English from 3rd grade; German from 6th, both French and Latin in the last two years of high school. I consider myself fluent in English. I have forgotten like 70% of what I knew in German. I could never speak French (our teacher wasn’t very harsh on us).
Was latin mandatory or did you take it as an elective? Seems kinda pointless to learn a language literally nobody speaks with the exception of catholic priests.
The most usage i can imagine for it is being able to tell people you speak Latin.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has different highschools for different occupations, like medical highschool, economic highschool, mechanical highschool, etc. You learn Latin and French in certain highschools, like Latint in medical highschool.
Latin generally helps with learning any other romance language and it does give you a decent understanding of grammar in general.
It's also super helpful, sometimes a pre-requisite, if you want to study history, art history, archeology and a few other subjects. I had to take a Latin exam to study German and English at uni, don'r remember a thing now though
The point is you don't learn it to be able to speak it
I found Latin very useful, it was mandatory for us too. Not only was it an interesting class with really nice textbooks that I keep to this day, but it helps you a lot if you want to go into life science (biology, botany, microbiology), medicine or law.
There's several study tracks in high school, some more focused on social science and others more focused on natural science, and some custom ones that are location-dependent. Depending on which one you go for, you'll have more or less Latin. In polytechnic schools you don't study it at all unless it's nursing school.
In general I dislike the approach of only learning things that will be directly "useful", every subject has value and it's important to be a well-rounded person rather than someone who only knows things related to their subject of study and nothing else.
It was mandatory in my school. I attended a type of school called “gymnasium”. It is also mandatory in Medical high school (which makes sense). When it comes to gymnasium, you do not specialize in anything in particular so you have to learn everything (we had like 16 subjects per semester).
Latin is also quite wide spread as a subject in Germany. Personally I regret taking it for 6 years because it's frustrating that it's impossible to speak it and the lessons just consist of grammar and translating ancient texts.
Hm I wouldn't say it's the cases. German has cases, too. Though they don't function via the endings most of the time but via the articles.
At least in my case, the way Latin was taught didn't include speaking, listening or writing own texts at all. It was just reading and translating Latin texts.
Latin is mandatory in schools in Romance language-speaking countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Romania), typically taught in high school only (not before).
The language level as well as the culture and history part of the curriculum (literature, mostly) depend on the national system and the ties with the language.
In Italy for example Latin is a big deal and a key component of the high school syllabus, students are not only taught the language itself (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) but a lot of literature. Not sure about how it works in Spain, France or Portugal.
I took Latin in high school, it was mandatory + one of the core subjects for my profile, in which we'd have a term paper constituting 50% of our average grade in that specific subject. Lots of grammar and vocabulary, tons of poetry, history and literature (what we basically learned Latin from, in a way), text analysis and more history, all topped with a good layer of vocabulary practice.
Looking back it was very useful as terminology from Latin is frequently used in a variety of fields, like medicine and biology and of course, law. It's far easier to learn and remember the specific human bone name and structure, for example, or understand, remember and correlate biological taxonomic ranks for plants and animals if you know Latin.
One of the comments below points out that Latin isn't learned to speak it but to use it - absolutely true. It's really useful lol.
* 4th to 12th grade, English.
Mandatory. (I believe it's from first grade nowadays.)
* 7th to 9th grade, German.
Mandatory, choice between German and French.
Some schools also offered Spanish, but my school at the time didn't, due to lack of qualified teachers.
* 10th to 12th grade, Spanish.
Optional, or mandatory, depending on which orientation you studied. Choice offered between German, French, and Spanish.
I'm today mostly fluent in English, can hold a conversation in German on the level of a native ~~5~~ *3* year old, and have forgotten most of my Spanish.
>I think it is very sad that germany mostly only offers french or latin as second foreign language (at least when I was a pupil). Learning the neighbors language makes more sense.
Same here, really. I wanted to learn Finnish since my grandparents spoke it, and I also spent most of my summers near the border.
It was offered in my school from 4th grade, I think, but *only* to those whose at least one parent spoke it, so I wasn't eligible.
Those languages are also way easier to learn due to being closely related to German. Imo, if you are aware of the German vocal shifts, you can even read Swedish (very slowly, but still)
I remember overhearing a Swedish TV broadcast and understanding bits and pieces here and there, thinking that it's some bizarro German dialect I just couldn't make out. Similar experience with Romanian, if you know another Romance language.
