The Kintyre Forum

Anybody learning Chinese or Spanish? - surely the two big languages for this century? Do we continue to teach mainly french/german in secondary schools, and if so is that because the structure of these languages makes them good ones to learn first, before moving on to others?

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Release ... 4/07101845

Tom B

Most local authorities teach French and German ... because they have French and German teachers 'on the books'. Which in turn yields young people who study these languages ... and then become French and German teachers.

There was at one time a government initiative to break into this cycle, and actively encourage a better/ more diverse set of choices for our young people. And languages that have good economic prospects, such as Mandarin and Spanish, as you suggest.

It all depends on our councils taking the initiative, at this stage. I don't think they prioritise it. But they should, in my view. Otherwise in a hundred years we will still be offering French and German.

We could raise it with our own education authorities and councillors. Schools alone have very little say, since they need the right in-service training, resources, cover in times of absence, assurance that if the teacher moves on, another will come along with the right language teaching ability. These can only come at authority level.

I have often wondered about this. As English is the international language I can see a point in Germans, French Spanish et al learning it, but other than to be polite to locals on holiday what is the point of learning another language. If you learn Spanish it limits your destinations. I always find speaking slower and louder seems to work in the rare occasions the locals dont parliamo Englaisi.

Many of our local schools offer French, German and Spanish on their curriculum and certainly, they are taught in all the grammars (we still have selective ed. My daughter is studying French and Spanish. One of the A Level courses in her school offers Russian and another offers Mandarin.

French and Spanish at CGS. We thought of going to Spanish as the main language with French the subsidiary but you have to allow for pupils (a) moving out of the area (not very many schools offering Spanish at all far less as main language) and (b) moving into the area only having done French.

Gizmo I can't believe your small-minded attitute. Firstly, speaking louder to non-english speakers in the hope they will understand you is plain rude. If someone shouts at you in Japanese does that mean you'll understand them if you don't speak Japanese?? Of course not.

Actually if you look at one set of statistics you'll see the following:
Top 4 languages spoken in the world (native speakers):
1) Mandarin Chinese: 873 million
2) Hindi: 370 million
3) Spanish: 350 million
4) English: 340 million

So you'll see that english is in fact 4th...behind both Chinese and Spanish - with Chinese having more than double the number of native speakers. And as WC said, these are two of the most common languages in the world.

Also, if you expect people coming to this country to be able to speak English, then they have every right to expect us to at least make an effort to speak their language. And learning a specific language does not limit your destinations, that's utter rubbish. No-one is stopping you going somewhere on holiday just because you don't speak the language! Perhaps you should also check the huge number of Spanish-speaking countries in the world. In fact in some places in the USA you'd get further by speaking Spanish than by speaking English!

To think that the only point in learning a foreign language is just to be polite to locals on holiday (as you say) is a very small-minded and ignorant way of thinking. There is a much bigger world out there than what we have in the UK and British people often seem to forget that and just expect everything to revolve round themselves. It's about time that people like yourself looked at the bigger picture and look outside your own little "bubble" for a change.

gizmo wrote:I have often wondered about this. As English is the international language I can see a point in Germans, French Spanish et al learning it, but other than to be polite to locals on holiday what is the point of learning another language. If you learn Spanish it limits your destinations. I always find speaking slower and louder seems to work in the rare occasions the locals dont parliamo Englaisi.

gizmo wrote:I always find speaking slower and louder seems to work in the rare occasions the locals dont parliamo Englaisi.

P.S. - "Parliamo" = "we speak" in Italian...don't think you meant to use it in the first person since you're talking about "them/they" which is third person...

I have given some serious thought to your comments and have come to the conclusion that I was right..

gizmo wrote:I have given some serious thought to your comments and have come to the conclusion that I was right..

I have given some serious thought to your comments and have come to the conclusions that I am in fact right, and that your occupation is perhaps better suited to $H:t stirring rather than muck spreading. Obviously you're good at that so please don't give up your day job to take up a career in international relations.