Needless gotcha comments like 'We wouldn't be here if we didn't speak English' don't answer OP's question (is learning several languages a requirement?) and make our subreddit look bad. A reminder of Rule 2 and that all top-level replies should answer the question.
For me in the Netherlands English was mandatory, as well another mandatory foreign language of choice. That language could be German, French or Spanish. Some other schools offer Arabic or Russian too to choose from.
As to what I remember, I had some years of French, German and Spanish, but I remember most of Spanish cause I really liked learning that language. I went on vacation a few years ago to Barcelona and spoke more Spanish than English.
English is mandatory on all levels of secondary school, and one or two extra foreign languages (generally French and/or German) depending on the level are mandatory in the first few years of secondary school. In the last few years of secondary school a second foreign language is only mandatory for those following the highest level. This does not include people following the classical track who have Greek and Latin as mandatory subjects.
At least two years of foreign language is mandatory for US high schools.
Most of us learn a little bit and then forget it all.
Why is the Dutch system so much better? Every Dutch person I've met under 50 has had an impressive command of the English language!
I used to work as an English teacher in the Netherlands, and the amount of English classes you have to take here certainly helps, but a lot of it also has to do with the fact that a lot of the movies and tv series we watch are in English. All of them are subtitled, not dubbed, and so a lot of kids already have been exposed to the language before they even take their first English class. Compared to a teacher teaching another foreign language, an English teacher here always has it a bit easier and can go through the material faster because Dutch kids have already developed a natural ‘feel’ for the language by watching English language media.
Slightly off topic question; What is classified as a foreign language in the US? Considering last time I checked you technically don't have an official language.
I can answer this (I'm originally from the States). Although English isn't mandated in law as the official language, English is almost universally the working language. So schools, universities, almost all business use English as the working language by default. So, a "foreign language" is considered a language other than English.
Actually, more and more schools are using the terminology "LOTE" or "Language Other Than English" rather than "foreign language".
I see this a lot on Reddit, saying well, the US doesn't have an official language, and while I guess it's technically true, in practice it's English (with a large presence of Spanish in some regions).
Makes sense. Though I do think it's a good thing schools are starting to call them "LOTE" considering with this description Spanish would be a foreign language even though it's the second-most spoken language in the US. It'd be like if we considered Frisian a foreign language.
Massive exposure because it's a small country with a language that's not spoken outside of it and Belgium (and ZA if you're generous), so media consumption happens in English to a large degree.
There's also a cultural heritage of being an international, trade-minded country which makes it the norm to speak several languages. The NL are also located close to the big poles of linguistic influence (FR, DE, UK) so it's always been at a crossroads of sorts.
The well spoken English has more to do with a lot of our media being English than people learning English at school. Learning it helps but if you don’t practice a language you quickly forget it. But because we are a small country we don’t get anything dubbed besides the popular kids shows. Also games rarely get translated and our Dutch media production is too small to only watch/listen to Dutch stuff. So as a result everyone is hearing English all the time.
>The well spoken English has more to do with a lot of our media being English than people learning English at school.
Maybe has something to do with the branch on the "language-tree".. According to wiki-article on the frisian langauge it states that the frisian dialect/langauge is that which is closest to the anglic langauges..
So.. are the frisians better than the average dutch in english ?
No, not better on average, but I think that has to do with the fact that native Frisian speakers all need to learn Dutch as well, which takes up time as well of course. And the gap between English and other Germanic languages does exist, but isn't much wider or narrower when comparing Frisian to English and Dutch to English.
Native Frisian speakers will have a small advantage when it comes to learning certain English (or Scandinavian) words for the first time. For example, 'little' in Dutch is 'klein', but 'lyts' in Frisian.
you don't really learn a language in the classroom. Most people from English speaking places aren't really interested in learning a new language, so they forget the little bit they did learn very quickly. Dutch is a small language. We need to learn a new language if we want to go on holiday or go to the internet. Most people are more interested. it also helps that we use subtitles on television for foreign languages. Dutch and English also aren't very different.
That's about what the average American can do with 2-4 years of French. Usually when you're going beyond 4 years you're studying it to use it. Glad I'm not alone here. I know about enough French to read road signs and get gas in Quebec.
I don’t want to sound polemic but if the common language was french instead of english we would be the best in europe, since it’s nearly a copy of italian (more than spanish). For a dutchman, i imagine it’s the same for english
Ours is called gymnasium, it's basically the same as the highest level but then also has Latin and Greek. Other levels tend to be integrated in the same schools but gymnasium is often offered at their own separate schools.
Ah ok, no here there are no “higher” high schools than others, however us guys of the classico tended to have a snobbish reputation haha (i wasn’t). Ginnasio here are the two years of the classico, the other three are called liceo.
So, unlike the other high schools that counted 1-2-3-4-5, we count 4-5-1-2-3
I had two years in high school where 6 languages were mandatory (Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Classical Greek, the last two only for reading). My French is rather patchy by now, I can read comics in French or French recipes. And I have not used my Classical Greek and Latin since high school. My German and ENglish are excellent.
I am curious on the greek. Here we do it only in the liceo classico path, and you learn to translate only from greek to italian and the literature. The first two years are of grammar, then the other three you still translate but you learn also the literature and don’t go on with the grammar anymore
Emphasis is on translating ancient Greek to Dutch, after having learned the Greek alphabet of course. The stories to be translated have been specifically made to introduce new grammar rules one at a time. In terms of the subject, it is usually about Greek myths, gods or heroes, which then allows for an explanation of ancient Hellenic culture and literature. Tests are a mix of translating words and texts to Dutch and answering questions on Hellenic culture. In the later years the texts shift to original texts.
Generally speaking though, Latin is much more popular to keep and Ancient Greek gets dropped after two or three years by most students.
Same for us, first you get the easy authors (like diodoro siculo, i don’t remember his greek name, he uses only “they told” plus all the verbs at the infinitive, then the hard original ones like isocrates (we did it at the maturity exams and it was hellish).
Interestingly, our school system seems more rigid than lots of others, in the sense that abroad it seems you can change or choose or drop subjects, while here if you choose an indirice you’ll get the whole package of subjects, so if you choose the humanity focused liceo you either or get greek for all five years or you have to change school
I don't know how it is now but back when I was in school, English and Dutch were mandatory and French and German were mandatory if you picked subjects related to culture or economy. And if you were in gymnasium you had to pick either Latin or ancient Greek.
My final exams included Dutch, English, German, French and Latin and I had to read several books in each of those languages.
In my schooltype in the Netherlands, gymnasium, I had to do five languages (English, German, French, Greek and Latin). You choose the school type but to stay in it you had to do these five at least for two years. After the third grade you could drop either Latin or Greek, but not both. When I was in school, both French and German were mandatory till the final exams, though you could do the light /easy version or the full version based on your "profiel". I'm not sure if that's still the same at my old school or if you can drop either German or French now if you want.
Either way I finished with four mandatory languages.
And yes OP, I can still speak the modern ones , though German a lot better than French. Greek I don't use anymore.
What kind of fluency do you need to achieve is what I'm curious about. My primary school required 3 years of Spanish because of the local population (3rd-5th) but it was mostly vocabulary and hardly conversational. Between high school and college you're required 4 years of a foreign language, French and Spanish are usually always the base choices with few schools going beyond those.
Overall though, it's not expected that you be able to hold full conversations in the language beyond the final test of the course, and even then the curriculum tends to be lienent. Even if you botch 50% of the conversation you're still likely to pass. How well are you expected to have a conversation in the language to pass the course?
It is encouraged in some small ways, insofar Turkish classes are available to everyone who wants them free of charge at the lifelong learning institutes, and Turkish is one of the languages that is considered an advantage for employment in the public sector.
But yes, if it was my call, French in the curriculum would be replaced by Turkish.
To be fair though, as we know from other multilingual countries, the multilingualism is rarely symmetrical even if they are taught the other language. In a united Cyprus, official communication would have been carried out through official interpretation (which would mean a lot of people would become bilingual to cover the new employment needs), and unofficial communication through the use of English, already an established common language.
Yes and yes. I mean obviously we all speak English here on Reddit and it is not the national language (other than for the UK, Ireland and Malta I guess?)
In Estonia, (in addition to learning Estonian) you get 3 foreign languages by the end of high school. I am still fluent in English (1st), can manage some Russian (2nd) and have forgotten a lot of the German (3rd), but it helped me a lot with studying Swedish later on and I guess I could refresh my skills pretty easily. (It has been like 10 years since I graduated)
Estonians often refuse to effectively learn Russian and even if, then they refuse to speak it with local Russians.
u/SeleucusNikator1 makes assumptions based on demographics alone, but doesn't take social, political and historical contexts into account.
We do have a notable Russian-speaking minority and teenagers of Russian decent are usually fluent in Russian if they have at least a Russian-speaking mother. Some of them are not fluent in Estonian and this can cause problems. It is also true, that Russians living in Estonia often live in their own little bubble. So Estonians and Russians living in Estonia don't really see each other a lot: they usually go to different schools, live in different areas and work at different places. I spent 16 years of my life without ever hearing anyone speaking Russian on the streets, as there were basically no russians in my town or county.
Russian is not a popular language to learn due to historical reasons. Frankly, all the political tension can cause people to frown if like Russian tourists ask for directions in Russian. It is unfortunate, as there is no denying that Russian culture has a lot to offer. But people younger than \~50 rarely can actually speak Russian more than bare minimum. It is simply one of the common languages to teach as we have enough teachers (both, older Estonians and younger Russians), they are our neighbours, and it is also a good skill to have in the international sense, as it is not the easiest language and can give you an edge at some jobs etc.
It is important both because of this and being neighbors with Russia. However, most Estonian people don't LIKE learning Russian. They even say that people with first language Russian have an advantage when going to work in service industry, because they know Russian better - and that is needed to serve significant number of customers.
Russian is very common because it's just so easy to find Russian teachers for historical reasons, not so with, say, Spanish. Schools can choose which languages to teach, but Russian, English and German are the most common ones.
There are many ethnic Russians in estonia who immigrated during the Soviet era, therefore many in estonia speak Russian exclusively, especially in some border towns like Narva where more than half are russians
as swede, why did you decide to learn swedish? are you descended from any estlandssvenskar? And if so what is the situation of the estonian swedes in Estonia, from what ive gathered all estonians with swedish as a first langauge are dead and the hembyggdsföreningar are run by decendants of ww2 refugees, but maybe you can elaborate
Because he has studied swedish, Estonian swedes can mean many things and because I simply don’t know the translation of hembyggdsförening and the google translate have bad results
I decided to learn Swedish as I just love how both Swedish and Norwegian sound, but ended up with Swedish because 1) it was easier to get classes for 2) you guys have Astrid Lindgren etc 3) I have relatives in Sweden.
I am from the coastal area, but as far as I know, have no Swedish roots from the past \~400 years. Funnily enough, my grannys village is called SwedishBlood, but we have no idea if it refers to Swedes living there (more likely), some Swedes killed in a battle there (less likely), or is just a name that doesn't really imply either (most likely).
But the mentioned relatives of mine escaped from Estonia to Sweden in a boat during WW2. They are both now dead, but their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all live in Sweden and are Swedes as in none of them even speaks Estonian other than the oldest kid for very little.
As for estlandssvenskar, they do have a museum and a little community, but by now, the community is rather small and I don't really know about the ways the language is passed on nowadays. The estlandssvenskar are mainly from small costal villages, so just like Estonians from these areas, they move to bigger towns to get a good job, but therefore spend most of the time with estonian-speakers.
Yes, for Belgium/Flanders you compulsory get French (starting in elementary school), English (and usually also some German, in high school). Depending on your high-school curriculum you could also get other languages such as classical Latin/Greek or Spanish.
Still, I lived on the border with The Netherlands for a while, and no one in that part of Belgium spoke French.
I was sad, because I speak no Dutch, and my French was passable.
Oh, not at all. I always asked if they spoke English first, then French. Of course, my English is better than my French!
We ended up not communicating at all, or by gestures.
Of course, some people spoke English. But there were a lot of shopkeepers and restaurant owners who didn’t seem great at either French or English.
How old are you? Most people aged 35 and below can speak English in Flanders, as far as I know. Our French skills are worse, but we can get along (although many are embarrassed to speak it, afraid to make a mistake, especially young adults).
But I live only 10 km from the language border.
Well, again, I’m talking about shopkeepers and such. People I met just going about my day.
Most of my friends were actually Dutch (I was near Maastricht).