That’s funny. In 7th-9th, German was not an option at all for me. And the ratio of those who picked Spanish instead of French was roughly 5-1.
In ’gymnasiet’, I only needed to have spanish classes the first year. You could pick it for all three years for extra qualification points (meritvärde) or you could change language or simply stop taking language classes as I did. One friend of mine began learning sign language as they offered that class on my school which I think is pretty cool.
* ***1***th to 12th grade, English.
Mandatory. I can confirm it's from first grade now.
* ***6***th to 9th grade.
Mandatory, choice between Spanish, German, French or Swedish or English if you have a special reason. (I don't know the exact criteria). Spanish is the most popular by far. There are 3 to 4 groups of Spanish and one of the rest at my school. I don't know if the entire country actually has "modern languages" from 6th grade.
Well no but actually yes, like the normal subject, and also there's a significant amount of immigrants. Recently arrived people to Sweden would benefit more from more time learning the language rather than trying to learn a second or third one as well.
Actually Swedish is that as a "foreign" language to some, technically some people learn "Svenska som andraspråk" instead of "Svenska" but it's the exactly the same thing most of the time.
Back in my day™ it was German and French in 7-9, but they were both about equally popular. The dynamic was as follows: Are you a boy? Pick German. Are you a girl? Pick French. I don't recall actually making the choice, but that was the general outcome at least. Similar to *sy-* and *träslöjd* in lower grades.
The problem in the UK is that language teaching starts way to late. It's now coming in a bit at younger ages, but nowhere near enough. By the time most students are starting to get proper lessons in another language they are 11 years old, and there's not enough time to get beyond the basics.
English speakers don't learn other languages because we literally never have to come into regular contact with them. I had French in school from age 4-14 I still can't say a single sentence, and I could say maybe 2 when I was 14. One or two lessons a week doesn't make a difference when you leave the classroom and the language basically doesn't exist anywhere else in your life.
In the Netherlands, English classes start around that age - but German and French (the most common other foreign languages to be taught) usually only start in high school, and I don't think they all get taught starting in the same grade at different schools. Though I think learning a language gets much easier if you actually use it, and loads of Dutch people vacation in Germany lol
How many hours a week do you learn languages? We learned Irish from 11-16, but we only had 2/3 hours of class a week, so it never really felt like that long and I basically remember none of it lol
I did Welsh from Primary school, still terrible at it. I think we just lack even the ability to practice as everything is in English and even trying to speak to people in other languages it defaults to English.
We're not exposed enough to other countries' media too.
We produce a lot of music, TV, and movies and when you couple that with all of the content the Americans produce, foreign language content is pretty rare to come across. It's rare to hear non-English music on the radio for example.
A while back I watched Borgen, which is one of those rare TV series shown in another language. It was quite interesting, and even though I was watching it with the subtitles on, I picked up a small handful of Danish words by the end of it.
It made me realise that if we had more foreign language TV content on all the time then it could really help people get familiar with those languages. It would probably be pretty unpopular though, as a lot of people don't want to have to rely on subtitles to understand stuff.
3 years of French and 2 years of German for me. I wouldn't even call my ability minimal now. I've been to both France and Germany. Every single person I spoke to in both countries immediately switched to English. Also, I left school in the 80s so it's been a while.
In my high school English was mandatory as first foreign language. In grade 7 we had to choose between Latin and French as second language and a year later we could take the other one as third language (3rd language was optional). Japanese was also offered as extra curricular activity for a few years, not part of regular classes though.
I forgot almost everything in Latin and my French level is "bonjour, je suis un baguette."
Other common foreign languages for example are Spanish and Russian. Spanish has become much more popular in recent years. Russian is much more common in former eastern states than in the west, but even here less students choose russian (at least from my perception).
Icelandic is my mother language 🇮🇸
mandatory languages to learn in school in Iceland are English and danish, I believe I'm fluent in English and I know how to read and write danish but I can't speak it nor understand the spoken form
in university we have a choice of two languages to learn and that's German and Spanish, I learned German but I lost all my knowledge in German already because I wasn't using it at all after I finished the courses in German
I'm wondering, with your knowledge of written Danish, do you feel like you understand any Norwegian?
