What languages should be taught in American schools?

Obviously the languages most used by trading nations. my daughter is fluent in Mandarin, Japanese, German, Spanish, BSL, as well as English.

Keep in mind, we're not worried about how useful the language will be today, but about how useful it will be when the child grows up. The way things are going, Mandarin will be the language of the global elite in 30 years. Another reason to learn Mandarin at an early age is that it's a very hard language to learn.

I would suggest French as another language kids should learn for a number of reasons: (1) it's easy to move on to Spanish when you know French; (2) many French words show up in English; (3) it is comparatively easy to pick up, something to fall back on if Mandarin does not work out.

English

I have heard arguments like this before; some people say things like "you should learn Latin, because once you learn that, it's easy to learn other languages." To me that's like saying you should learn to drive a backhoe, because once you learn to drive a backhoe it's easy to learn to drive a car. Huh? That makes no sense whatsoever. If you want to learn to drive a car, learn to drive the car, and if you want to learn Spanish, learn Spanish. I haven't heard any evidence that going off on tangential learning in preparation yields any benefit whatsoever.

You don't learn French with objective of learning Spanish. The ease with which Spanish comes to francophones is merely a fringe benefit of French. All the arguments I made for French also apply to Latin but almost no one actually speaks Latin nowadays.

I've found having some Latin quite handy in figuring out bits of Spanish/Portuguese that I'm not familiar with when I'm reading.

In any case, I think the more languages the better - and the sooner someone starts learning languages the better. There is something about having your ear able to tune to different languages that comes easier if you don't wait too long to start learning multiple languages.

Gotta admit, it is fun to be able to eavesdrop in a lot of languages. It's come in handy a few times (I particularly like to catch out German tourists being asswipes )

it definitely gives you a headstart - but you probably do have to have an ear for languages/music/math/patterns to begin with

what is BSL ?

(here it means Breed Specific Legislation)

so ... different from ASL ?

cool

another one to take on

Sorry, but you've already got your answer, and yes, BSL is different to ASL.

Yeah, after reading social media content, I'd say we should.

My children are bilingual, courtesy of their Thai mother, and my ceaseless ******* insistence that she "SPEAK THAI TO THE KIDS". I'm hoping it gives them a leg up in future Asian language studies. Particularly Mandarin, which, like Thai, is a tonal language.
I know that my wife is still struggling with English after more than 8 years, but was speaking and reading Korean in less than 4 years there. And she speaks two dialects of Thai - traditional Thai of the south, and the Isaan dialect, indistinguishable from Laotion, in the north.

A lot different from ASL. And English only. I think the great thing about ASL is that deaf people from opposite sides of the world can communicate. Have seen that on the streets of Bangkok.

Full respect to your wife.

http://www.livescience.com/48721-bilingual-brain-bodybuilders.html



Having taught English at university level for 15 years, I can attest the claim that English is one of the hardest languages for non-Europeans to master. But it can be done, even as an adult, if you have the motivation, understand and apply second/foreign language acquisition theory and approach (Krashen, in particular), ie, the Natural Approach.

Hi Banana Breath,
I think you should learn English it will help you because English is an internationl language used in every field, so it will help you to get a job.

English language is useful for students to learn but for advantage they should learn any other language also which they like as per their interest.

English is taught in pretty much all American schools, but beyond that?

That happened to me once on a train in Italy while sitting across from two German women who were talking about my husband and me. Heh. I only had taken a semester of German years before but retained enough to get the gist.. along with the tone.

I wish I had taken more languages in my youth. Whether or not I understand what is being said, I also like different languages for their sounds and sometimes their musicality - to my ears.

gaudi, picasso, cervantes, dali, goya, lorca, juana de arco, sorolla, paco de lucia, francisco pizarro, jose ortega y gasset... your are judging a whole culture by the last several years?!! that´s like me saying english has been useful in ordering bigmacs... as any culture you can learn about it without speaking its language.... taking on account you seem to learn different languages as an investment to your economic and professional future and nor because you like languages themselves i´ll tell you one thing: south america will hold the 90% of worldwide natural resources quite soon and are still not fully economically developed...... considering they are quite being at speaking other languages.... 2+2 =

Did you notice how many of your examples were famous not because of their use of the Spanish language, but rather irrespective of their spoken language?
Gaudi was known for his Architecture, Dali, Goya and Sorolla for their paintings, Paco de Lucia for his guitar mastery. They would probably have been as successful regardless what language they spoke. Pizarro was unschooled and illiterate. He is known mostly for his greed in plundering Peru, and perhaps the fact that he did NOT master Spanish was an asset when conquering a people who only spoke native languages at the time.
Cervantes is among the few that anyone cites when the subject of Spanish literature is raised. But for instance there were MANY landmarks of literature in Italian already when Cervantes rolled into town, and many after; for instance Petrarch, Boccaccio, Dante (Divine Comedy), Machiavelli... and likewise with French. Despite the fact that much more of the world speaks Spanish than French, there are far more Nobel Prizes per capita in French than in Spanish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature
I've read Cervantes in the original Spanish and honestly I'm not impressed. It's a wacky tale and has a place along with such works as Alice in Wonderland, but it's sad that it's the best that anyone can come up with when trying to legitimatize Spanish literature.