from watching the odd TV show or reading a news story now and then. People mostly don't learn languages well unless they have to, and Americans at the moment don't.

javagram 5y ago

Studying latin in the way it's currently taught in schools does help with the SAT, supposedly (I got a good score!) That said, most schools have dropped Latin in favor of Spanish, French, or Italian for precisely the reason you state, especially in high school.

wolverine876 5y ago

There's much more to life than asking where the bathroom is. French and Latin (and other languages) open the door to universes of perspectives and knowledge outside the 21st century USA. Learning about other perspectives and cultures is essential to maturing as people and as a society. I can workaround the bathroom issue; I can't workaround the other.

jjtheblunt 5y ago

I respectfully think that teaching only Spanish would be a terrible idea, not because of Spanish or those speaking it. Teaching Latin makes many languages after Latin trivial: the case system and inflections on the verbs, adjectives, nouns reveal a common theme across many IndoEuropean languages. Russian would too, I believe, having had Russian after 4 years of hardcore Latin. Polish would do better than Russian in this regard, since Russian has simplifications of grammatical distinctions still present elsewhere. Not faulting any language, as English and Swedish, for examples, simplify things more complex still in German. I just think if only one language were to be taught, it would be strategic for it to represent more than one present-day set of simplifications of a richer grammatical past, one to which people might be exposed in other modern day languages. (Spanish and Italian, for examples, collapse/simplify some of the structure present in their main common predecessor. )

unmole 5y ago

> We've got a huge sub-population that faces all kinds of obstacles because the English-speakers can't communicate with them Maybe the solution is to teach said sub-population English?