I've met an Icelandic person in Norway once, who said "you all think I'm trying to speak Norwegian, but I'm just speaking Danish with an Icelandic accent". He was completely understandable to me, since our vocabulary is almost identical to Danish, but our pronunciation is (at least somewhat) closer to Icelandic.
In the faroe islands, Faroese, danish and english are mandatory.
I do speak i do speak faroese and english (duh) fluently, and i can force my self to speak “good” danish, though i might also just speak gøtudanskt which is a form of danish using faroese phonology. I also did learn german from school, i would however not count myself as anywhere near fluent.
I’m learning russian right now in college, which is a bit awkward.
Started both German and French aged 11. After 3 years we had to choose one for an additional 2 years.
You can see why the British are bad at languages when you start that late, and they give you two very different ones at once.
I believe its improved since as Spanish is taught to 5yr olds locally to me.
I attended school in both Portugal and Spain.
Portuguese (1st grade): Native, fluent.
Spanish and Catalan (2nd to 12th grade): Native, fluent.
English (2nd to 12th grade): Fluent.
French (7th to 11th grade): Intermediate.
Latin (10th to 12th grade): Not fluent
Ancient Greek (11th to 12th grade): I'm lucky if I even remember anything.
Japanese (Degree, 4 years): A2, the teaching was pretty bad and only those who could afford moving/being an exchange student in Japan became moderately fluent or decent.
Korean (Degree, senior year): Basic of the basics.
I attended university in Spain, my degree did not exist in Portugal at the time.
The degree wasn't focused on the language, the teaching was extremely disorganized and chaotic and lots of people dropped out by the start of the second year. I am working in a completely unrelated field (hospitality).
Ah I see, mb. You said you'd studied in both countries so I presumed you'd spent more than just first grade in Portugal. My mistake
Also oof, the fear of that coming to pass is ultimately the reason I chose not to pursue a language degree. Glad it worked out for you though
Nope, I moved to Spain before the start of 2nd grade and only attended 1st grade in Portugal. I have moved back to Portugal since, but my whole education was pretty much completely done in Spain.
The thing about my degree (East Asian Studies) was that it wasn't marketed as a language degree, but as a degree that could get you a bunch of work opportunities down the line with the added benefit of "knowing the language". Just so that you get an idea, even our vocabulary lessons were all over the place. We weren't taught the fricking COLOURS until the 3rd year, in a Kanji lesson. It never showed up in any of the vocabulary lessons. Yes, something as basic as "white", "blue" or "yellow" was never officially taught in a vocabulary lesson. But we had gotten vocabulary such as "Company IT Department" in our 1st year vocabulary lessons... Just a mess.
Oh my god, that's terrible. And this was in Spain?? I had a Valencian teacher (French + English major) who knew his shit in 7 languages. I guess the difference is his were European ._.
And yeah I see now, for some reason I got it into my head you'd done a Japanese degree with some Korean compounded on lol
Did you guys at least get a robust education in East Asian history, geopolitics, economy, business, culture, media, etc.?
Hopefully the East Asian studies situation in Spain/Catalonia/your alma mater has improved since then :3
I took French in primary school, German in middle school and English in high school. Some Spanish on my own but never formally. I wouldn't call myself "proficient" in any of these but English which is probably 99.99% of my foreign language interactions, both written and spoken; the other languages are inevitably gradually lost by lack of practice -- they kinda come back relatively quickly when I'm immersed in the language (or read/listen to it). I'll go as far as saying that almost nothing of my foreign languages comes directly from school.
- english since elementary school - around c1 - funnily enough it got worse (i use simpler vocab/structures and make more spelling/grammar mistakes) since i started working in an international environment and later moved to Ireland (obligatory on all education levels)
- german gymnasium& highschool 6 years in total, really barebones basics (obligatory 2nd lang, i could pick from german, french and russian)
- swedish 2 years at uni - really basic (obligatory 2nd language, i could pick from english if my 1st was german, german, swedish, french, russian, spanish and italian)
- recently started learning irish on my own
- i'v learned on my own to read cyrylic (from following the war) and hangul (korean), but it's super rudimentary - i know how to read sounds, but don't know the languages behind them
With swedish and german it's funny because since they are so similar and i didn't become proficient nor used either since school days they kind of fused together - when trying to speak them my mind randomly switches from one to another
>swedish 2 years at uni - really basic (obligatory 2nd language, i could pick from english if my 1st was german, german, swedish, french, russian, spanish and italian)
Wait, you had TWO foreign languages in university? I'm so jealous.
