Languages

Here in the UK languages like French, German and Spanish are the most widely taught in high schools, with Mandarin Chinese, Italian, Latin and Russian (for example) growing but still essentially a unique 'selling point'. I'm not entirely sure which languages take precedence in US schools, but from what I've seen, it's largely similar.

My problem is that French, German and Spanish in particular are of increasingly little practical value. People complain about the majority of native English speakers not knowing another language, when much of the world is learning English; but then, I visited Germany last year, and there were literally two (older) people I met who didn't speak English over the course of a week; I faced a similar situation in France, although less prominently. However, many Asian countries - China, Japan, the Arabic nations - which have huge populations have comparatively few English speakers, and with the ingrained difficulties in learning English/problems with education systems, this isn't likely to change any time soon.

I'm not saying that those 'big three' languages shouldn't be taught, but I have to question their value. Surely it would be better for governments to replace them at the educational forefront with Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic etc...and really, why hasn't this happened already?

First of all then French and Spanish is still spoken in very large portions of the world, but putting that aside, then it is very important to be able to speak the language of your major trade partners /neighboring countries.
This is very important because for most people speaking a second or third language they do not quite get the nuances of the language, which means that they may misunderstand sarcasm or humor. This can be a huge problem for companies trading with other countries where their employees do not speak the language.
I know that japan, china and Russia do a lot of trading, but you have to think about which language will be most useful for your country to have its citizens be able to speak, and I do not belive that Japanese and Chinese will be on the top of that list.

In America our big languages are, like you said, Spanish, German, and French. In my high school we also had Japanese and Latin. Japanese was obviously the most useful in our ever shrinking world, but there was still only obout 16 kids in my senior class in Japanese.

I think the problem is that most people think they wont need a class like Japanese which is a lot more challenging than taking Spanish. Which, if your going to be an accountant or something later in life, is correct. You probably wont need it.
In the global marketplace however, a language like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, or even Russian would be of more use.

Plus, America has borders with French and Spanish speaking countries, Canada and Mexico, respectively. So both of those classes can be of some use here too.

So it probably just goes back to when we only needed to speak the language of our country and its neighbors.

i live in Tijuana, (Mexico)
and i speak English, Spanish & German oh and some Latin.
i learned them all except English just 4 the lulz and it has payed off with flying colours all the time

Also Some schools also offered a form of Chinese. Not sure what type but a old friend of mine took it.

My school only had French, Spanish and German. Also 3 years of French is compulsory in the UK, maybe if had a choice there would have been more people that speak other languages.

Forgive me, but some of you aren't really answering the question: shouldn't we be favouring languages like Chinese or Japanese, which are of more practical use, rather than French, Spanish etc?

A couple of people cited neighbouring countries, but I think most people who are learning languages in schools are looking for them to further career opportunities if anything, not to speak a bit while on holiday. With the nature of modern business and trade, and the prominence of Asia in this, I think most people recognise their prominence; but then, are some people learning languages which they think will be more useful than is true - this all harks back to the question. I'll emphasise what I said: those 'big three' languages may be widely spoken, but the countries with which they are associated are also largely English-speaking; it's brilliant to be able to communicate with people in their native language and there are still those who don't speak English in these countries, but you can still get along fine most of the time without.

Probably, but you know the government, they are retarded after all. If Chinese is the most widely spoken language it does make sense to learn it.

Only if you're really sure you will be speaking it, or have a high probability of doing so. I am going to take my PhD in Hong Kong, so it makes sense for me to learn now, but an ordinary (danish) person would never have to speak a single Chinese word in their life.

I really feel like I grew up in a hick town now. My high school only taught two languages - Spanish and Latin, and Latin is a honors thing, for people who wanted really good grades. It wasn't seen as being of value at all. They discontinued French after my freshman year because the teacher left; they didn't try to get a replacement at all.

Kind of off-topic, but is French really one of the most widely used languages in the world? I didn't think anyone would speak it outside of France. And, you know, parts of Canada.

As an American, it seems to me that we're only concerned with teaching our children Spanish, and that's only because we have a lot of Hispanics and Latinos. Instead of trying to stop illegal immigration, we're apparently embracing the people that jump the border. I guess it's a way of giving up without pissing people off by admitting that we give up.

Concerning the teaching of languages, when it comes to America, I doubt Chinese will ever be required in public schools. The school system's been wallowing in shit for years, and a lot of students just wouldn't be able to learn the language. If the students are having trouble getting high enough math and spelling scores, how horrible are they going to do when it comes to learning a language that is nothing like English?

As for the rest of the world, I really don't know enough about their educational practices and languages used to say much. I'd think that English would be the most widely-taught second language. It would probably be better to know English than Chinese, unless the person was planning to get into business that would involve interacting with Chinese companies.

Have fun with the Chinese since the Chinese have many dialects. If, I remember correctly Mandarian and Cantonese are the main ones. China has the largest economy but its potential has not been reached yet because of almost 2 billion people in China. Can you imagine each one buying a hamburger, from McDonalds, daily.

No

You mean because China and Japan are 2nd and 3rd in terms of GDP? Maybe if you want a more business view of things but people are learning other languages because there are more speakers. But I agree that there should be a general importance in the Asian language, not only because they can be used in advanced countries but they're few of the most hardest languages to learn that is so alienated for English speakers. There's a growing number of non-Asian speakers and wouldn't be bad if there were more. Hell, there are even Asians in America that don't even know their own native tongue.

I also noticed that some people who took classes in Asian countries learn other Asian languages respectively; like in Korean schools people learn Japanese/Chinese and vice versa. Is it a mandatory choice or do people just take it on high demand?

Yeah it is. Half of the African countries have French as an official language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_where_French_is_an_official_language

With any of the Romance languages you have to look at colonies - Wiki reckons about 110 million native and 500 million total (fluent) speakers, making it the fourth most spoken in the world.

Edit: beaten to it, I didn't see the second page. :P Similarly though, German is also surprisingly widely spoken, as are a number of other European languages for the same reasons. The dominance of English through British 'expansion' is the most obvious example.

I believe the languages spoken in a particular country is tied to its history. Lots of independent nations today continue to speak fluently in the language used primarily by their former colonial masters.

For countries with an extremely long history, they have also developed their own unique language.

I live in Sweden and we also have French, German and Spanish as optional languages.

But English is mandatory, it's one of the core subjects.

Well in Hungary (center eurupe if you don't know, check the map, it's a small country) The students mostly can learn english and german (don't know why that, it's sucks, sorry germans) But I thinking on learning spanish, french and maybe chinese and japanese 'cause these are the most used laguages. I can learn languages pretty fast, I got some talent for it. So far I studied oficially english and non-officially some japanese. Well see what will I have from knowing these.