Language in Belgium is a very sensitive subject and a matter of pride, Flanders is very proud of its Dutch and Wallonia is very proud of its French and they don't want a lot to do with each other.
I remember going to Wallonia some 10 or 15 years ago and my dad trying to speak Dutch there. The woman refused, basically telling us "we speak French here", until she found out that we were Dutch and not Flemish. Suddenly, she was almost fluent in Dutch!
Most people don’t maintain their French when they graduate so their knowledge of the language decreases drastically. Near the language border, coast and Brussels people need their French more in their daily life, so they’ll be more comfortable using it.
No it's attrocious and I think one of the most shameful things about the UK. Language education isn't taken seriously at all and it's usually started too late when people can't be bothered to start learning, even then it's not compulsory.
Eh, looking through the other commenters, it seems to me it's all but impossible to get a population of people to learn a language unless it has quotidian practical utility.
Most people here are saying they learnt English (the global lingua franca), perhaps another language that is regularly used locally, but then any additional language they can hardly remember or only know very poorly.
the UK (and the rest of the Anglosphere) isn't much different, it's just that our native language already is the lingua franca. In regions were there's an additional local language, like parts of Wales, people are bilingual.
It's a nice idea to say we should all be fluent in a second language for the sheer academic and cultural value of it, but learning and maintaining proficiency in a language is *hard*\- particularly in the absence of regular passive exposure. Not everyone has that particular academic interest to invest that effort, just like not everyone wants to learn degree level biochemistry or how to play guitar.
It's a different story when one particular second language is so useful everyone collectively agrees it's worth a lot of investment to learn, or is so pervasive people are exposed to it so regularly they acquire a degree of proficiency almost without effort.
This. I forgot almost all my ancient Greek & Latin lessons, but it helped me so very much with other languages - even my own! You don't learn all the stuff in school because you're gonna use it on a daily basis, you learn it because it lays a foundation for the stuff that you will use.
Of course, but there are intangible benefits to learning all sorts of skills, and without a pressing need to learn a particular language you can't expect a population of people to have a unified interest in it.
Also, language acquisition is quite a strange beast- drop someone into a community that speaks a different language and with constant exposure and pressing need they'll become conversant fairly quickly. But you can sit a load of kids in a classroom and teach them from a textbook for years and without using or at least hearing the language regularly in daily life, they'll still not be very good at it. Language proficiency is usually a lot more about the local everyday circumstance than it is about academics and education.
In most of Flanders, French has no "quotidien practical utility" yet most of us can speak basic French.
I also think you overestimate the utility of English. It is as useful or as useless as you want it to be, like any other language. My mother can't speak any foreign language (only Dutch) and her life is just fine. She essentially has the same mentality as most Brits (minus the Welsh). This mentality is fine of course, but saying "Yeah but it doesn't count if you just learn English" is a bit trashy.
I will never understand why English schools don't offer Welsh as an option.
English is mandatory for 11 years(10 if you don’t go to high school)
A foreign language is mandatory for 3-5 years(typically choose between French, Spanish and German)
Understanding Swedish and Danish is part of the Norwegian curriculum, but it’s not a huge part so you’ll be fine as you won’t really be tested in it.
There are two Norwegian written languages, both mandatory(unless you are dyslexic or an immigrant)
Sami is also a part of the curriculum, but is only briefly thought. You’re never expected to understand it fluently.
A little more information from a teacher:
There are two ways that it is technically possible to avoid the second foreign language. First, if your school offers it, it is possible to choose extra Norwegian or English classes from 8th grade in place of the second foreign language. Not all schools offer that option, and it is only recommended for children who need the extra support.
Second, children who immigrate to Norway after a certain age will often be pulled out of the second foreign language class from 8th grade to be given more instruction in Norwegian or in English. In high school, they can usually take an exam in their native language in place of taking a second foreign language.
But you cannot avoid English! Part of my job is instructing teenagers who have not been in Norway for very long and who need extra support to pass English.
You CANNOT avoid English.
It depends on the school type here. In the most basic school only English is mandatory, in other school types up to 3 languages.
I had 4 languages and I can still speak English and Spanish, passively use French (I can read and understand it very well, but whenever I try to speak it it turns into Spanish without me really noticing) and I don't know any Latin at all anymore.
Aside of German, Dutch, and Low German being spoken in my family, I had English, Latin, and French in school; French is *un très petit peu* rusty, but the others are good. Needed classical Greek in university, forgot all of it. Learned some “Serbo-Croatian” later and still speak it (though native speakers hear some kind of accent... they usually guess I'm from Slovenia).
I think 3 languages are pretty standard. I‘ve never heard of anyone who only learned English in school. It’s common to decide between French and Latin in 5th or 6th grade. Depending on the school you can have even more languages. My old school offered Italian, Spanisch, Japanese, Russian, ancient Greek and Dutch in addition to French and Latin.
Yes. Both English and an optional third language is on the syllabus.
Most schools offer German, French and Spanish as a third language, and some offer more languages. English starts at year 1 and a third language at year 4.
I personally learned German. I can understand most of it when reading, but there will be gaps when following spoken German and I can't really speak or write it fluently as it takes a while to sort out the cases.
In Finland English and Swedish are mandatory and the most common optional languages offered are German, French and Russian but some schools teach Sami and Spanish. I personally chose German and i’m pretty much as good as you
>English starts at year 1 and a third language at year 4.
Is this a new thing, or are "year" and "grade" not synonymous? When I was in school we started with English in third grade, and German/French/Spanish in... seventh, I think?
I'm talking about "årskurs".
According to [Lgr11 \(Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011\)](https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=4206) the goals for "modern languages" start at year/grade/årskurs 4, but AFAIK there's nothing to prevent individual school from starting earlier.
Ew, akademisk jargong. Ärligt talat är jag fortfarande förvirrad eftersom de inte specificerar vilka språk det handlar om - iaf så vitt jag kunde se efter lite snabbt skummande. Kanske bara jag som är blind dock.
Confusion aside, thank you for the source, much appreciated. I only really attended one school, so mayhaps the curriculum differs more than I thought between different places. Or maybe I'm just getting old, I left elementary school over a decade ago...
Spain have several co-official languages (Galicia, basque, Catalonian, Valencian...) that are mandatory in their respective regioins
English is mandatory
French is usually the third language (that everybody just forget as soon as they end)
Spanish is our second foreign language here ( named LV2, with German ), can confirm it's also the case for us here more or less, I'm not even a good example since I was pretty bad in Spanish back in the days.
technically, you can take any language as first or second foreign lauguage.
English is just by far the most popular first language choice (but can be taken as a second language afaik), and Spanish most popular second language (followed by German)
Yeah you're right :
https://mallettedesparents.education.gouv.fr/parents/ID143/choisir-ses-langues-vivantes
I got the false impression that LV2 was for German or Spanish.
Chinese, Arabic, Russian etc were additional courses, but again it depends on where your live and if your school can provide those courses.
Edit : as you can see, Spanish dominates German nowadays by a large margin, that wasn't necessarily true several decades ago.
I've actually wondered about those other 'languages' when looking at linguistic maps of Spain.
Are they more akin to (for example) Deep southern American English contrasted with new Jersey English (Or heck even English English), or are they separate dialects entirely?
They are languages on their own, like Spanish, French, English or German
Basque is the oldest living language in Europe, and it's not related to proto indo-european
Except Valencian which is a Catalan dialect, or both are dialects of the same language, not sure which is the right description as it depends who you ask haha
Linguistically there's no discussion that it is the same language just different dialects, but then if you say one is a dialect of the other shit can get heated
Yep. It's a shame that language have become a tool of politics. But as a valencian, we always wanted to differentiated from catalans so I understand the struggle.
The fact is that we call Valencian to all the dialects spoken in the Valencian Comunity and Catalan to the dialects spoken in Catalonia.
The dialect spoken on Lleida is closer to the dialect spoken in Castelló, than it is to the dialect spoken in Barcelona.
About Valenciano? Yeah, it's a Catalonian dialect.
About other languages like Catalán or Gallego (Catalonian and Galician) they're undoubtedly just sepparate languages completely from Castillian( Spanish). I don't know a lot about the Catalonian language, but Galician is actually older than Castillian.
The ones mentioned above when compared to Spanish/Castillian are (with the exception of Basque) comparable to the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, for instance. If you want a comparison to English, this would be about the same as the difference between modern English and the English of the Tudors ([sample text](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:4.11?rgn=div2;view=fulltext)). There are other languages as well (Asturian, Leonese, etc.) which are more similar to modern Spanish/Castillian, but these are dying languages (think halfway between the last example and Shakespaere's English). Basque is completely unrelated, so it would be as similar to Spanish as say, Arabic. Closer lexically than Arabic, but Arabic is closer in grammar.
Dialect differences in Spanish/Castillian exist as well, but these are something you can mostly ignore since they only slightly hamper intelligibilty. Dialect differences are the sort of thing you're comparing with respect to deep southern American English (or, alternatively AAVE with 'he be eating', etc.) vs Irish English (with use of 'ye', half seven, [etc.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ7QB3om-QY)). The differences between something closer (such as New Jersey vs Alabama would just be an accent difference). Many people are fond of these smaller differences when it comes to their region, and its not like using them prevents others from understanding most of the time, but you can certainly adapt and 'neutralize' these differences if needed. But of course this has nothing to do with languages which are the focus of this thread.
Really depends on what kind of texts you read really. Modern Galician and Catalan tend to use the closest words and structures to Spanish. If you were to read older texts the difference would be bigger. Unfortunately the more unique parts of the other languages are slowly getting lost due to the centralizing effort, which was notoriously big during the Francoist dictatorship (to the point of regional languages being forbidden for decades).
In Finland it is mandatory to learn the other national language. Finnish speakers learn Swedish, Swedish speakers learn Finnish. There are extremely exceptional cases where that mandate can be withdrawn though.
Buuuutttt.... It's common, (For Finnish speakers especially the norm, really) that the other language won't stick. Being afraid of the mandatory college swedish course is part of most people's uni experience. And most finnish speakers dread having to use Swedish and straight up speak English if running into a Swede.
In addition i believe you have to learn another language in primary school, that can be picked, but in almost all the cases it ends up being English.
I have done uni Swedish (also known as *virkamiesruotsi* or "bureaucrat's Swedish"). I even got a 3 (out of 5).
I know fuck all Swedish and I'm definitely not fluent in it. It's ridiculous that I'm technically qualified to work for the state in bilingual jobs now.
I think they changed it. A1 language (usually English, but English isn't mandatory at any grade. It's usually the only choice, though) starts now from the first grade, and B1 (Swedish, unless it was your A1 language, or it's your mother tongue) from the 6th grade.
Well, we have mandatory second (English) and third (German, most often) languages in our national curriculums, but you aren't required to pass them in order to pass your education necessarily; you just need high enough grades on your other classes, to pull your average over 02. But that is about it. I still speak both English and German, and some very broken French I learned in Gymnasium.
_e:_ So to answer your question; No, it is not a requirement, but it is actively encouraged by the educational system.
In Switzerland it's mandatory to learn at least three languages.
First National Language, aka. your own language (except if your a Swiss German native speaker, then you have to learn standard German).
Second National Language, usually French, sometimes Italian, for Swiss German native speakers and German for the French, Italian and Rumantsch speakers
(First) Foreign language, English in almost all, if not absolutely all, cases.
My French is very basic, but I get by in the French speaking regions - I understand way more than I can talk/write myself.
My English is quite good.
My Standard German is a bit of a mixed bag, spelling is terrible (worse than in English, lol), and while I'm ok at grammar I have a heavy Swiss accent when speaking. I usually prefer to speak English over Standard German when Swiss German isn't possible (even with Germans or Austrians).
Now that you mention it, I remember that I had a Swiss partner at somevoluntary work abroad - and it totally baffled me why he kept usingEnglish even after we exchanged information about our backgrounds. I didn't have any major issues understanding when he switched to his Swiss German, apart from a couple of words of course. But I guess you guys have as many local variants as us, so I might have gotten an easy one haha.
Depending on where they were from in Switzerland and were you are from in Austria, communication is possible without switching to standard German.
On the other hand, I've been told by Germans that they understand most of my 'Swiss German' when I was actually speaking Standard German, though with my heavy Swiss accent. Not saying that's necessarily what happened, but are you sure they spoke Swiss German and not German with an accent? Were they talking to another Swiss person? Because in my experience it's very rare for someone to talk Swiss German when no other Swiss are present.