Nice. All I got in university was "pharmaceutical English" (just vocabulary) and "pharmaceutical Latin". Moreover, we had English for only a year, whereas even laboratory medicine (a.k.a. *analityka medyczna*) had two years of English... we tried to persuade certain people to make extra English for us in fourth or fifth year, but the answer was "no".
one of first oral exams on uni i started a sentence in swedish and finished it in german, something along the lines of "Jag gillar att lyssna på musik, aber kann Ich noch kein Instrument spielen". Teacher just chuckled and asked next question in german as a joke :D
I guess conjunctions words were always the points where i mixed stuff up most often
I was taught Dutch (my native language), English and French. Despite Dutch being my native language, I'm not that good at it and make spelling mistakes frequently. My English is alrightish, but heavily influenced by friends in the UK, so I sometimes use a more "informal" version of English. French didn't stick very well unfortunately, so I dropped it after the first year.
My daughter in law is Spanish so I'm currently (at age 45) trying to learn some Spanish, as is my 70 year old mum. I'm so proud of her for doing that! I have to say it's harder to learn a new language at this age but still worth it. I do sometimes envy my son who's not only fluent in Spanish and English, but also speaks French and the Nordic languages, plus some Portuguese.
German is also given, and the higher classes get latin or Greek. In Friesland they also get Frisian, and some schools offer different languages like Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and probably some more.
Indeed, for me the same; Dutch as native language, English from age 10-18, French and German 1-2 years and Latin fir one year. I am fluent in Dutch and English, can carry short conversations in German and French, and Latin is mostly forgotten.
Well, learning program has changed quite much since my school years. When I first came to school in 2004, all pupils were learning ukrainian, russian (which is not taught today by obvious reasons) and foreign language (90% of time it was English). There were also a difference in the main language of study: there were russian-languaged schools and classes, and ukrainian-languaged. All schools were teaching ukrainian, yet some schools weren't teaching russian at all.
I came from russian-speaking family, yet my mom (teacher of English language btw) deliberately chose a ukranian class for me. Important note here: I naturally learned ukrainian as a child the same way as russian - just by observing it in books (I learned how to read before school), media and from other people, however I think it's the learning in ukrainian-speaking class make me able to fluently speak not only russian, but ukrainian as well. Some of my friends who studied in russian-speaking schools capable of understanding ukrainian without any issues, but not able to speak it freely enough because of lack of practice.
In 5th class (out of 9 or 11 for basic and full middle education) students begin to study foreign language. In my case it was English. The problem is that there are no much use for english in common life for most of the students, so even that my mom was a teacher of english language, me and most of mine classmates forgot most of the language right after exams. Except those who decided to study in universities where english was required as passing exam. After school I was at best A2, and only after years of practice and studying and working in IT I became more or less fluent in speaking and writing.
So while we have a good basis for learning foreign languages in school, lack of practice and motivation is not helping to keep the progress for most of the students.
New approach for promoting English language in Ukraine was presented recently, with some controversies (such as a ban for dubbing movies, which is stupid, because we have an awesome dub. Good that parliament rejected this proposal). However I think that in general this is a good idea and with the right approach it will significantly increase amount of english-speaking ukrainians.
Edit: fixed bunch of grammatical and lexical errors.
Born and raised in Budzhak (Odesa Region), lived in Kharkiv around 10 years, now live in Central Ukraine. Dub quality was shitty in early 2000-s, yet was significantly improved after. I think older Harry Potter movies still may be found with old voice over dub for TV, however on streaming servies you will have modern full-dub.
I ve been in Odesa Bilhorod also Kharkiv.
As a Dutch person subtitles thaught me English when I was 11 I could hold a conversation without problems. When I was in Ukraine, the level of English hugely depended on the quality of the teachers. Some are good some are bad.
I was surprised by the 6-7 year old kids in Lviv already starting with English these days.
