L2 Language Pairs like French/Spanish

[MorkTheFiddle]

My high school offered Spanish, French, German and Latin. Given that I was headed for science in college, I should have taken German, but I took Spanish. But only for two years, not three as most others did.* Had to make up for it by taking German in college.

* I don't remember why, but I think I had to substitute something else. Languages were a priority only for those of us planning to go to college, and that was the only reason language was a priority, not a love for the language.

[eido]

I wouldn't call it an extreme immersion situation, but yes,...

I only said that because I was thinking about my Icelandic tutor. He's a foreign student, as well as many of his classmates in his major at the University of Iceland. And they all speak different native languages. I don't know if speaking English, or Swahili (whatever the native language may be) is banned, but they still continue to speak whatever language they see fit to communicate.

I just thought it interesting, since I've never taken a class like that. But it makes sense it's done that way.

[aokoye]

I wouldn't call it an extreme immersion situation, but yes,...

I only said that because I was thinking about my Icelandic tutor. He's a foreign student, as well as many of his classmates in his major at the University of Iceland. And they all speak different native languages. I don't know if speaking English, or Swahili (whatever the native language may be) is banned, but they still continue to speak whatever language they see fit to communicate.

I just thought it interesting, since I've never taken a class like that. But it makes sense it's done that way.

Ah yeah. I really liked it honestly. In the case of ASL it was also our first lesson about culture Deaf culture - at least in Portland. It was a, "here's how to be polite...".

The other situation where it was more or less all L2 all the time was when I took a 4 week German language intensive at Freie Universität Berlin, though in that situation I was in a C1 class. My classmates made an unspoken rule that we would only speak German to each other and only speak English on campus if the other person didn't have a high enough proficiency in German. Everyone in my class (there were 6 of us) spoke English, though two people spoke it as an L2. This more or less meant that we spoke to almost no one else. It worked for us, but looking back we were very co-dependent There was one student who I would talk to in English before class who was in an A1 or A2 course, but otherwise it was my classmates, my instructor, and occasionally the other instructors.
We lasted until I think the last 3 days when someone from the B2 class came in during our break to talk to me about linguistics and more or less refused to speak to us in German. We all cracked - but we lasted almost four full weeks. But yeah, that was a far more intense situation because we spent so much time together both inside and outside of class (we would typically hang out at least once a week - sometimes as a whole group but typically in pairs).

Note, I'm pretty sure the A1 and A2 classes were primarily in German, if not entirely in German in part because there were a number of people with almost no English.

[golyplot]

So an extreme immersion situation? How did you communicate with your fellow classmates? Using your ASL knowledge, right?

You can still write things down if necessary. But in general, if you can't communicate something... you don't. There's a lot less idle chit chat in ASL classrooms. (Not that it would really be possible in the first place, since the visual nature of ASL means you can only pay attention to one speaker at a time anyway)

Sometimes immersion can be a bit frustrating (for any language, not just ASL). I know I've given inaccurate answers to questions before because an honest answer would be too difficult. But on the other hand, immersion is great for learning.

It's also important to note that ASL classes aren't true immersion since they still use English. They just don't use spoken English. I suppose that's why it would be awkward to adapt the model for foreign language classes. Imagine your German teacher telling you that you can only speak German but you can write down questions in English if necessary. It would seem pretty silly.

[Adrianslont]

At my first high school in the state of Victoria, Australia, German was the language offered and that you had to do. One day the German teacher wasn't there, they filled in with an Italian teacher who taught us a few basic words. Upon moving towns a little into that year I went to a high school in a different part of the state. There they had French and I think later Italian was offered. Generally back then (90s) I think it'd be safe to assume that the three big languages offered in high schools (often without a choice within one high school) were Italian, German and French. Spanish as far as I know was never offered.

Things started changing towards the end of my high school and onwards. Australia suddenly realised it was not the UK, nor Europe and so languages in Asia became more popular. Nowdays I believe that the traditional European languages are still offered, particularly at more prestigious schools, while generally in all schools languages like Mandarin, Japanese and Indonesian are quite common and have taken over a lot of the space that only Italian, German and French once occupied when I was at school in the 90s.

If there are any other Australians around, maybe they could share their experience(s) and perhaps enlighten me on whether my experience was the norm.

Peter, I’m also Australian, but in New South Wales. And I am older, I went to high school in the first half of the seventies. And I live in the “big smoke” ie Sydney. You grew up in a rural area? I think that may contribute to some differences also.

Yes, European languages are big but Asian languages gained a lot in popularity in the 70s and 80s, way before you even got to high school, Peter - in metropolitan NSW at least.

Indonesian boomed in the 70s and has fallen somewhat by the wayside this millenium. My nearest university offered it for many years but discontinued it just a few years ago. Japanese boomed in the 80s and is still reasonably strong. Chinese has grown in more recent years ie this millenium, reflecting China’s growth in global economic importance and increased Chinese migration to Australia.

Words like “booming” and “strong” are relative, though, as at matriculation level, languages are optional and sadly less than 10% of students take a language at this level.

The top 5 languages at this level in NSW are French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and German. French has four times the number of students as German. Also rans in popularity include Indonesian, Arabic, Latin and Spanish.

In primary schools, where students are given limited language instruction I believe Indonesian, Italian and Arabic are amongst the most common. I think this is caused by a number of factors including average age of teachers, migration patterns and perceived ease of Indonesian.

[DaveAgain]

I went to school in the UK. We started Latin and French when 11 years old, at 13 (?) you had the option of dropping Latin, which most of us did, and German was introduced as an optional language, but you still had to study french until at least 16.