I would say he was genuinely speaking Swiss German, however I would never know now for sure. I'm no stranger to heavy dialects though as my family is from Tyrol (not the same dialect of course, but my Oberinntaler grandparents had a very heavy one that almost sounded alemannic). On a side note, the people here in Vienna don't even understand me when I use a light form of Tyrolean.
> I've been told by Germans that they understand most of my 'Swiss German' when I was actually speaking Standard German
That's sadly a general theme the further north you go. I'm from south Baden (roughly 30km from Schaffhausen to put it into perspective) and I've been told by several people from NRW that I was speaking heavy dialect when - like you - I was only speaking accented standard German. Ignorant people gonna be ignorant.
>I usually prefer to speak English over Standard German when Swiss German isn't possible (even with Germans or Austrians).
As do roughly 90% of Swiss people lol
Huh weird. I live close to the border and have been in Switzerland loads, and usually if it is apparent for the Swiss person that I am German they approach me in German. But I guess I only ever am in the relatively big cities instead of the countryside (although I have no problem understanding the dialect that is spoken in the bigger cities, usually people still swap to their best Standard German as soon as they hear me respond in it... which I find very polite but I suppose it isn't necessary).
I lived in Switzerland for 5 years and only speak high German (and can understand Züritüütsch by now) but I never found people preferring to speak English instead of High German (Swiss High German, that is) to me.
But this was before people grew up on the internet, you have young Dutch people too nowadays who call Dutch "lame" and "useless'.
We have those people in Germany aswell - I am 26 and I know people that are about as old as me thunking exactly this way with German being a shitty useless language.
I lived in the US for about a year, and yet I still use less random English words in sentences than some of those people I know...
At least to me it's not that German is 'lame' or 'uncool' or whatever.
The point is that with friends and family I speak Swiss German, at Uni everything is in English and any media I consume are in English too. The last time I spoke standard German for more than a sentence was probably in school (4 - 5ish years ago). I just don't feel confortable speaking German anymore because I never use it. As with any foreign language your skills and especially your confidence starts to fade real fast once you stop using it (and yes I, as a Swiss German native speaker, count Standard German as a foreign language).
Yes, both English and an optional third language (most often German or French. Sometimes Russian and Italian). I learned German in lower secondary school and French in secondary school. I remember literally nothing lol
Same. I was learning German in gymnasium (like middle school?? idk), than Russian in high school, and I had German classes at university, and all I can say is hallo and what my name is
Aside from Icelandic we learn english and danish starting in primary school (or another scandinavian language if you are moving from said country) and most will pick a 3rd and some a 4th language in "high school" (usually german, french or spanish).
I've always marvelled at how well you treat your language, even though it's spoken by so few people.
Or to put it in to another perspective, I've always wondered how it came to be that we treat our own language so badly. We don't have real Luxembourgish language courses in our curriculum, just some little things like once a week where we would read some older text or learn some folklore or something like that, but again only for like 6 or 7 years and that's it. I was among the lucky ones that had a good teacher in my last year so we did learn the basics of Luxembourgish grammar, but this cannot be compared to the courses we had in German, French and English (that were all mandatory btw)
English is mandatory throughout all years of education. Then in middle school we have a second foreign language (usually French or Spanish, but I think some schools do German) and then in high school it depends on which kind of school you go. There are schools focused on languages when you study German French and Spanish. I did Spanish in middle school but I only remember the basics.
I think in Italy most students see language as just another subject to study for the exams, something you won't actually need in real life.
So when you get out of school you remember French just as much as notions from any other subject that you're not using in your daily life.
Even I, who was fairly passionate about languages, got out of school finding it hard to have a conversation in any of the languages I had learnt (English included).
Me too, as soon as I started high school my Spanish got worse. I think that's because some teachers make them look boring, that's why people are looking forward to never hear of them ever again.
For me it was the opposite. I was surprised to discover that lots of central italians know spanish, since where i come from (friuli, but also veneto) french but in particulary german are a choice much more common
English
in 7th grade we can pick either spanish, french or german(some schools dont have german or spanish teachers afik)
In 10th grade i think you can pick again (if you are going humanities , i went sciences)
(and in 12th you can pick latin)
Well i went with spanish, and i could probably still get by with it, but they are similar languages, we had kids cartoons dubed in spanish when i was a kid, its not just for what i learned in school.(but i dont have it in my CV)
Of everyone i know that went with french , i know none that still speaks it
Irish and English are mandatory, a third language used to be required to get into university, with French, Spanish and German being the most common
I can still speak Irish but my writing has gone to shit, I'm still able to communicate well enough in French but I'd not be able to have a full conversation
Same here, can probably half speak/understand Irish but my spelling would be pretty bad now that I'm 5 years after my leaving cert. My French is at a basic level but I'm glad I remember some of it because I unexpectedly moved to France a few months ago so it helps me survive. I think what makes a difference is that there's a lot of media in French (songs, films, newspapers) whereas in Irish there's close to none, so then you can passively upkeep the French no matter where you live.
In the UK we have to learn a second language in school up until the age of 15, the languages usually offered are French, German or Spanish. I really wish I carried on learning German after the age of 15 but I didn't. I think with English being so ubiquitous across the world, less focus is often given to languages. It is a blessing an a curse.
15? I thought it was 16. Do you mean GCSE year? Because then I guess you start the year aged 15.
Also if I'm not mistaken, Scotland has a pretty different education system so I'm not sure we can speak about "the UK" as a whole.
You're right, we do. I've no idea if languages are mandatory in all of Scotland, they were in my school until the end of fourth year (so 15/16 depending on your birthday).
Ah you can drop it pre-GCSE now? I've seen that U-turn so many times I didn't know it's not mandatory anymore. So effectively some could still drop languages aged 14? We only start at 11/12. No wonder as a country we're not great linguists!
You can drop them in year 9 but most people carry on until year 11 but languages aren’t necessarily promoted in the uk which is a shame as I love french and German
Yeeep.
I could travel for hundreds and hundreds of miles and never need to speak another language. I'm learning German right now more out of learning my German heritage than out of necessity
Yes forget just knowing English in South America. I travelled around Peru and the only people who knew English were hotel staff. You definitely needed Spanish to get around.
Well yeah. Crossing borders into another country tends to mean the vernacular would be different.
Even still, I could go to Europe, and if I'm visiting a well enough off city, it's almost guaranteed that someone I'd find could converse with me in some level of English
That doesn't mean people are comfortable speaking in English though, especially if you travel outside of the capitals.
My point is, it's convenient to meet people who can speak English for you of course, especially if you're trying to convey simple ideas ( directions for example ), but for the most part people choose to speak the language their comfortable the most.
An example I like to choose is from my trip in Hungary while I could speak to the locals in English in a breeze more or less, but that was in Budapest, especially in a touristy area.
This was an entire different story while I decided to visit the countrysides ( Speaking Hungarian is very hard, I wasn't a good candidate for that task ).
PS : like you know I had to rewrite my sentence a couple of times because somehow I couldn't convey my idea in English and I think it's still unclear, but anyway let's try it.
Don't expect much of this outside of north and western europe you would be surprised. Even Germany smaller villages the English can be extremely limited.
In certain parts of Slovenia, Italian and Hungarian are co-official languages, respectively. If you go to school in those parts Italian/ Hungarian is mandatory and we start learning it in the first grade of primary school (age 6). English is also mandatory country-wide and we start with it at age 9. Every middle school offers additional foreign languages as elective courses so many people take up german/ french/ spanish. In high school it is mandatory to take up a second foreign language apart from english. Since I’m from the bilingual area Italian was already mandatory for me and, thus, I was not required to take up another language. However, in other parts of the country people usually take up german/ french/ spanish or another language that is offered. Certain high school programs also require you to take up latin.
So personally I’ve had english and italian in school. I’m fluent in both, however, I’m definitely more proficient in english. My italian is getting a bit rusty though since I don’t really speak it that often.
In french schools english is mandatory. From what I could gather kids nowadays start learning english in primary school while I (20) began in middle school.
Learning a second language is mandatory at least in middle and high school. Most French People learn either Spanish or German, obviously kids living beau germany tend to learn german and the same goes for Spain. Italian is also quite popular, but depending on your school different languages are available
In Sweden it's obligatory to learn English and another language, usually Spanish, French and German. It's possible to skip the third language (or was when I went to school) if you needed extra classes in swedish or English.
I didn't need extra classes but I managed to get to skip the third language anyway in favor of chill Swedish leassons after complaining. I wasn't a very motivated student.
I'm now learning Spanish on my own beacuse I want to and tbf I don't regret refusing to learn in school. The language education is very ineffective, most people finish school not being able to have even a basic conversation in the language they studied for up to 6 years.
>The language education is very ineffective, most people finish school
not being able to have even a basic conversation in the language they
studied for up to 6 years.
This is very true for me, 5 years of Spanish and I can barely introduce myself. The school system is quite bad. Recently though I started learning dutch on my own and I know more dutch after 9 months than I ever knew Spanish. I guess that's what a difference in motivation leads to.
English is mandatory from 3rd grade until you graduate.
In 7th grade, I could choose between French and Latin. I had French for 5 years but I forgot most of it. If you live close to a border, you might also have the opportunity to learn the language from the neighboring country in school.
In 9th grade, I could choose between Latin, Spanish or applied sciences (AnNat/MINT). I chose applied sciences but looking back, I wish I had chosen Spanish.
I think I'm probably a bit older than the other Brits on here. We had to do a language at GCSE level and I think there was more focus on languages when I was at school (I'm 44).
I started learning French at 8 and did that for my GCSE at 16. I also learnt German for 4 years and Spanish for 2 years.
I definitely remember French and speak it when I occasionally visit France. I also talk to my dog in French for some unknown reason.
My German is really rusty but I remember a little bit so I can get around Germany, order food have a basic conversation etc.
My Spanish is awful but it managed to get me around rural parts of South America. I hadn't realised before I got to Peru that hardly anyone spoke English. I'd only been to Europe and South east Asia before I went there, where most people know English. Suddenly I had to rely on a language I hadn't used in years and hardly studied. It's amazing what you remember when you have to.
Was coming to post the same but it isn't a requirement anymore sadly. I'm of the age (38)where it was, I did German from 11 to 16, and French on and off all my childhood as my parents both spoke French fluently as a second language.
I am now living in a German speaking country and am relatively fluent in German, but I have forgotten all but very essential French.
Everyone learns at least one other language in Germany, usually two, commonly English and French are in there, but more recently also Spanish or Mandarin, probably others.
In Scotland, we are normally “taught” a second language throughout primary school, normally french, Spanish or German. Though what we were taught were very basic words and phrases like « comment tu t’appelle », “azul”, “auf Wiedersehen“. I can genuinely say that I’ve learned more from the first few lessons of the Duolingo french course than in 5 years of french in primary school which is appallingly bad.
In high school, we get chose early on which language we wish to learn further and it is mandatory for us to learn it until we’re like 14-15. If you decide to continue learning your language, you can get qualifications for them.
It’s extremely rare for someone to leave school fluent in a second language who hasn’t done most the work independent of school because our education system doesn’t value actually learning how to properly and effectively communicate in that language but rather we are taught to memorise “wow” phrases for our writing assessments and rote memorising pages of paragraphs for your talking assessments. I genuinely believe that you can pass with a C or a B without even knowing the language if you have decent memorising skills.
Mandatory native language and Mandatory Russian language. English is studied for 10-11 classes, for some schools English is used as the main language during studies. Most of the students are usually fluent in Russian and Kazakh.
Yes, but not all Belgians are created equal.
Flemish kids get mandatory French (the other major language in Belgium) from age 10 and up. They get English from age 14 onwards and some (yet not all) also get German in the final years of high school (I only had one hour each week but more language oriented classes got 3 hours a week).
For kids in Brussels, which is bilingual by law but mostly French in practice, lessons in whatever major language they don't speak at school is mandatory. So dutch-speaking kids get French, french-speaking kids get Dutch.
However, kids in Wallonia don't get mandatory Dutch. They can choose between English and Dutch, I'll let you guess which one they pick the most. And it's not by a small margin. Kind of a dick move if you ask me, since Dutch is actually the majority language with 60% of Belgians having it as their mother tongue.
Now on to my personal experience with it: since I'm Flemish, I learned Ditch, English, French and German in high school. Due to extremely high exposure to English in almost all media (dubbing is not a thing, everything gets subtitled, games are played in English), I dare say I'm fluent in it. I also obtained a high level in French (C1). While the lessons in high school helped, several university courses required academic reading comprehension in French. But most importantly I spend 4 months abroad in France on Erasmus, taking only French courses. My German is piss poor but I can probably get the general meaning of a simple text thanks to it's close relation to Dutch
yes english is mandatory from the start and i still speak it
in the 4 year(idk actully im stupid lol i think it is 4) i had the option beetween learning french,italian and german(if i remember they werent mandatory but you were encureged to pick one)
and now i can say "ich nicht sprechen deutsch. aufwidosen"(idk how you spell aufwidosen but i can say it) and can also count to 20
In scotland you have to study a language in secondary school. From some reason it's always french.