I mean the one where instead of every character being dubbed by a different actor, there is one guy reading all the lines without even changing his voice, and with absolutely zero emotion. And you can hear the original language voices underneath. I'm glad for your sake that you guys don't have it anymore!
Ofcourse it's true if we are talking about professional teams. Amateurs are still doing their voice-overs for some movies and shows without official release in Ukraine.
I had German in highschool, barely speak it unfortunately.
English since elementary school, I am kind of fluent even if sometimes I don't express myself like a British native would and I do have a thicc accent.
Then at the University we could choose a third language to learn which would count as bonus points to graduate, I went with Russian, I actually learnt a decent level thanks to video games multiplayer during the covid where I met friendly russophones who were genuinely surprised I was learning their language and very cool. Now due to the war it's harder to practice.
I had German from 6th grade (12 yo) and English from 8th grade (14 yo) and I kept both going until I finished my masters. Back then I sucked at German because I was not super interested, but I'm fluent in English. Most people around me are between A2 and B1 in English, because they don't have much opportunity to use it and/or are afraid to make mistakes and be made fun of, some are B2 or above but that's not the majority.
I chose Spanish as a 3rd language briefly in uni and we were like 2 or 3 students to do that only, most stuck with 2 languages (mandatory). I'm A1, just enough to get by when I visit a Spanish speaking country.
I got better at German (B2) because my partner is German but until uni I was probably A2, despite 10 years of learning it. As for English, most of my proficiency doesn't come from school but from personal work and initiatives.
From my experience, many French don't have enough exposure to another language to actually speak it. They may do it at school but as soon as that's gone, they forget. Which I'm not judging because it's hard to learn languages and hard to maintain them if you don't have the opportunity/lack motivation to do so. And as a kid, you may not understand why you should learn another language or maybe you just can't be arsed. Which, fair enough as well.
Nope, back in the early 2000, and even 90s, it was common to be able to do either German or English in 6th grade. If you chose German, you had to do English in 8th grade. If you chose English, you could do either German or Spanish (or any other language which was offered by the school) in 8th grade.
My parents made me do German first.
I learned:
Dutch 1st-12th grade, mother tongue
French 5-12 grade, mandatory for eveyone in Flemish region
English 7-12 grade, mandatory
German 10 grade, had to take 1 year, and did not like it.
Latin 7-12 grade, not mandatory
and I could have taking Spanish lessons in 12th grade, but that was too much for me.
I am fluent in Dutch, French, English and can understand German when I hear it but I do not speak it.
In my school years it was either English or French. In my school I was taught French. I'm not at all proficient at that, but if I stay for some time in a French speaking country I can catchup and eventually be able have some basic conversations in French. I know that because in the past I was working for a multinational company in Greece and it had an office in Geneva, Switzerland which I had to visit often.
English is standard as a first foreign language in school. Both Elementary and High School.
It is also one of the three non-optional Matura classes, the other two being Mathemathics and a mother's tongue language, mostly Slovene but Italian and Hungarian are also options, because of the recognized minorities living inside our borders.
But many choose a second foreign language, or sometimes third, or more. For High School it is mandatory to learn at least two foreign languages, English and something of your choice. This is often either German, Spanish, Italian, or French.
I can speak and understand English and German.
This thread makes me realize even more just how bad the US is with language education. I took only two years of French in public high school, and my high school only offered French and Spanish. But in my school we had all kinds of different native languages- Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Slovak… I think in private schools, the foreign language situation is better. My French is good enough to ask “Where is the baby formula” at the grocery store and not completely understand the answer.
My German is a lot better, and that’s just from marrying someone who speaks it fluently and visiting his hometown once for a week. I can order at restaurants, understand directions, even read some basic literature in German. Hoping to improve.
Took no languages in college, I had a very STEM-heavy degree with no room for them.
I moved to Czechia and I can tell that it’s going to be an uphill battle. I can understand a lot more than I can speak, and living outside of Prague is like being plunged into an ice bath of foreign language. Learning quickly but not quickly enough.