Other languages were sometimes studied outside the school system. Usually a heritage language.

[Eriol]

What were the language choices you faced as a teenager? (The languages seen as typical student choices, not the obscure languages you as a budding polyglot decided to teach yourself!)

Swedish school system when I was part of it (late 80s, early 90s):
Grades 7 to 9: French, German (if you wanted to study another language at all)
High school: French, German, Spanish, Russian

Swedish and English as obligatory languages, and depending on programme in high school, sometimes one extra, maybe two extra. And then Latin and/or Greek... (for aspiring polyglots).

Observations: if you had taken either French or German for three years, you'd likely keep it in high school. (No previous language? Spanish.) If you had to take an extra language, then likely Spanish or possibly French (less likely: German; unlikely: Russian). I don't know that many who went straight for Russian without having studied any previous language. In fact, I don't know that many who took Russian at all.

I'm told that two languages from the French/Spanish/Italian trio was quite common in other parts of the country (if you had to study two languages, that is).

Nowadays the regular setup for in Sweden is a choice between French/German/Spanish in grade 6, but there is a severe lack of teachers so not all languages may be available everywhere.

[zenmonkey]

What were the language choices you faced as a teenager? (The languages seen as typical student choices, not the obscure languages you as a budding polyglot decided to teach yourself!)

In my American High School (2 Years, CA, 80's, 900 students per year) - they had classes for French, Spanish and German and maybe something else? I took French, tested out of Spanish. Among my friends, kids around me took after school classes for Japanese, Hebrew, and Italian.

When we moved back to Mexico (last two years of High School) I went through a unique experience - my school was mostly for expats and was fully bilingual (en/sp), our year only had 35 students and the only other language offered was French (we were 3 kids in 'advanced' French, 9 in beginner). We ate tortas, drank soda and smoked with the teacher. Almost no French was studied. Most of the those 35 kids also learned another language outside of school at the Alliance Francaise or Goethe Institute. Of those 35 kids, I still keep in contact with about 10-12 and all of them are trilinguals+ of some kind. So despite terrible language resources in school, culturally we brought and maintained our languages.

My kids did pretty much the same when attending a bilingual school in Munich (fr/de) but with the added requirement of English and a lot of kids spoke 4+ languages.

Now back in a regular system in France, my four daughters have had English, Latin (except 2 of them), German and Spanish in school before the Lycée level. The three youngest have or will attend a Lycée that also specialises in languages.

The French system is currently* such that students must take two second languages, called "Langue Vivantes" and designated LV1 and LV2. Legally LV1 can be any of 23 foreign languages (see https://langues.ac-versailles.fr/spip.php?article786) and LV2 has a wider choice which also includes some regional languages (basque, breton, catalan, corse, créole, langues mélanésiennes, occitan-langue d’oc, tahitien, wallisien et futunien).

In practice, at my girls' school, it basically means that students take English, (as LV1 or as LV2). If English isn't chosen as L1 then it's mostly German (Spanish is reserved as L1 for kids in a Spanish bilingual section). L2 choices are English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch (we are next to the Belgian border), and Italian. And because this is a school specialised in languages more than half the kids take an L3 option from Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Polish or Portuguese.

Generally speaking, in school my daughters take Latin and drop it, English, German, Spanish on top of their native French. But because of social and personal interest they've had access to a bunch of other languages.

Despite all the grumblings on the forum, this system (with a specialised public school) works for my daughters - they are functional in four languages when they leave the Lycée. This doesn't mean they are perfect L2 speakers but it does mean I can drop them in country and they will thrive. At the same time, this French system does fail when my daughters in college then have friends that mostly struggle in their first L2 that they've likely been studying for 6 years.

So in France the L2 Language Pairs, in practice, are German/Spanish/English (dominant), Greek/Latin (the cool kids take Greek), and eventually Spanish (dominant)/Italian ...

*they are always reforming the system.

[badger]

in the UK in the mid-late 80's French was compulsory from about age 11, then you had the option of adding German and/or Latin at age 13. back then German was seen as a good choice for people doing STEM subjects, so I did German for a year then dropped it. some of the weirder kids took Latin. at 14 French was compulsory for GCSE & you could continue with German and/or Latin in addition if you'd taken them at age 13. the UK system allows for quite a lot of specialization at age 16 - there is no requirement to continue with a foreign language - so I just took STEM subjects for A-level up to the age of 18. both my younger sisters took German to A-level at the same school.

I don't remember Spanish being an option, although my old school does offer it now. Spain had been pretty isolationist until the mid-70s & there wasn't the level of mass tourism there is today, whereas France had always been just on our doorstep. stuff like Mandarin wasn't even on the radar back then.

[Lianne]

In Canada (specifically Winnipeg) I took the required French classes from approximately grade 3 up to grade 8. High school (grade 9-12) French was optional, and sadly I didn't have enough electives to take it. At my high school French was the only language option, though there were other schools (ones with AP courses and that kind of fancy stuff) that had other options.

Actually, my elementary school (K-5) was a trilingual English-French-Ukrainian school. There was a Ukrainian immersion program kids could be in, but I wasn't in that, so I just got little Ukrainian lessons once a week or something like that. My neighbourhood had a large population with Ukrainian heritage.

Nowadays I think there are getting to be more programs like that. I know there are several schools with Anishnaabemowin (Ojibwe) and Cree language programs, as there gets to be more of a push for learning indigenous languages.