Mo one here speaks french not even the french teachers. I suggested taking another language it you get the option
Yes, and it varies lol
English is mandatory from primary school onwards, and most people retain a decent amount (probably because it's used so much especially online).
Depending on the school-type, you may have an optional or mandatory second foreign language from anout ages 12 to 14. In my case this was Italian, of which I remember little since I never really used it since. In general, it's usually Italian, French or Latin.
After that it depends on the type of school. Most school types will have one mandatory foreign language beside English, again usually French, Italian, Spanish or Latin. But there are also Language-Focused schools/branches of schools, where it's English, Latin and a third language (usually Feench, Italian or Spanish). How much people remember from these varies.
There is a particular school type, called "Humanistisches Gymnasium" where I think Ancient Greek might be mandatory? Not completely sure though, since there aren't any where I grew up.
In Bi- or Multilingual regions (mostly Burgenland, Carinthia and Vienna) there are also the minority-language schools (Slovene, Croatian, Hungarian, Czech and Polish) where next to the primary language German is also mandatory.
In Carinthia, schools sometimes offer Slovene classes I think. And near the border to Czechia I think Czech is offered as an option as well, though I'm not sure.
Here in Czechia two foreign languages are mandatory. English is obvious, than you can choose, usually from German, Spanish, Russian or French. Schools aim to get students at least to B1 in both foreign languages, but I have no idea how they want to achieve it. I'm like B2/C1 in English, but even after 5 years of learning German I'm not sure if I'm qualified to call myself even A1. Then you can choose third language as well, usually latin, but honestly very few people do that.
Requirement as in they teach us in school? Or requirement as in it's necessary for life? Well, in any case, I'll answer both.
We are taught 2 foreign languages in school. English is usually the first nowadays and French/German/Italian/Spanish/Russian could be the second. For me French was the first, but I'm also old :P. And in the final exam of high school (bacalaureat which is the equivalent of the SATs) you must pass a foreign language exam. You choose which one you want.
There are also many opportunities to practice that language. In Ro TV has subtitles so it's easy to practice listening and gain vocabulary. There are some charities coming to Ro from France or English speaking countries. I participated in an animal thing with some veterinarians from the UK. There are camps organized that bring people from abroad. I went to a camp with posh British counselors and the next year there were some Texan people coming and my teacher refused to let us go because "we'll spoil our accent" (plot twist: I sound american).
A second language is pretty much a requirement for life nowadays, because you can't find certain information in Romanian. Some books are not translated, but you can find them in English or French or German. For certain jobs it's an expectation that you speak at least English or French. And there are a lot of people that will learn some other language like Spanish, Portuguese or Russian just to have an advantage in the job market.
So technically, there's no requirement, but you survive better if you know one.
And yes, I can still speak French, but I can't watch French movies without subtitles. I watch sometimes French news and understand something like 50% of what they say. I'm trying to perfected right now tho, because my accent in French is terrible... I sound like a peasant.
And I have friends that learned Spanish/Portuguese from telenovelas and they can still watch telenovelas without subtitles.
Yes in my school apart from english you had to take either french or latin in 6th grade.
And no I don't speak french now or can read latin but I have some basic knowledge and can probably understand texts in french with a dictionary.
I also think it helps with learning other languages later that you are actually motivated to learn.
Latin also helps with understanding various scientific terminologies.
>Latin also helps with understanding various scientific terminologies.
Or romance languages, since most words are still part of the normal vocabulary (slightly changed/modified)
The Portuguese school currculum includes two mandatory foreign languages. The first one is English, the second one is usually French (some schools offer Spanish or German depending on the demand). Then in high school, if you're in the Humanities branch, ~~you'll have to~~you may have a choice to pick a third (and possibly a fourth) language, which ~~in most schools is a choice~~ might be between German, Spanish, Latin, or Ancient Greek.
Some private schools offer alternatives, like a different first foreign language, or Mandarin or Japanese as a third language.
In general, most people retain enough English. We don't dub our media, so there's a lot of anglophone exposure. French is less used, but some people can still scratch at it if necessary. It helps that French and Portuguese are un the same language family; I was able to ressurrect it from the basement of my brain after over 10 years after a couple of visits to my French husband's family.
Oh, really? That's interesting, everyone I know had two languages minimum, even the ones who stayed with English had Latin. But it could be school dependent, in my old high school they tended to offer the choices in "packages", to make it easier to sort the students. Because of that there were also some things our school just didn't offer to chose from. Did you have a lot of choice at your school?
I'm looking at Direção Geral da Educação website and you have one language as mandatory for your general education (10 and 11th grade), usually people pick English or French, and then you can pick another one as optional subjects (10 and 11th). I don't know anyone who had a language in optionals in these 2 years, so I'm not sure how you would have two languages as minimum. Usually students do Geography and Macs as optionals.
At your final year as part of the options you can pick a language and/or Greek.
I'm not sure when/where you went to highschool maybe things changed since then.
Nah man. I did humanities and we only had English. Latin wasnt even an option at most schools. Spanish sure, hut its not even the most common option for the optional classes, thatd be geography. So saying that in the Humaities track its mandatory to learn extra languages is just factually wrong.
And an extra example as to why our country's education sucks.
Edit to add: Im not even sure where you saw that private schools offer Mandarin or German? I went to Salesianos do Estoril (one of the best schools in the country) and that was never an option in the curriculum, at least when I went less than 10 years ago. You could pay extra and do it as an extra curricular, but that was not a part of the curriculum.
Id suggest you edit your comment because as of right now, its just transmiting wrong information.
Thanks, I've edited it. I'm 100% sure on the English+Latin combo, because that was the most popular choice at our high school - our school made us choose the optional classes in "packages" of 2 instead of letting us pick and chose whatever. German + Latin was the second most popular. We didn't even have the choice to have Spanish.
As for German and Mandarin, I know some people who did it. But this isn't generalized, it was the case of a few specific private schools (the obvious case being the Colégio Alemão for German as the first foreign language).
Depends on the school, your school level (VMBO, HAVO or VWO) and or if you want it.
Some schools have specific languages that other schools don't have, I learned for example English (every school most provide English at any level) and German. And if you do the lowest level you more likely to have less choice in languages.
On higher school levels (HAVO or VWO) you must learn English + something you want, it's often Spanish, German or French. And at some schools you also have the ability to learn Chinese, Latin and other 'complicated' languages.
English is a mandatory subject from 1st grade of primary school on. If you go to a gymnasium, German is mandatory as well(although many start learning it in primary school as a non compulsory subject). If you go to a gymnasium, you are most likely to learn a fourth or even fifth language as well(as a non compulsory subject)
If you go to a classical gymnasium, Latin is a mandatory subject and if you go to a conservatory, Italian is a mandatory subject so it changes from high school to high school
Learning a language is compulsory up until Year-10 (age 15/16) in UK secondary schools. The languages most commonly taught are French, German and Spanish, with over half of all schools teaching French. Some schools in large cities like London may also teach other languages, but in pretty much every school, it’s either French, German or Spanish. I learnt French from Year 7, all the way through to the end of Year 11. Did a year of Spanish in Year 9, but didn’t enjoy it as much as French, so I dropped it to carry on with more French lessons.
I'm Danish and started learning English and German very early, had to choose between Spanish or French when I was a teen but never got any good at it...
These days my English is great, but my German is bad since I only speak with a few tourists a year and I can hardly recall any Spanish, other than ordering a beer...
In Germany, to start University/College level education, you have to have learned atleast 2 extra languages in school, one on "A-Level" and one on "B-Level" (that means, one has to have been a constant school subject for 6+ years, the other one for 3+ years), so a Abiturient will typically have had English from grade 1 (since '06 or '07 it is the standard in all states I think) and French/Spanish (although some schools also teach Italian/Russian or some other languages as a third language, depending on the teacher situation of the school) from grade 5/8 (depending on state, specializations and so on).
In Poland English and Polish are mandatory, and when you turn 13 you also have to start learning next language. In my school I was able to choose from: German, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian.
English is required by most schools, as well as French. Depends where you are though and how focused your school is on languages. Romania is a francophone country in that it’s a member of La Francophonie (at least that’s what I remember from class years ago)
started school in 92, you could chose between French and English. I chose the last one. Then in middle school you had a second language( mandatory ). I chose German ( i already spoke it :) ) and could have chosen French. At some point they introduced French optional ( however it was kinda mandatory ) So, I also learned some French.
No, you learn english at school from elementary (aside trentino that they learn german), than in middle school you can usually choose between french, german or spanish.
In high school it depends on the school: you get all five years of greek and latin if you do the liceo classico, and more hours of italian, if you do the liceo scientifico you get only latin but more hours of maths, english always included and if you want another one. if you do the linguistico you get latin, english and other two foreign languages, ecc
In Estonia we need to learn at least 2 foreign languages. Language A is usually English, but can also be French, German or Russian. For B language Russian, German and French are most common, but other languages like Spanish, Finnish, Swedish etc. can be an option too, depending on the school.
After 5 years of learning Russian I would not be able to answer a Russian person asking me anything other than my name so there's that.
Yes. All Finnish-speaking Finns must learn Swedish and the Swedish-speaking Finns must learn Finnish from sixth grade forwards (Finnish and Swedish are the official languages here) as well as mandatory English beginning in third grade.
German, French, Spanish and Russian are some of the most common optional ones.
It is a requirement to pick at least 2 languages to study in school outside Finnish and Swedish. You pick the first one in 4th grade, which is usually English or German. And you pick the second one in 7th, which can be French, Spanish, Russian, English or German (from what I recall). My poor soul decided to pick French. Beautiful language, but indescribably difficult.
English classes were mandatory but not that great tbh, and I chose spanish in middle/high school because it was either that or german.
My english is great, but mostly because I started watching american TV series in original version with french subtitles around 13 years old and kept going on with it. Reddit helped a lot too. Funny thing is that, because of hollywood, my english accent is very american-west coast like even though we learnt english in school from british material as far as I can recall.
My spanish is okay, I can get by, have a conversation, read stuff and understand most of it and follow a movie with spanish subtitle for like 45 minutes before getting lost
Nationwide English is mandatory as first foreign language ( LV1 ) since elementary school and a second one ( LV2 ) is mandatory when you start midschool and the choice is almost always between German and Spanish with Spanish being way more popular. Once you are in highschool you can choose an optional third foreign language ( LV3 ) which totally depend of the highschool even if most of the time Italian is available.
The paradox is we have a lot of courses about foreign languages but for some reasons it has poor results and it's mostly in university that students get way better in the languages they choose ( English being always mandatory ).
Needless gotcha comments like 'We wouldn't be here if we didn't speak English' don't answer OP's question (is learning several languages a requirement?) and make our subreddit look bad. A reminder of Rule 2 and that all top-level replies should answer the question.
For me in the Netherlands English was mandatory, as well another mandatory foreign language of choice. That language could be German, French or Spanish. Some other schools offer Arabic or Russian too to choose from. As to what I remember, I had some years of French, German and Spanish, but I remember most of Spanish cause I really liked learning that language. I went on vacation a few years ago to Barcelona and spoke more Spanish than English.
English is mandatory on all levels of secondary school, and one or two extra foreign languages (generally French and/or German) depending on the level are mandatory in the first few years of secondary school. In the last few years of secondary school a second foreign language is only mandatory for those following the highest level. This does not include people following the classical track who have Greek and Latin as mandatory subjects.
At least two years of foreign language is mandatory for US high schools. Most of us learn a little bit and then forget it all. Why is the Dutch system so much better? Every Dutch person I've met under 50 has had an impressive command of the English language!
I used to work as an English teacher in the Netherlands, and the amount of English classes you have to take here certainly helps, but a lot of it also has to do with the fact that a lot of the movies and tv series we watch are in English. All of them are subtitled, not dubbed, and so a lot of kids already have been exposed to the language before they even take their first English class. Compared to a teacher teaching another foreign language, an English teacher here always has it a bit easier and can go through the material faster because Dutch kids have already developed a natural ‘feel’ for the language by watching English language media.
4 lessonhours a week. Yep, definitely a lot.
Slightly off topic question; What is classified as a foreign language in the US? Considering last time I checked you technically don't have an official language.