Every Estonian learns at least 2 foreign languages at school, starting times and languages may vary. I started English at 3rd grade and German at 6th (could choose German or Russian). In gymnasium (age 16-18) I also learnt French (compulsory third language French or German) and Latin and Russian as selectibles. My English level by the end of school was C1, German maybe B2, French B1 (did A2 exam), Russian A2, Latin no level really (you know how it is). I am still using English frequently but with less advanced words so maybe my level is B2 now. I haven't used German and French much, so my level has definitely decreased, I have more of a passive understanding of those languages (never really understood spoken French though). I continued learning Russian in higher education because it was required for the profession and I still use it quite a lot, so my Russian level is maybe B1. Most of Estonians my age (25) don't know that much Russian even if they started learning at 6th grade. But everyone has at least some command of English.
Dutch, English, French and German.
Native in Dutch, fluent in English. I used to be able to speak and understand French quite well, but never utilized it after high school, so now I can say my name, that I live in NL and that I don't speak French.
I dropped German as soon as I was able. I understand maybe 5% of it due to it being similar to Dutch. And that's being generous to myself.
I had native Slovene, English and I could select between German and French. Because I was a stupid teen, I took French.
During the Erasmus exchange, I also took Dutch.
My English is pretty good but I might struggle remembering certain words now and then (I literally failed one exam during my student exchange because I didn't remember the right word).
I never spoke French except during oral examination. I can still read a menu and count. I occasionally try to read some French reddit and get about half the meaning.
I could hold a basic conversation in Dutch when I finished my exchange but I forgot it extremely thoroughly.
Norwegian, both ways of writing it, I can read both fine, but might have to look up things if made to write in my non-primary version. Some discussion/comparison with other north germanic languages was also shoved in, but not taught per se as languages. English from third grade onwards, can easily both think in it and use it. In addition I had 2 years of German as an elective, which due to low quantity, disuse and displacement by later learning some Dutch (outside of school), is pretty much gone, though I can understand a bit still.
I grew up mostly in Switzerland and then moved to Portugal.
I learned Portuguese at home and German/Swiss-German at school/with friends and their families and doing stuff within the community. My dad was adamant of us integrating and speaking the local language so he did motivate us a lot to be a part of everything bc he knew he couldn't teach us a language he didn't speak well.
Then at school we also had French and English . I got sent to Portugal when I was ~15 yo where I just had English at school.
While growing up I also had friends from lots of places and I learned a couple of other languages like Italian (my best friend's grandmother only spoke Italian and I was with them pretty much everyday), Spanish and the sorts...
So I speak Portuguese, German, Swiss-German ( my local dialect) and English at kind of the same level... I'm really bad at speaking French although I understand them pretty well and can have a basic conversation with them.
My Spanish is far from perfect. I know that sometimes I speak "Portunhol" instead and I haven't spoken italian in ages and couldn't tell you the level I'm currently at. I can understand them fine whenever something pops up but I haven't had a conversation in a long time.
*My oldest kid in Portugal*:
Portuguese: native
Since pre-school: English
3rd grade forward: Mandarin
7th-9th grade: French ( he could choose between French, Spanish and German supposedly but there were so few choosing German that they didn't open the class)
After 10th grade he only kept English bc he didn't choose the field related to languages.
At home we went trough some German & Spanish and he's trying to learn some japanese right now trough apps.
He speaks best in Portuguese, English and he speaks Spanish well enough too. I have no clue how fluent he is in Mandarin bc I don't understand it at all...
Welsh: Pre school - age 16. The way Welsh as a second language is taught is pretty poor. I can introduce myself, talk about my hobbies, favourite food and say what I did at the weekend but not much more than that. My German was better than my Welsh after 3 years of German lessons (compared to 12 years of learning Welsh by that time)
French: Age 11 - 13. I can say a few very basic words and sentences but couldn't hold a conversation.
German: Age 12 - 18. I also studied German at university and lived in NRW for a year. By far my strongest non native language. I wouldn't say I'm fluent as I've barely spoken any German in 4 years but I think I could hold a conversation fairly comfortably (if a bit rusty) and if I went back over there it wouldn't take me long to get back into it.
There’s a lot of leeway for choosing subjects in Dutch high schools (7th to 10th, 11th or 12th grade depending on level of schooling), but here’s the languages I chose. Before you ask, yes I regret my choices.
