Languages - Modern and Ancient

[inlovewithsophi]

Does your child take language lessons? What kind? Has your child stuck with it?

[whatsnextmom]

My DD 15 is heading into college level 2nd year Spanish. My DS 11 went to Spanish immersion school and so fluent in that language. He is also in his 4th year of Mandarin and conversational (though far from truly fluent.) They do love being able to speak different languages and seem to want to continue further study.

[nerdmomma6885]

Yes, German and Latin for my oldest, one takes Chinese through her school but wants to learn Esperanto, and the youngest speaks ASL fluently for obvious reasons. Well, all of us can speak ASL, but.....

My oldest only took German for two years to fulfill high school requirements, but she is very passionate about Latin. My second takes mandatory Chinese once a week at her school- she has been since 1st grade. My youngest speaks ASL because of her deafness, but at her school it's a required course as well.

[cmp12345]

DD is starting a full mandarin immersion kindergarten so I'm no help! But I hope she sticks to it for at least 6 years through grade 5. We don't speak mandarin at all at home.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by nerdmomma6885 

My oldest only took German for two years to fulfill high school requirements, but she is very passionate about Latin.

What is it about Latin? My 14 year old dabbled in ASL and French, but when she started Latin it was like she met her soul mate. 

My 15 year old has successfully made it through 2 years of Spanish and is now interested in learning Japanese.

[ollyoxenfree]

Over the years they've studied French, German, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish or Italian (I can't recall - it was one of the romance languages). Some study amounted to just a little exposure and they picked up a smattering of phrases. Others they studied fairly in depth on a regular basis for several years and became fairly adept, if not truly fluent.

They haven't stuck with any, but mostly because they have had limited opportunities to use them. To be honest, they've also neglected the opportunities they have had to practice with native speakers. 

DS especially surprises me sometimes by his recall of vocabulary or ability to read in another language. I think if he pursued it or lived for a while in another country, he would brush up the languages he's already studied fairly quickly. 

DH just lucked into a great opportunity to access Rosetta Stone as a workplace benefit. We now have access to any of their language packages - any language, any level. He was playing with the Spanish program this weekend. I might brush up on some of my French or try something new.  DD wants to visit Greece when she graduates high school in a couple of years, so we'll see if she's interested in acquiring a little Greek before then.  

[Geofizz]

After taking every ASL intro class she could find for the last 4 years, we finally found DD a proper instructor last summer.  For the last year she and two other girls have met with a tutor to learn ASL once a week.  None of the girls have any personal connection to the deaf community, but each is loving learning the language.  The group has put on plays twice and have learned to interpret songs, in addition to building a signing vocabulary of hundreds of words.

Neither DD nor DS have any interest in learning another spoken language.  Honestly, though, DS still needs to work on English, with remaining struggles with articulation and expressive speech which lag what his brain can think. 

[nerdmomma6885]

To Geofizz:

If you wanted some resources for the deaf community, you can contact me via PM. Personally, I think it's great that your DD wants to learn ASL, how did she find out about it? It's too bad that most states still do not recognize it as an official language and therefore not deserving of foreign language credit! If that were so, then there would be an overabundance of interpreters and my DDs would ace their foreign language classes.... We're lucky that my youngest attends a school where the deaf is welcomed and they have ASL classes for the hearing kids. She has already been asked numerous times to help out for obvious reasons. :)

Anyway... what is the easiest language, do you think? A lot of people have been arguing about that- I heard that supposedly, Italian is the easiest?? Is that true? I'm thinking about German for my oldest, since I know German and could help her with homework.

[Geofizz]

PM'd you.

I actually want DD to take a Germanic or Romantic language as the grammers and vocab help with English. Wanting to take more languages is only a bonus.

The easiest language will be the one you get the most exposure to, though. I did well in Spanish having grown up in a school district with a very large Mexican population.

ASL counts for the foreign language requirement at the university where I'm a prof. It's very popular and is one of the most competitive set of classes to get a spot. The local community college has also started teaching it so that students can go there as well to transfer the credits.

[forestmushroom]

My kids learn Espanol at school, but have also learned some Latin, and my oldest some German. We also have lots of Hebrew books.