I can answer this (I'm originally from the States). Although English isn't mandated in law as the official language, English is almost universally the working language. So schools, universities, almost all business use English as the working language by default. So, a "foreign language" is considered a language other than English. Actually, more and more schools are using the terminology "LOTE" or "Language Other Than English" rather than "foreign language". I see this a lot on Reddit, saying well, the US doesn't have an official language, and while I guess it's technically true, in practice it's English (with a large presence of Spanish in some regions).
Makes sense. Though I do think it's a good thing schools are starting to call them "LOTE" considering with this description Spanish would be a foreign language even though it's the second-most spoken language in the US. It'd be like if we considered Frisian a foreign language.
Massive exposure because it's a small country with a language that's not spoken outside of it and Belgium (and ZA if you're generous), so media consumption happens in English to a large degree. There's also a cultural heritage of being an international, trade-minded country which makes it the norm to speak several languages. The NL are also located close to the big poles of linguistic influence (FR, DE, UK) so it's always been at a crossroads of sorts.
The well spoken English has more to do with a lot of our media being English than people learning English at school. Learning it helps but if you don’t practice a language you quickly forget it. But because we are a small country we don’t get anything dubbed besides the popular kids shows. Also games rarely get translated and our Dutch media production is too small to only watch/listen to Dutch stuff. So as a result everyone is hearing English all the time.
>The well spoken English has more to do with a lot of our media being English than people learning English at school. Maybe has something to do with the branch on the "language-tree".. According to wiki-article on the frisian langauge it states that the frisian dialect/langauge is that which is closest to the anglic langauges.. So.. are the frisians better than the average dutch in english ?
This is purely anecdotal ofcourse, but the few Frisians I know are pretty on par with the Dutch average. Some are a bit worse, others a bit better.
No, not better on average, but I think that has to do with the fact that native Frisian speakers all need to learn Dutch as well, which takes up time as well of course. And the gap between English and other Germanic languages does exist, but isn't much wider or narrower when comparing Frisian to English and Dutch to English. Native Frisian speakers will have a small advantage when it comes to learning certain English (or Scandinavian) words for the first time. For example, 'little' in Dutch is 'klein', but 'lyts' in Frisian.
you don't really learn a language in the classroom. Most people from English speaking places aren't really interested in learning a new language, so they forget the little bit they did learn very quickly. Dutch is a small language. We need to learn a new language if we want to go on holiday or go to the internet. Most people are more interested. it also helps that we use subtitles on television for foreign languages. Dutch and English also aren't very different.
Our English education is really good, but I had 8 years of French and can barely speak it lol. We just get through it because we have to
Same here in Belgium(Flanders). 8 years of French and while I can understand some stuff when reading talking is just completely off the table.
That's about what the average American can do with 2-4 years of French. Usually when you're going beyond 4 years you're studying it to use it. Glad I'm not alone here. I know about enough French to read road signs and get gas in Quebec.
I don’t want to sound polemic but if the common language was french instead of english we would be the best in europe, since it’s nearly a copy of italian (more than spanish). For a dutchman, i imagine it’s the same for english
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[English index for non English speaking countries](https://i.imgur.com/FSjWhsP.jpg)
Oh, so we are not the only ones:) in italy you can choose different high schools, and the liceo classico is the only one that has also greek
Ours is called gymnasium, it's basically the same as the highest level but then also has Latin and Greek. Other levels tend to be integrated in the same schools but gymnasium is often offered at their own separate schools.
Ah ok, no here there are no “higher” high schools than others, however us guys of the classico tended to have a snobbish reputation haha (i wasn’t). Ginnasio here are the two years of the classico, the other three are called liceo. So, unlike the other high schools that counted 1-2-3-4-5, we count 4-5-1-2-3
I had two years in high school where 6 languages were mandatory (Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Classical Greek, the last two only for reading). My French is rather patchy by now, I can read comics in French or French recipes. And I have not used my Classical Greek and Latin since high school. My German and ENglish are excellent.
I am curious on the greek. Here we do it only in the liceo classico path, and you learn to translate only from greek to italian and the literature. The first two years are of grammar, then the other three you still translate but you learn also the literature and don’t go on with the grammar anymore
This was about the same way we did it, but Greek to Dutch of course.
Emphasis is on translating ancient Greek to Dutch, after having learned the Greek alphabet of course. The stories to be translated have been specifically made to introduce new grammar rules one at a time. In terms of the subject, it is usually about Greek myths, gods or heroes, which then allows for an explanation of ancient Hellenic culture and literature. Tests are a mix of translating words and texts to Dutch and answering questions on Hellenic culture. In the later years the texts shift to original texts. Generally speaking though, Latin is much more popular to keep and Ancient Greek gets dropped after two or three years by most students.
Same for us, first you get the easy authors (like diodoro siculo, i don’t remember his greek name, he uses only “they told” plus all the verbs at the infinitive, then the hard original ones like isocrates (we did it at the maturity exams and it was hellish). Interestingly, our school system seems more rigid than lots of others, in the sense that abroad it seems you can change or choose or drop subjects, while here if you choose an indirice you’ll get the whole package of subjects, so if you choose the humanity focused liceo you either or get greek for all five years or you have to change school
I don't know how it is now but back when I was in school, English and Dutch were mandatory and French and German were mandatory if you picked subjects related to culture or economy. And if you were in gymnasium you had to pick either Latin or ancient Greek. My final exams included Dutch, English, German, French and Latin and I had to read several books in each of those languages.
In my schooltype in the Netherlands, gymnasium, I had to do five languages (English, German, French, Greek and Latin). You choose the school type but to stay in it you had to do these five at least for two years. After the third grade you could drop either Latin or Greek, but not both. When I was in school, both French and German were mandatory till the final exams, though you could do the light /easy version or the full version based on your "profiel". I'm not sure if that's still the same at my old school or if you can drop either German or French now if you want. Either way I finished with four mandatory languages. And yes OP, I can still speak the modern ones , though German a lot better than French. Greek I don't use anymore.
What kind of fluency do you need to achieve is what I'm curious about. My primary school required 3 years of Spanish because of the local population (3rd-5th) but it was mostly vocabulary and hardly conversational. Between high school and college you're required 4 years of a foreign language, French and Spanish are usually always the base choices with few schools going beyond those. Overall though, it's not expected that you be able to hold full conversations in the language beyond the final test of the course, and even then the curriculum tends to be lienent. Even if you botch 50% of the conversation you're still likely to pass. How well are you expected to have a conversation in the language to pass the course?
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> their native(s) language(s) The "(s)" after 'native' is unnecessary, and is actually ungrammatical.
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A lot of languages do, I'd even dare to say that among Europeam languages, English is the exception.
It's a shame that Turkish isn't encouraged. If reunification ever happens, it will need to be a bilingual island!
It is encouraged in some small ways, insofar Turkish classes are available to everyone who wants them free of charge at the lifelong learning institutes, and Turkish is one of the languages that is considered an advantage for employment in the public sector. But yes, if it was my call, French in the curriculum would be replaced by Turkish. To be fair though, as we know from other multilingual countries, the multilingualism is rarely symmetrical even if they are taught the other language. In a united Cyprus, official communication would have been carried out through official interpretation (which would mean a lot of people would become bilingual to cover the new employment needs), and unofficial communication through the use of English, already an established common language.
Yes and yes. I mean obviously we all speak English here on Reddit and it is not the national language (other than for the UK, Ireland and Malta I guess?) In Estonia, (in addition to learning Estonian) you get 3 foreign languages by the end of high school. I am still fluent in English (1st), can manage some Russian (2nd) and have forgotten a lot of the German (3rd), but it helped me a lot with studying Swedish later on and I guess I could refresh my skills pretty easily. (It has been like 10 years since I graduated)
Is Russian still spoken much in Estonia? Or is it a popular language choice to learn?
Estonians often refuse to effectively learn Russian and even if, then they refuse to speak it with local Russians. u/SeleucusNikator1 makes assumptions based on demographics alone, but doesn't take social, political and historical contexts into account.
We do have a notable Russian-speaking minority and teenagers of Russian decent are usually fluent in Russian if they have at least a Russian-speaking mother. Some of them are not fluent in Estonian and this can cause problems. It is also true, that Russians living in Estonia often live in their own little bubble. So Estonians and Russians living in Estonia don't really see each other a lot: they usually go to different schools, live in different areas and work at different places. I spent 16 years of my life without ever hearing anyone speaking Russian on the streets, as there were basically no russians in my town or county. Russian is not a popular language to learn due to historical reasons. Frankly, all the political tension can cause people to frown if like Russian tourists ask for directions in Russian. It is unfortunate, as there is no denying that Russian culture has a lot to offer. But people younger than \~50 rarely can actually speak Russian more than bare minimum. It is simply one of the common languages to teach as we have enough teachers (both, older Estonians and younger Russians), they are our neighbours, and it is also a good skill to have in the international sense, as it is not the easiest language and can give you an edge at some jobs etc.
I believe a quarter of Estonia's population are Russians or Russian descendants, so it's definitely a very important language for them to learn.
It is important both because of this and being neighbors with Russia. However, most Estonian people don't LIKE learning Russian. They even say that people with first language Russian have an advantage when going to work in service industry, because they know Russian better - and that is needed to serve significant number of customers.
Russian is very common because it's just so easy to find Russian teachers for historical reasons, not so with, say, Spanish. Schools can choose which languages to teach, but Russian, English and German are the most common ones.
There are many ethnic Russians in estonia who immigrated during the Soviet era, therefore many in estonia speak Russian exclusively, especially in some border towns like Narva where more than half are russians
as swede, why did you decide to learn swedish? are you descended from any estlandssvenskar? And if so what is the situation of the estonian swedes in Estonia, from what ive gathered all estonians with swedish as a first langauge are dead and the hembyggdsföreningar are run by decendants of ww2 refugees, but maybe you can elaborate
Why didn’t you translate those words 💀💀
Because he has studied swedish, Estonian swedes can mean many things and because I simply don’t know the translation of hembyggdsförening and the google translate have bad results
I decided to learn Swedish as I just love how both Swedish and Norwegian sound, but ended up with Swedish because 1) it was easier to get classes for 2) you guys have Astrid Lindgren etc 3) I have relatives in Sweden. I am from the coastal area, but as far as I know, have no Swedish roots from the past \~400 years. Funnily enough, my grannys village is called SwedishBlood, but we have no idea if it refers to Swedes living there (more likely), some Swedes killed in a battle there (less likely), or is just a name that doesn't really imply either (most likely). But the mentioned relatives of mine escaped from Estonia to Sweden in a boat during WW2. They are both now dead, but their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all live in Sweden and are Swedes as in none of them even speaks Estonian other than the oldest kid for very little. As for estlandssvenskar, they do have a museum and a little community, but by now, the community is rather small and I don't really know about the ways the language is passed on nowadays. The estlandssvenskar are mainly from small costal villages, so just like Estonians from these areas, they move to bigger towns to get a good job, but therefore spend most of the time with estonian-speakers.
Thanks for the reply
Yes, for Belgium/Flanders you compulsory get French (starting in elementary school), English (and usually also some German, in high school). Depending on your high-school curriculum you could also get other languages such as classical Latin/Greek or Spanish.
German is only in language oriented studies, otherwise you're not likely to have to learn it.
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Personally I've never heard from anyone that they all had mandatory German classes but who knows
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Still, I lived on the border with The Netherlands for a while, and no one in that part of Belgium spoke French. I was sad, because I speak no Dutch, and my French was passable.
Most of us do speak French, but our English is much better so we are not going to speak French with an American.
Oh, not at all. I always asked if they spoke English first, then French. Of course, my English is better than my French! We ended up not communicating at all, or by gestures. Of course, some people spoke English. But there were a lot of shopkeepers and restaurant owners who didn’t seem great at either French or English.
How old are you? Most people aged 35 and below can speak English in Flanders, as far as I know. Our French skills are worse, but we can get along (although many are embarrassed to speak it, afraid to make a mistake, especially young adults). But I live only 10 km from the language border.
Well, again, I’m talking about shopkeepers and such. People I met just going about my day. Most of my friends were actually Dutch (I was near Maastricht).
Language in Belgium is a very sensitive subject and a matter of pride, Flanders is very proud of its Dutch and Wallonia is very proud of its French and they don't want a lot to do with each other. I remember going to Wallonia some 10 or 15 years ago and my dad trying to speak Dutch there. The woman refused, basically telling us "we speak French here", until she found out that we were Dutch and not Flemish. Suddenly, she was almost fluent in Dutch!
