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What languages should be taught in schools?

naivesincerity

2

Vote, discuss. (Secondary schools)

Reply 1

Ethelred the Unready

I'm potentially in favour of all those languages being taught, depending on the area and whether there are qualified people with the knowledge to teach those subjects willing to apply to the school, or whether the school or Modern Foreign language departments can sort it out.

French, German, Spanish and Russian should be taught (I feel), but that's purely my own bias. They are fairly simple languages (as I would assume Italian would be). I know not of Indian and Chinese, but like I say, I can't think of a reason why they shouldn't be taught...

So long as languages are available and actually taught to people capable of learning them, I see no problem. There are no "necessities", ultimately. It's down to the choice of students and the school.

That said, I see benefits of certain languages over others in terms of their industrial development and the need for interpreters.

Reply 2

Wangers

16

Latin (from which a better understanding of English, most European languages, mental dicipline and critical thought inevitably follows) and Chinese or Russian.

Reply 3

annab1684

15

I'm not going to choose a language. I just think it's important that languages are taught. :smile:

Reply 4

Hylean

15

Wangers

Latin (from which a better understanding of English, most European languages, mental dicipline and critical thought inevitably follows) and Chinese or Russian.

Latin is only helpful for the romance langauges, which amount to about 4. It can help with English, but French is just as useful in that regard. Latin has little advantage for someone learning a German language, an Slavic language, a Baltic language, or a Finno-Ulgric language.

I say all of them should be taught: French, German and Spanish should be a staple of every school, then the rest can be taught depending on tradition and the surrounding population (as to decide which languages are most advantageous to the students to learn.) No point teaching kids Russian if they won't use it, but in a heavily Russian speaking neighbourhood, it's a wise idea.

I say we also throw in Celtic languages in N. Irish, Welsh, Manx and Scottish schools, obviously the Celtic language native to those areas.. Irish especially in N. Ireland. :wink:

Reply 5

Jesska xD

18

I think traditional languages such as French, German, Spanish and mabye Italien. I think that these languages are more easy to grasp as some words are similar to English words. Although this is the case with Latin, its known as a "dead" language as not many people speak it anymore!

Reply 6

Vjyrik

10

German, Chinese, Indian, Japanese.
Large economies, large growth, large population, large influence => large importance.

Reply 7

Yusuf.T

15

my school was awsome
it taught french, german,spanish, russian,arabic,gujirati,urdu,punjabi,japanesse.

Reply 8

Tzara

12

Any European languages.

Chinese.

Esperanto... and not just our schools, all schools worldwide

Reply 11

DeadLine

I think we should have oppoturnity to learn as many languages, as we can. Including Russian, Hylean. :smile:

And Latin could be good as base for other languages AND OPPOTURNITY TO READ ROMAN LITERATURE IN ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.

BTW.: Although I don't like French, it is spoken by 300 millions of people - Harriellie, do you really think it's useless? :wink:

Reply 12

NDGAARONDI

16

Hylean

I say we also throw in Celtic languages in N. Irish, Welsh, Manx and Scottish schools, obviously the Celtic language native to those areas.. Irish especially in N. Ireland. :wink:

Nobody speaks Manx any more. Otherwise you might as well bring up dead Celtic languages of England like Cumbric. Would be nice seeing Celtic tongue brought back to the whole of the country (and not those just considered to be 'Celtic'), including the native tongue of the Atrebates for me personally. Would be rather hard to do it though. Then again, we could always bring in Norman French too. :biggrin:

Out of the list - Spanish.

Reply 13

tom_tom_tom

18

My school offered... French, Spanish, German, Italian, Latin

however latin has been dropped in recent years!

i think as long as another European language is taught its okay!

Reply 14

Candescence

Well, having always hated learning other languages...i picked chinese because mandarin is the second most spoken language in the world, isn't it? But i suppose that has something to do with the fact that China has billions of people living in it.

Why European though?

Candescence

Well, having always hated learning other languages...i picked chinese because mandarin is the second most spoken language in the world, isn't it? But i suppose that has something to do with the fact that China has billions of people living in it.

It's first.
2nd = Hindustani
3rd = Spanish
4th = English
5th = Russian

Reply 17

Hylean

15

NDGAARONDI

Nobody speaks Manx any more. Otherwise you might as well bring up dead Celtic languages of England like Cumbric.

It's not dead yet! 56 native speakers and over 1000 of whom speak it as a second language. :p:

Thus there is still a reason to teach it and hopefully save it from extinction.

Reply 18

A Stranger in Moscow

12

Hylean

It's not dead yet! 56 native speakers and over 1000 of whom speak it as a second language. :p:

Thus there is still a reason to teach it and hopefully save it from extinction.

Like Welsh in the 60s!

Reply 19

Joanna May

15

Harriellie

French/German/Italian are the most 'useless' (if a language can ever be useless) especially in numbers... French is only there because of tradition. It's hardly a useful world language now, is it?

How is French useless? It's spoken on every continent, it's an official language of most international organisations and it has the sixth largest economy in the world. It's also the second most common official language, after English. Not to mention, it's the most popular tourist destination around.

Not to throw around statistics, but there is a lot more case for things like Italian being practically useless than French.

What languages should be taught in schools?

Which languages should be taught in schools?

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