Did you learn a language at school? Do you use it?

I was just reading about the government brining in more language learning for all ages in education

From my experience it seems other countries vastly do this very well and people are versed in 1-2 languages at least.

I went to a school that specialised in languages but to be honest, even with doing it at GCSE to a high level and beyond found that we never really learned conversational language well, or that any of the school seemed to care about it.

There’s absolutely benefits in mentally for doing it and opening doors career wise but it’s hard to even gain experience as a tourist when it seems 99% of popular European countries will speak English to you regardless.

Which I think is probably some of the problem - English is used so much in the business world and such that it’s more essential for other nations to learn it than us to learn another language.

So GR did you learn a language at school? Do you use it today or could you?

I learned French in Primary and Secondary school. And by 'learned' I mean a few stock phrases and maybe a 100 or so words, so if ever lost in Paris you could presumably point and go 'erm...Le taxi, gason? erm...je suis un...idiot?'

My French teacher got me to say 'I like to wear a dress'. I didn't know what I'd just said, but all fun was had by all. He'd be suspended for that now, probably. Things were different back then. In 2001.

Guten tag.

I did German from year 7 to year 11. I joke about only remembering how to ask where the toilet is and can you speak English, but when I've been to Germany, everyone's English was so good that apart from saying "eins stein bitte" (mostly for fun than necessity) I had zero need to speak German.

Languages are incredibly poorly taught in the UK and the best explanation for it is that English is the language everyone wants to learn if their 1st language is something else. The business / travel / academic need to learn another language is greatly reduced.

It's also largely only taught in secondary school which is far from ideal and on top of that, the total hours in the school week for it is unlikely to exceed 2 hours.

You really need to be immersed in the language to pick it up, 2 hours per week for about 42 weeks a year is totally insufficient for mastery of a 2nd language. The time would be better spent on more PE lessons.

At secondary school (this was back in the 80s) I had French lessons for a year but I didn't really learn too much; a few odd words here and there but nothing that I could really speak.

Nowdays I am pretty much lmited to "bonjour" and "tres bein"... that last one of which I'd thought was "very good" but Google Translate has just told me it's "alright" :lol:

.

Got taught French in secondary school , presumably like a lot of people here. One of the teachers was atrocious but it picked up for Year 10 and 11. The GCSE syllabus doesn't get you out of Advanced Beginner in all likelihood, which is a pretty criminal level for a 16 year old in a language so similar to English. They estimate it takes 400 hours to become proficient in French/Spanish/the romance languages, so if we started early enough we could get people to a decent level.

However apathy is a big barrier. Firstly, there's no language that stands out as one English-speakers must use, so some do French, some do Spanish, some do German. French especially, didn't really appeal to teenagers in the North-East of England. There was a sense that it wasn't going to be useful for anyone's life path.

Secondly, the fact that English is so widespread means we lack the urgency of a second language. The French, the Spanish and the German all speak great English, so there's not much need for us to go over there and tell everyone je adore le foot.

Language learning is often linked to motivation and desire. It's hard to get someone to learn a language they are not interested in. There's also got to be a need there - when I moved abroad, learning the language was fundamental in getting by and having personal connections with the people I met. It was also a personal pride thing, as I couldn't stand speaking like a three year old and being surrounded by symbols and not knowing what they mean

I love learning languages and I feel like it not only unlocks skills within us but also a different way of thinking and appreciation of a culture, but it's not handled well at all here. Some of it is the system, some of it is the mindset we have.

didici linguam?

I did Latin. No option, top set did Latin, middle set did French, bottom set did woodwork (language of the damned).
Latin is used in everyday English, so yes, I use it in a roundabout way.

Mommy wrote:didici linguam?

I did Latin. No option, top set did Latin, middle set did French, bottom set did woodwork (language of the damned).
Latin is used in everyday English, so yes, I use it in a roundabout way.

I studied German at school, but decided there was no point in learning it as I'd probably never actually visit Germany. I was wilfully bottom of the class.