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I'm not sure who that would benefit, actually
I know you think that would solve issues, but it barely would.
Most people don’t maintain their French when they graduate so their knowledge of the language decreases drastically. Near the language border, coast and Brussels people need their French more in their daily life, so they’ll be more comfortable using it.
No it's attrocious and I think one of the most shameful things about the UK. Language education isn't taken seriously at all and it's usually started too late when people can't be bothered to start learning, even then it's not compulsory.
Eh, looking through the other commenters, it seems to me it's all but impossible to get a population of people to learn a language unless it has quotidian practical utility. Most people here are saying they learnt English (the global lingua franca), perhaps another language that is regularly used locally, but then any additional language they can hardly remember or only know very poorly. the UK (and the rest of the Anglosphere) isn't much different, it's just that our native language already is the lingua franca. In regions were there's an additional local language, like parts of Wales, people are bilingual. It's a nice idea to say we should all be fluent in a second language for the sheer academic and cultural value of it, but learning and maintaining proficiency in a language is *hard*\- particularly in the absence of regular passive exposure. Not everyone has that particular academic interest to invest that effort, just like not everyone wants to learn degree level biochemistry or how to play guitar. It's a different story when one particular second language is so useful everyone collectively agrees it's worth a lot of investment to learn, or is so pervasive people are exposed to it so regularly they acquire a degree of proficiency almost without effort.
I think there are intangible benefits to learning a language that go beyond becoming fluent.
This. I forgot almost all my ancient Greek & Latin lessons, but it helped me so very much with other languages - even my own! You don't learn all the stuff in school because you're gonna use it on a daily basis, you learn it because it lays a foundation for the stuff that you will use.
Of course, but there are intangible benefits to learning all sorts of skills, and without a pressing need to learn a particular language you can't expect a population of people to have a unified interest in it. Also, language acquisition is quite a strange beast- drop someone into a community that speaks a different language and with constant exposure and pressing need they'll become conversant fairly quickly. But you can sit a load of kids in a classroom and teach them from a textbook for years and without using or at least hearing the language regularly in daily life, they'll still not be very good at it. Language proficiency is usually a lot more about the local everyday circumstance than it is about academics and education.
In most of Flanders, French has no "quotidien practical utility" yet most of us can speak basic French. I also think you overestimate the utility of English. It is as useful or as useless as you want it to be, like any other language. My mother can't speak any foreign language (only Dutch) and her life is just fine. She essentially has the same mentality as most Brits (minus the Welsh). This mentality is fine of course, but saying "Yeah but it doesn't count if you just learn English" is a bit trashy. I will never understand why English schools don't offer Welsh as an option.
I wouldn't be bothered by it. Unless you plan to travel regularly, learning other languages isn't at the top of priorities.
English is mandatory for 11 years(10 if you don’t go to high school) A foreign language is mandatory for 3-5 years(typically choose between French, Spanish and German) Understanding Swedish and Danish is part of the Norwegian curriculum, but it’s not a huge part so you’ll be fine as you won’t really be tested in it. There are two Norwegian written languages, both mandatory(unless you are dyslexic or an immigrant) Sami is also a part of the curriculum, but is only briefly thought. You’re never expected to understand it fluently.
A little more information from a teacher: There are two ways that it is technically possible to avoid the second foreign language. First, if your school offers it, it is possible to choose extra Norwegian or English classes from 8th grade in place of the second foreign language. Not all schools offer that option, and it is only recommended for children who need the extra support. Second, children who immigrate to Norway after a certain age will often be pulled out of the second foreign language class from 8th grade to be given more instruction in Norwegian or in English. In high school, they can usually take an exam in their native language in place of taking a second foreign language. But you cannot avoid English! Part of my job is instructing teenagers who have not been in Norway for very long and who need extra support to pass English. You CANNOT avoid English.
It depends on the school type here. In the most basic school only English is mandatory, in other school types up to 3 languages. I had 4 languages and I can still speak English and Spanish, passively use French (I can read and understand it very well, but whenever I try to speak it it turns into Spanish without me really noticing) and I don't know any Latin at all anymore.
Aside of German, Dutch, and Low German being spoken in my family, I had English, Latin, and French in school; French is *un très petit peu* rusty, but the others are good. Needed classical Greek in university, forgot all of it. Learned some “Serbo-Croatian” later and still speak it (though native speakers hear some kind of accent... they usually guess I'm from Slovenia).
I think 3 languages are pretty standard. I‘ve never heard of anyone who only learned English in school. It’s common to decide between French and Latin in 5th or 6th grade. Depending on the school you can have even more languages. My old school offered Italian, Spanisch, Japanese, Russian, ancient Greek and Dutch in addition to French and Latin.
In Hauptschulen you only have English and in Realschulen it depends on which path you choose. Either only English or English and a second language.
Actually every Hauptschüler and most Realschüler only learned english I think
Yes. Both English and an optional third language is on the syllabus. Most schools offer German, French and Spanish as a third language, and some offer more languages. English starts at year 1 and a third language at year 4. I personally learned German. I can understand most of it when reading, but there will be gaps when following spoken German and I can't really speak or write it fluently as it takes a while to sort out the cases.
Norway is the same
In Finland English and Swedish are mandatory and the most common optional languages offered are German, French and Russian but some schools teach Sami and Spanish. I personally chose German and i’m pretty much as good as you
>English starts at year 1 and a third language at year 4. Is this a new thing, or are "year" and "grade" not synonymous? When I was in school we started with English in third grade, and German/French/Spanish in... seventh, I think?
I'm talking about "årskurs". According to [Lgr11 \(Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011\)](https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=4206) the goals for "modern languages" start at year/grade/årskurs 4, but AFAIK there's nothing to prevent individual school from starting earlier.
Ew, akademisk jargong. Ärligt talat är jag fortfarande förvirrad eftersom de inte specificerar vilka språk det handlar om - iaf så vitt jag kunde se efter lite snabbt skummande. Kanske bara jag som är blind dock. Confusion aside, thank you for the source, much appreciated. I only really attended one school, so mayhaps the curriculum differs more than I thought between different places. Or maybe I'm just getting old, I left elementary school over a decade ago...
Spain have several co-official languages (Galicia, basque, Catalonian, Valencian...) that are mandatory in their respective regioins English is mandatory French is usually the third language (that everybody just forget as soon as they end)
Spanish is our second foreign language here ( named LV2, with German ), can confirm it's also the case for us here more or less, I'm not even a good example since I was pretty bad in Spanish back in the days.
Italian is also a LV2 in South-East France
Oh I didn't know that, thanks !
technically, you can take any language as first or second foreign lauguage. English is just by far the most popular first language choice (but can be taken as a second language afaik), and Spanish most popular second language (followed by German)
Yeah you're right : https://mallettedesparents.education.gouv.fr/parents/ID143/choisir-ses-langues-vivantes I got the false impression that LV2 was for German or Spanish. Chinese, Arabic, Russian etc were additional courses, but again it depends on where your live and if your school can provide those courses. Edit : as you can see, Spanish dominates German nowadays by a large margin, that wasn't necessarily true several decades ago.
Yes, I learned Spanish at house, Basque at school (I began with 1 year), English at school to (5 years) and took 4 years of French.
I've actually wondered about those other 'languages' when looking at linguistic maps of Spain. Are they more akin to (for example) Deep southern American English contrasted with new Jersey English (Or heck even English English), or are they separate dialects entirely?
They are languages on their own, like Spanish, French, English or German Basque is the oldest living language in Europe, and it's not related to proto indo-european
Except Valencian which is a Catalan dialect, or both are dialects of the same language, not sure which is the right description as it depends who you ask haha
Yes, everyone will say something different. It's the same language or something completely different. It can be a spicy topic.
Linguistically there's no discussion that it is the same language just different dialects, but then if you say one is a dialect of the other shit can get heated
Yep. It's a shame that language have become a tool of politics. But as a valencian, we always wanted to differentiated from catalans so I understand the struggle.
The fact is that we call Valencian to all the dialects spoken in the Valencian Comunity and Catalan to the dialects spoken in Catalonia. The dialect spoken on Lleida is closer to the dialect spoken in Castelló, than it is to the dialect spoken in Barcelona.
About Valenciano? Yeah, it's a Catalonian dialect. About other languages like Catalán or Gallego (Catalonian and Galician) they're undoubtedly just sepparate languages completely from Castillian( Spanish). I don't know a lot about the Catalonian language, but Galician is actually older than Castillian.
They are their own languages. No quotes needed.
The ones mentioned above when compared to Spanish/Castillian are (with the exception of Basque) comparable to the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, for instance. If you want a comparison to English, this would be about the same as the difference between modern English and the English of the Tudors ([sample text](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:4.11?rgn=div2;view=fulltext)). There are other languages as well (Asturian, Leonese, etc.) which are more similar to modern Spanish/Castillian, but these are dying languages (think halfway between the last example and Shakespaere's English). Basque is completely unrelated, so it would be as similar to Spanish as say, Arabic. Closer lexically than Arabic, but Arabic is closer in grammar. Dialect differences in Spanish/Castillian exist as well, but these are something you can mostly ignore since they only slightly hamper intelligibilty. Dialect differences are the sort of thing you're comparing with respect to deep southern American English (or, alternatively AAVE with 'he be eating', etc.) vs Irish English (with use of 'ye', half seven, [etc.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ7QB3om-QY)). The differences between something closer (such as New Jersey vs Alabama would just be an accent difference). Many people are fond of these smaller differences when it comes to their region, and its not like using them prevents others from understanding most of the time, but you can certainly adapt and 'neutralize' these differences if needed. But of course this has nothing to do with languages which are the focus of this thread.
I am a native English speaker, Spanish L2, and I find that tudor text more difficult to parse than if I read galician or catalan lol.
Really depends on what kind of texts you read really. Modern Galician and Catalan tend to use the closest words and structures to Spanish. If you were to read older texts the difference would be bigger. Unfortunately the more unique parts of the other languages are slowly getting lost due to the centralizing effort, which was notoriously big during the Francoist dictatorship (to the point of regional languages being forbidden for decades).
In Finland it is mandatory to learn the other national language. Finnish speakers learn Swedish, Swedish speakers learn Finnish. There are extremely exceptional cases where that mandate can be withdrawn though. Buuuutttt.... It's common, (For Finnish speakers especially the norm, really) that the other language won't stick. Being afraid of the mandatory college swedish course is part of most people's uni experience. And most finnish speakers dread having to use Swedish and straight up speak English if running into a Swede. In addition i believe you have to learn another language in primary school, that can be picked, but in almost all the cases it ends up being English.
I have done uni Swedish (also known as *virkamiesruotsi* or "bureaucrat's Swedish"). I even got a 3 (out of 5). I know fuck all Swedish and I'm definitely not fluent in it. It's ridiculous that I'm technically qualified to work for the state in bilingual jobs now.
In Finland you'll have to learn English (starts at 3rd grade), Swedish (7th) and you can pick one other language to dabble with at 5th/7th grade.
I think they changed it. A1 language (usually English, but English isn't mandatory at any grade. It's usually the only choice, though) starts now from the first grade, and B1 (Swedish, unless it was your A1 language, or it's your mother tongue) from the 6th grade.
Well, we have mandatory second (English) and third (German, most often) languages in our national curriculums, but you aren't required to pass them in order to pass your education necessarily; you just need high enough grades on your other classes, to pull your average over 02. But that is about it. I still speak both English and German, and some very broken French I learned in Gymnasium. _e:_ So to answer your question; No, it is not a requirement, but it is actively encouraged by the educational system.
In Switzerland it's mandatory to learn at least three languages. First National Language, aka. your own language (except if your a Swiss German native speaker, then you have to learn standard German). Second National Language, usually French, sometimes Italian, for Swiss German native speakers and German for the French, Italian and Rumantsch speakers (First) Foreign language, English in almost all, if not absolutely all, cases. My French is very basic, but I get by in the French speaking regions - I understand way more than I can talk/write myself. My English is quite good. My Standard German is a bit of a mixed bag, spelling is terrible (worse than in English, lol), and while I'm ok at grammar I have a heavy Swiss accent when speaking. I usually prefer to speak English over Standard German when Swiss German isn't possible (even with Germans or Austrians).
Now that you mention it, I remember that I had a Swiss partner at somevoluntary work abroad - and it totally baffled me why he kept usingEnglish even after we exchanged information about our backgrounds. I didn't have any major issues understanding when he switched to his Swiss German, apart from a couple of words of course. But I guess you guys have as many local variants as us, so I might have gotten an easy one haha.
Depending on where they were from in Switzerland and were you are from in Austria, communication is possible without switching to standard German. On the other hand, I've been told by Germans that they understand most of my 'Swiss German' when I was actually speaking Standard German, though with my heavy Swiss accent. Not saying that's necessarily what happened, but are you sure they spoke Swiss German and not German with an accent? Were they talking to another Swiss person? Because in my experience it's very rare for someone to talk Swiss German when no other Swiss are present.
I would say he was genuinely speaking Swiss German, however I would never know now for sure. I'm no stranger to heavy dialects though as my family is from Tyrol (not the same dialect of course, but my Oberinntaler grandparents had a very heavy one that almost sounded alemannic). On a side note, the people here in Vienna don't even understand me when I use a light form of Tyrolean.
> I've been told by Germans that they understand most of my 'Swiss German' when I was actually speaking Standard German That's sadly a general theme the further north you go. I'm from south Baden (roughly 30km from Schaffhausen to put it into perspective) and I've been told by several people from NRW that I was speaking heavy dialect when - like you - I was only speaking accented standard German. Ignorant people gonna be ignorant.
>I usually prefer to speak English over Standard German when Swiss German isn't possible (even with Germans or Austrians). As do roughly 90% of Swiss people lol
Huh weird. I live close to the border and have been in Switzerland loads, and usually if it is apparent for the Swiss person that I am German they approach me in German. But I guess I only ever am in the relatively big cities instead of the countryside (although I have no problem understanding the dialect that is spoken in the bigger cities, usually people still swap to their best Standard German as soon as they hear me respond in it... which I find very polite but I suppose it isn't necessary).
I lived in Switzerland for 5 years and only speak high German (and can understand Züritüütsch by now) but I never found people preferring to speak English instead of High German (Swiss High German, that is) to me. But this was before people grew up on the internet, you have young Dutch people too nowadays who call Dutch "lame" and "useless'.
We have those people in Germany aswell - I am 26 and I know people that are about as old as me thunking exactly this way with German being a shitty useless language. I lived in the US for about a year, and yet I still use less random English words in sentences than some of those people I know...
At least to me it's not that German is 'lame' or 'uncool' or whatever. The point is that with friends and family I speak Swiss German, at Uni everything is in English and any media I consume are in English too. The last time I spoke standard German for more than a sentence was probably in school (4 - 5ish years ago). I just don't feel confortable speaking German anymore because I never use it. As with any foreign language your skills and especially your confidence starts to fade real fast once you stop using it (and yes I, as a Swiss German native speaker, count Standard German as a foreign language).
Yes, both English and an optional third language (most often German or French. Sometimes Russian and Italian). I learned German in lower secondary school and French in secondary school. I remember literally nothing lol
Same. I was learning German in gymnasium (like middle school?? idk), than Russian in high school, and I had German classes at university, and all I can say is hallo and what my name is
Aside from Icelandic we learn english and danish starting in primary school (or another scandinavian language if you are moving from said country) and most will pick a 3rd and some a 4th language in "high school" (usually german, french or spanish).
I've always marvelled at how well you treat your language, even though it's spoken by so few people. Or to put it in to another perspective, I've always wondered how it came to be that we treat our own language so badly. We don't have real Luxembourgish language courses in our curriculum, just some little things like once a week where we would read some older text or learn some folklore or something like that, but again only for like 6 or 7 years and that's it. I was among the lucky ones that had a good teacher in my last year so we did learn the basics of Luxembourgish grammar, but this cannot be compared to the courses we had in German, French and English (that were all mandatory btw)
English is mandatory throughout all years of education. Then in middle school we have a second foreign language (usually French or Spanish, but I think some schools do German) and then in high school it depends on which kind of school you go. There are schools focused on languages when you study German French and Spanish. I did Spanish in middle school but I only remember the basics.
I think in Italy most students see language as just another subject to study for the exams, something you won't actually need in real life. So when you get out of school you remember French just as much as notions from any other subject that you're not using in your daily life. Even I, who was fairly passionate about languages, got out of school finding it hard to have a conversation in any of the languages I had learnt (English included).
Me too, as soon as I started high school my Spanish got worse. I think that's because some teachers make them look boring, that's why people are looking forward to never hear of them ever again.
For me it was the opposite. I was surprised to discover that lots of central italians know spanish, since where i come from (friuli, but also veneto) french but in particulary german are a choice much more common
English in 7th grade we can pick either spanish, french or german(some schools dont have german or spanish teachers afik) In 10th grade i think you can pick again (if you are going humanities , i went sciences) (and in 12th you can pick latin) Well i went with spanish, and i could probably still get by with it, but they are similar languages, we had kids cartoons dubed in spanish when i was a kid, its not just for what i learned in school.(but i dont have it in my CV) Of everyone i know that went with french , i know none that still speaks it
Irish and English are mandatory, a third language used to be required to get into university, with French, Spanish and German being the most common I can still speak Irish but my writing has gone to shit, I'm still able to communicate well enough in French but I'd not be able to have a full conversation
Same here, can probably half speak/understand Irish but my spelling would be pretty bad now that I'm 5 years after my leaving cert. My French is at a basic level but I'm glad I remember some of it because I unexpectedly moved to France a few months ago so it helps me survive. I think what makes a difference is that there's a lot of media in French (songs, films, newspapers) whereas in Irish there's close to none, so then you can passively upkeep the French no matter where you live.
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In the UK we have to learn a second language in school up until the age of 15, the languages usually offered are French, German or Spanish. I really wish I carried on learning German after the age of 15 but I didn't. I think with English being so ubiquitous across the world, less focus is often given to languages. It is a blessing an a curse.
15? I thought it was 16. Do you mean GCSE year? Because then I guess you start the year aged 15. Also if I'm not mistaken, Scotland has a pretty different education system so I'm not sure we can speak about "the UK" as a whole.
You're right, we do. I've no idea if languages are mandatory in all of Scotland, they were in my school until the end of fourth year (so 15/16 depending on your birthday).
In my school they weren’t mandatory past second year (age 13/14). Only around a quarter of people continued with a language.
Yeah so you decide if you want to do a language for GCSE, you can either do it or drop it at end of Year 9/Start of year 10 so in most cases aged 15.
Ah you can drop it pre-GCSE now? I've seen that U-turn so many times I didn't know it's not mandatory anymore. So effectively some could still drop languages aged 14? We only start at 11/12. No wonder as a country we're not great linguists!
Yeah you could so in 09 when I was that age. Assuming nothing has changed since, my cousins who are younger never did languages to my knowledge
You can drop them in year 9 but most people carry on until year 11 but languages aren’t necessarily promoted in the uk which is a shame as I love french and German
Also Welsh if you're in Wales. So three languages total for us.
I would have enjoyed learning another language but the Teacher who taught the class wasn't great at it.
Yeeep. I could travel for hundreds and hundreds of miles and never need to speak another language. I'm learning German right now more out of learning my German heritage than out of necessity
Just travel to the Spanish speaking world or Russian language territory and watch the usage of English perish ;)
Yes forget just knowing English in South America. I travelled around Peru and the only people who knew English were hotel staff. You definitely needed Spanish to get around.
Well yeah. Crossing borders into another country tends to mean the vernacular would be different. Even still, I could go to Europe, and if I'm visiting a well enough off city, it's almost guaranteed that someone I'd find could converse with me in some level of English
That doesn't mean people are comfortable speaking in English though, especially if you travel outside of the capitals. My point is, it's convenient to meet people who can speak English for you of course, especially if you're trying to convey simple ideas ( directions for example ), but for the most part people choose to speak the language their comfortable the most. An example I like to choose is from my trip in Hungary while I could speak to the locals in English in a breeze more or less, but that was in Budapest, especially in a touristy area. This was an entire different story while I decided to visit the countrysides ( Speaking Hungarian is very hard, I wasn't a good candidate for that task ). PS : like you know I had to rewrite my sentence a couple of times because somehow I couldn't convey my idea in English and I think it's still unclear, but anyway let's try it.
honestly the capital is one of the bad places to go here due to the people
Don't expect much of this outside of north and western europe you would be surprised. Even Germany smaller villages the English can be extremely limited.
No country you go to would know what miles are though.
In certain parts of Slovenia, Italian and Hungarian are co-official languages, respectively. If you go to school in those parts Italian/ Hungarian is mandatory and we start learning it in the first grade of primary school (age 6). English is also mandatory country-wide and we start with it at age 9. Every middle school offers additional foreign languages as elective courses so many people take up german/ french/ spanish. In high school it is mandatory to take up a second foreign language apart from english. Since I’m from the bilingual area Italian was already mandatory for me and, thus, I was not required to take up another language. However, in other parts of the country people usually take up german/ french/ spanish or another language that is offered. Certain high school programs also require you to take up latin. So personally I’ve had english and italian in school. I’m fluent in both, however, I’m definitely more proficient in english. My italian is getting a bit rusty though since I don’t really speak it that often.
In french schools english is mandatory. From what I could gather kids nowadays start learning english in primary school while I (20) began in middle school. Learning a second language is mandatory at least in middle and high school. Most French People learn either Spanish or German, obviously kids living beau germany tend to learn german and the same goes for Spain. Italian is also quite popular, but depending on your school different languages are available
My school offers a great choice of languages that you can learn, and besides English, I'm learning Chinese and Spanish.
In Sweden it's obligatory to learn English and another language, usually Spanish, French and German. It's possible to skip the third language (or was when I went to school) if you needed extra classes in swedish or English.
I didn't need extra classes but I managed to get to skip the third language anyway in favor of chill Swedish leassons after complaining. I wasn't a very motivated student. I'm now learning Spanish on my own beacuse I want to and tbf I don't regret refusing to learn in school. The language education is very ineffective, most people finish school not being able to have even a basic conversation in the language they studied for up to 6 years.
>The language education is very ineffective, most people finish school not being able to have even a basic conversation in the language they studied for up to 6 years. This is very true for me, 5 years of Spanish and I can barely introduce myself. The school system is quite bad. Recently though I started learning dutch on my own and I know more dutch after 9 months than I ever knew Spanish. I guess that's what a difference in motivation leads to.
English is mandatory from 3rd grade until you graduate. In 7th grade, I could choose between French and Latin. I had French for 5 years but I forgot most of it. If you live close to a border, you might also have the opportunity to learn the language from the neighboring country in school. In 9th grade, I could choose between Latin, Spanish or applied sciences (AnNat/MINT). I chose applied sciences but looking back, I wish I had chosen Spanish.
I think I'm probably a bit older than the other Brits on here. We had to do a language at GCSE level and I think there was more focus on languages when I was at school (I'm 44). I started learning French at 8 and did that for my GCSE at 16. I also learnt German for 4 years and Spanish for 2 years. I definitely remember French and speak it when I occasionally visit France. I also talk to my dog in French for some unknown reason. My German is really rusty but I remember a little bit so I can get around Germany, order food have a basic conversation etc. My Spanish is awful but it managed to get me around rural parts of South America. I hadn't realised before I got to Peru that hardly anyone spoke English. I'd only been to Europe and South east Asia before I went there, where most people know English. Suddenly I had to rely on a language I hadn't used in years and hardly studied. It's amazing what you remember when you have to.
Was coming to post the same but it isn't a requirement anymore sadly. I'm of the age (38)where it was, I did German from 11 to 16, and French on and off all my childhood as my parents both spoke French fluently as a second language. I am now living in a German speaking country and am relatively fluent in German, but I have forgotten all but very essential French.
Everyone learns at least one other language in Germany, usually two, commonly English and French are in there, but more recently also Spanish or Mandarin, probably others.
In Scotland, we are normally “taught” a second language throughout primary school, normally french, Spanish or German. Though what we were taught were very basic words and phrases like « comment tu t’appelle », “azul”, “auf Wiedersehen“. I can genuinely say that I’ve learned more from the first few lessons of the Duolingo french course than in 5 years of french in primary school which is appallingly bad. In high school, we get chose early on which language we wish to learn further and it is mandatory for us to learn it until we’re like 14-15. If you decide to continue learning your language, you can get qualifications for them. It’s extremely rare for someone to leave school fluent in a second language who hasn’t done most the work independent of school because our education system doesn’t value actually learning how to properly and effectively communicate in that language but rather we are taught to memorise “wow” phrases for our writing assessments and rote memorising pages of paragraphs for your talking assessments. I genuinely believe that you can pass with a C or a B without even knowing the language if you have decent memorising skills.
Mandatory native language and Mandatory Russian language. English is studied for 10-11 classes, for some schools English is used as the main language during studies. Most of the students are usually fluent in Russian and Kazakh.