Not only that, but the global reach of German is tiny compared to English, French and Spanish. Germany was rubbish at colonisation. Quite good at invasion for a while, but that's another story.

Imagine my surprise when I ended up living there for fourteen years.

Moggy wrote:
Mommy wrote:didici linguam?

I did Latin. No option, top set did Latin, middle set did French, bottom set did woodwork (language of the damned).
Latin is used in everyday English, so yes, I use it in a roundabout way.

Yeah, I definitely agree that in the UK it's associated with toffs but I was schooled in rural Ireland (Tipperary, a real peel-em-and-eat-em area).
The reality is that I was doing stuff in Year 1 secondary school in Ireland that we didn't do until Year 5 in high school.

I learned German from Year 7 to Year 11. I've never managed to use it for anything so outside of a few words I've forgotten it all and all the grammar is completely gone. I then went on to self study and become fluent in Japanese and I've come to realise I would've remembered German more if I just actually bothered to use it, it's just much easier to use Japanese online since it's all most Japanese people know. German however outside of German only communities which when I was younger I never bothered looking for mostly use English because they learn it from a super young age.

We should teach second languages in schools, but it should start much earlier than Year 7.

Mommy wrote:I was schooled in rural Ireland (Tipperary, a real peel-em-and-eat-em area).

I didn't know you lived such a long way away.

Learnt German and loved it but I can't really remember much of it now.

At secondary school I did French for three years and German for two, hated both and have never used them. It's not that I saw language learning as particularly bad, I'd love to speak a second or third language, I just never saw a scenario where those two languages would be useful since I neither planned on visiting either country or working there. I know there's no way to cater for everyone's interests but Japanese or Mandarin would have been much more useful and interesting to me.

My language learning since then hasn't been great. I've tried to teach myself both Mandarin and Japanese (not at the same time) but I'm just not good at languages and it takes ages for anything to stick. I get despondent with my lack of progress, give up for a while and have to start from square one again. On the degree I'm doing now we had the option to do Japanese for non-specialists but the pace of it was only a little bit slower than for those doing Japanese Studies with a fraction of the contact time. I had to make the choice between trying to learn Japanese but sacrifice my grades in other modules (and likely fail my degree) or just quit the language modules and concentrate on other modules but not have any language skills at the end. It's limiting my career plans for the future but I'm thinking once I've done my degree I might pay for an intensive Japanese course to get me to a level (not necessarily fluent) that I need to be at to get my ideal job in Japan.

I genuinely wish I was better at languages.

Bonjour mes amis, j'ai appris le français mais je ne l'utilise pas beaucoup.

También hablé español pero lo uso incluso menos que el francés.

Ich habe kein Deutsch gelernt, weiß aber ein paar Dinge, weil ich Rammstein gehört habe

Visual Basic. No.

I did German and had a lot of fun when we convinced our teacher to tell us what ‘Ich bin halt’ meant. We had a year 10 trip to Germany and spent the whole thing teaching the locals English. I genuinely nearly drowned when we went to the swimming baths in Koblenz and a large German fellow went down the water slide straight after me and landed on my head whilst I was underwater at the bottom. My fondest memory was finding a bakery that sold Marmelade Donuts, something I can’t believe we don’t have in the UK.

We did French, German and Spanish at school because these were the biggest economies we neighboured in the 1990’s.

These days it would be more prudent to teach Mandarin and Punjabi at school to prepare young people for dealing with the emerging economies of the 2020’s.

Did French in years 7-9, know a few phrases and basic words, but I don't think much of it sank in sadly.

French, occasionally in, well, France.

Tiny amount of Latin.

I did German from 1st Year of Secondary School, then German and French in 2nd and 3rd year, then for GCSE we had to pick one or the other, so I ended up picking French just because it seemed a it easier.

Scraped a C and never used it again after.

Did you learn a language at school? Do you use it?

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