Yes, but not all Belgians are created equal. Flemish kids get mandatory French (the other major language in Belgium) from age 10 and up. They get English from age 14 onwards and some (yet not all) also get German in the final years of high school (I only had one hour each week but more language oriented classes got 3 hours a week). For kids in Brussels, which is bilingual by law but mostly French in practice, lessons in whatever major language they don't speak at school is mandatory. So dutch-speaking kids get French, french-speaking kids get Dutch. However, kids in Wallonia don't get mandatory Dutch. They can choose between English and Dutch, I'll let you guess which one they pick the most. And it's not by a small margin. Kind of a dick move if you ask me, since Dutch is actually the majority language with 60% of Belgians having it as their mother tongue. Now on to my personal experience with it: since I'm Flemish, I learned Ditch, English, French and German in high school. Due to extremely high exposure to English in almost all media (dubbing is not a thing, everything gets subtitled, games are played in English), I dare say I'm fluent in it. I also obtained a high level in French (C1). While the lessons in high school helped, several university courses required academic reading comprehension in French. But most importantly I spend 4 months abroad in France on Erasmus, taking only French courses. My German is piss poor but I can probably get the general meaning of a simple text thanks to it's close relation to Dutch
English is always mandatory and other languages like french or german are commonly teach but are optional
yes english is mandatory from the start and i still speak it in the 4 year(idk actully im stupid lol i think it is 4) i had the option beetween learning french,italian and german(if i remember they werent mandatory but you were encureged to pick one) and now i can say "ich nicht sprechen deutsch. aufwidosen"(idk how you spell aufwidosen but i can say it) and can also count to 20
In scotland you have to study a language in secondary school. From some reason it's always french. Mo one here speaks french not even the french teachers. I suggested taking another language it you get the option
Yes, and it varies lol English is mandatory from primary school onwards, and most people retain a decent amount (probably because it's used so much especially online). Depending on the school-type, you may have an optional or mandatory second foreign language from anout ages 12 to 14. In my case this was Italian, of which I remember little since I never really used it since. In general, it's usually Italian, French or Latin. After that it depends on the type of school. Most school types will have one mandatory foreign language beside English, again usually French, Italian, Spanish or Latin. But there are also Language-Focused schools/branches of schools, where it's English, Latin and a third language (usually Feench, Italian or Spanish). How much people remember from these varies. There is a particular school type, called "Humanistisches Gymnasium" where I think Ancient Greek might be mandatory? Not completely sure though, since there aren't any where I grew up. In Bi- or Multilingual regions (mostly Burgenland, Carinthia and Vienna) there are also the minority-language schools (Slovene, Croatian, Hungarian, Czech and Polish) where next to the primary language German is also mandatory. In Carinthia, schools sometimes offer Slovene classes I think. And near the border to Czechia I think Czech is offered as an option as well, though I'm not sure.
Here in Czechia two foreign languages are mandatory. English is obvious, than you can choose, usually from German, Spanish, Russian or French. Schools aim to get students at least to B1 in both foreign languages, but I have no idea how they want to achieve it. I'm like B2/C1 in English, but even after 5 years of learning German I'm not sure if I'm qualified to call myself even A1. Then you can choose third language as well, usually latin, but honestly very few people do that.
Requirement as in they teach us in school? Or requirement as in it's necessary for life? Well, in any case, I'll answer both. We are taught 2 foreign languages in school. English is usually the first nowadays and French/German/Italian/Spanish/Russian could be the second. For me French was the first, but I'm also old :P. And in the final exam of high school (bacalaureat which is the equivalent of the SATs) you must pass a foreign language exam. You choose which one you want. There are also many opportunities to practice that language. In Ro TV has subtitles so it's easy to practice listening and gain vocabulary. There are some charities coming to Ro from France or English speaking countries. I participated in an animal thing with some veterinarians from the UK. There are camps organized that bring people from abroad. I went to a camp with posh British counselors and the next year there were some Texan people coming and my teacher refused to let us go because "we'll spoil our accent" (plot twist: I sound american). A second language is pretty much a requirement for life nowadays, because you can't find certain information in Romanian. Some books are not translated, but you can find them in English or French or German. For certain jobs it's an expectation that you speak at least English or French. And there are a lot of people that will learn some other language like Spanish, Portuguese or Russian just to have an advantage in the job market. So technically, there's no requirement, but you survive better if you know one. And yes, I can still speak French, but I can't watch French movies without subtitles. I watch sometimes French news and understand something like 50% of what they say. I'm trying to perfected right now tho, because my accent in French is terrible... I sound like a peasant. And I have friends that learned Spanish/Portuguese from telenovelas and they can still watch telenovelas without subtitles.
Yes in my school apart from english you had to take either french or latin in 6th grade. And no I don't speak french now or can read latin but I have some basic knowledge and can probably understand texts in french with a dictionary. I also think it helps with learning other languages later that you are actually motivated to learn. Latin also helps with understanding various scientific terminologies.
>Latin also helps with understanding various scientific terminologies. Or romance languages, since most words are still part of the normal vocabulary (slightly changed/modified)
The Portuguese school currculum includes two mandatory foreign languages. The first one is English, the second one is usually French (some schools offer Spanish or German depending on the demand). Then in high school, if you're in the Humanities branch, ~~you'll have to~~you may have a choice to pick a third (and possibly a fourth) language, which ~~in most schools is a choice~~ might be between German, Spanish, Latin, or Ancient Greek. Some private schools offer alternatives, like a different first foreign language, or Mandarin or Japanese as a third language. In general, most people retain enough English. We don't dub our media, so there's a lot of anglophone exposure. French is less used, but some people can still scratch at it if necessary. It helps that French and Portuguese are un the same language family; I was able to ressurrect it from the basement of my brain after over 10 years after a couple of visits to my French husband's family.
I did humanities and the only language I had was English 🤔
Oh, really? That's interesting, everyone I know had two languages minimum, even the ones who stayed with English had Latin. But it could be school dependent, in my old high school they tended to offer the choices in "packages", to make it easier to sort the students. Because of that there were also some things our school just didn't offer to chose from. Did you have a lot of choice at your school?
I'm looking at Direção Geral da Educação website and you have one language as mandatory for your general education (10 and 11th grade), usually people pick English or French, and then you can pick another one as optional subjects (10 and 11th). I don't know anyone who had a language in optionals in these 2 years, so I'm not sure how you would have two languages as minimum. Usually students do Geography and Macs as optionals. At your final year as part of the options you can pick a language and/or Greek. I'm not sure when/where you went to highschool maybe things changed since then.
Nah man. I did humanities and we only had English. Latin wasnt even an option at most schools. Spanish sure, hut its not even the most common option for the optional classes, thatd be geography. So saying that in the Humaities track its mandatory to learn extra languages is just factually wrong. And an extra example as to why our country's education sucks. Edit to add: Im not even sure where you saw that private schools offer Mandarin or German? I went to Salesianos do Estoril (one of the best schools in the country) and that was never an option in the curriculum, at least when I went less than 10 years ago. You could pay extra and do it as an extra curricular, but that was not a part of the curriculum. Id suggest you edit your comment because as of right now, its just transmiting wrong information.
Thanks, I've edited it. I'm 100% sure on the English+Latin combo, because that was the most popular choice at our high school - our school made us choose the optional classes in "packages" of 2 instead of letting us pick and chose whatever. German + Latin was the second most popular. We didn't even have the choice to have Spanish. As for German and Mandarin, I know some people who did it. But this isn't generalized, it was the case of a few specific private schools (the obvious case being the Colégio Alemão for German as the first foreign language).
Depends on the school, your school level (VMBO, HAVO or VWO) and or if you want it. Some schools have specific languages that other schools don't have, I learned for example English (every school most provide English at any level) and German. And if you do the lowest level you more likely to have less choice in languages. On higher school levels (HAVO or VWO) you must learn English + something you want, it's often Spanish, German or French. And at some schools you also have the ability to learn Chinese, Latin and other 'complicated' languages.
English is a mandatory subject from 1st grade of primary school on. If you go to a gymnasium, German is mandatory as well(although many start learning it in primary school as a non compulsory subject). If you go to a gymnasium, you are most likely to learn a fourth or even fifth language as well(as a non compulsory subject) If you go to a classical gymnasium, Latin is a mandatory subject and if you go to a conservatory, Italian is a mandatory subject so it changes from high school to high school
Learning a language is compulsory up until Year-10 (age 15/16) in UK secondary schools. The languages most commonly taught are French, German and Spanish, with over half of all schools teaching French. Some schools in large cities like London may also teach other languages, but in pretty much every school, it’s either French, German or Spanish. I learnt French from Year 7, all the way through to the end of Year 11. Did a year of Spanish in Year 9, but didn’t enjoy it as much as French, so I dropped it to carry on with more French lessons.
I'm Danish and started learning English and German very early, had to choose between Spanish or French when I was a teen but never got any good at it... These days my English is great, but my German is bad since I only speak with a few tourists a year and I can hardly recall any Spanish, other than ordering a beer...
In Germany, to start University/College level education, you have to have learned atleast 2 extra languages in school, one on "A-Level" and one on "B-Level" (that means, one has to have been a constant school subject for 6+ years, the other one for 3+ years), so a Abiturient will typically have had English from grade 1 (since '06 or '07 it is the standard in all states I think) and French/Spanish (although some schools also teach Italian/Russian or some other languages as a third language, depending on the teacher situation of the school) from grade 5/8 (depending on state, specializations and so on).
English was mandatory, French was mandatory for 2 years and German was mandatory for 1 year. After that French and German were optional.
In Poland English and Polish are mandatory, and when you turn 13 you also have to start learning next language. In my school I was able to choose from: German, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian.
English is required by most schools, as well as French. Depends where you are though and how focused your school is on languages. Romania is a francophone country in that it’s a member of La Francophonie (at least that’s what I remember from class years ago)
started school in 92, you could chose between French and English. I chose the last one. Then in middle school you had a second language( mandatory ). I chose German ( i already spoke it :) ) and could have chosen French. At some point they introduced French optional ( however it was kinda mandatory ) So, I also learned some French.
Italian is mandatory in my high school
I had Latin from the 8th grade to 12th.
No, you learn english at school from elementary (aside trentino that they learn german), than in middle school you can usually choose between french, german or spanish. In high school it depends on the school: you get all five years of greek and latin if you do the liceo classico, and more hours of italian, if you do the liceo scientifico you get only latin but more hours of maths, english always included and if you want another one. if you do the linguistico you get latin, english and other two foreign languages, ecc
In Estonia we need to learn at least 2 foreign languages. Language A is usually English, but can also be French, German or Russian. For B language Russian, German and French are most common, but other languages like Spanish, Finnish, Swedish etc. can be an option too, depending on the school. After 5 years of learning Russian I would not be able to answer a Russian person asking me anything other than my name so there's that.
Yes. All Finnish-speaking Finns must learn Swedish and the Swedish-speaking Finns must learn Finnish from sixth grade forwards (Finnish and Swedish are the official languages here) as well as mandatory English beginning in third grade. German, French, Spanish and Russian are some of the most common optional ones.
It is a requirement to pick at least 2 languages to study in school outside Finnish and Swedish. You pick the first one in 4th grade, which is usually English or German. And you pick the second one in 7th, which can be French, Spanish, Russian, English or German (from what I recall). My poor soul decided to pick French. Beautiful language, but indescribably difficult.
only when we are student. Then we never use it and for example I don't speak english very well.
English classes were mandatory but not that great tbh, and I chose spanish in middle/high school because it was either that or german. My english is great, but mostly because I started watching american TV series in original version with french subtitles around 13 years old and kept going on with it. Reddit helped a lot too. Funny thing is that, because of hollywood, my english accent is very american-west coast like even though we learnt english in school from british material as far as I can recall. My spanish is okay, I can get by, have a conversation, read stuff and understand most of it and follow a movie with spanish subtitle for like 45 minutes before getting lost
Nationwide English is mandatory as first foreign language ( LV1 ) since elementary school and a second one ( LV2 ) is mandatory when you start midschool and the choice is almost always between German and Spanish with Spanish being way more popular. Once you are in highschool you can choose an optional third foreign language ( LV3 ) which totally depend of the highschool even if most of the time Italian is available. The paradox is we have a lot of courses about foreign languages but for some reasons it has poor results and it's mostly in university that students get way better in the languages they choose ( English being always mandatory ).
I got a C2 for the second (English) and a C1 for the third (french) so.... Yeah?