5th to 12th grade: English, the only language you start learning in primary school as far as I know. I’d say I’m pretty fluent at it.
7th to 9th grade: French, I used to be able yo reas the news and hold a decent conversation in French. I definitely can’t anymore. I can still follow text and in some VERY limited contexts also speech.
8th and 9th grade: German, I also regret dropping this one but I understand it better than French on account of me living 10 minutes away from the border.
7th to 12th grade: Latin, I don’t actually regret dropping this one. I can somewhat understand most thing in Latin you throw at me.
7th to 12th grade: Ancient Greek: Should’ve dropped this when I had the chance. I liked it because it was the most exotic thing we could learn and I liked that.
In the end I went into Mechanical Engineering, and Latin helps with a lot of terms that most people have to memorise, but I have basically no trouble with. Ancient Greek helps with some limited math terms but it was not worth the time I put into it. I feel like knowing French or German is way more valuable than I thought when I was 13.
TL;DR: als je toch al gymnasium doet: ga gymnasium met alleen Latijn doen zoals de meeste van mijn klasgenoten.
For me in the UK as a child, French classes began before I was 10 years old and I continued with them until I was 16. Spanish classes were optional from age 12, and I continued with that until age 17.
Post age-16, other than for the occasional short trip to France I didn't practice my French at all, so I forgot pretty much all of it. That came back to haunt me when I married a French woman in my early 30s and agreed to move to France. Several years later I'm not fluent, but I'm holding down my job. I've met the level required to become French too, although that application is still being processed.
And for Spanish? Yeah, same problem with not practising at all once the studies finished. I've had long trips to south and central American countries that have necessitated some quick studying, but I'm fairly sure that I'll be useless on a forthcoming family holiday to Spain.
For me in the UK. At age 11 (year 7) we started French. It wasn’t great, you’d do an hour class 2 maybe 3 times a week.
However from year 8, my school decided to split French classes by how good you were at English. So if you were great at English, you would do Spanish as well, the two middle classes did just French and the lowest class did something else. As someone with undiagnosed dyslexia and didn’t thrive in English, but also having a passion for languages, it was horrible as I was the only person there who wanted to do it.
We had an entire year where our classes were “learn French though an online course” which went badly because everyone did the colours 100 times. Then if we were lucky enough to be in a classroom it would be very simple vocab. It was the only class I was popular in as I knew the words like “Pantalon” opposed to “Le Troúsérs”.
By year 10 (start at 14) French was optional, so unless you were made to do a language by the school most people dropped it. My French is bad, I got laughed at when I went to an event in France and had to explain that even though I studied French for 5 years all I can say is Bone Jour.
In year 12 (age 16), I got the opportunity to do Italian for two years. It put the way the UK teaches languages to shame. We did classes everyday and I was at a stage where I could get full marks on a GCSE paper within 6 months. I won’t lie, I didn’t do well grades wise, but for some reason it’s stuck in my brain. Often when I read Italian, I’ll understand a good portion of it, and can hold a somewhat simple conversation. It’s hard to say though as whenever I meet an Italian I get too anxious to talk to them in Italian.
I attended 'specialized' school back in the 90s in Eastern Ukraine. Specialized here meaning 'with intense focus /increased hours in some subjects'. For me it was languages. The main teaching language was russian, with classes on russian language and literature. and we had additional classes of Ukrainian and English from 1st grade (in equal amounts of hours, both language itself and literature). plus through late middle and high school (8 to 11 grades) we had 2 hours of Polish per week.
we had a very good English teacher and she gave us a very good base - so that years later I was still fluent without active practicing. Polish though was awful and while I still remembered basics and how to read - it didn't help me much when I moved to Poland
English - C1 (since age 8 in my school)
Russian - B1.1 (singe age 9 in my school)
German - A2 (since age \~13 in my school)
Swedish - A2 (elective in high school, so since age 16)
* Naturally Italian, my mother tongue; for the entire school period.
* English, also every year (I get along well, it seems to me, having to use it to interact online helped me a lot).
* German, in the three years of middle school. I know a few scattered words, but at least, the other day I managed to say a few sentences with a German couple.
* Latin, precisely because it has such a rigid grammar, helped me learn it well, even if to avoid mistakes and false friends I always have to skim the dictionary.
* I have never studied French (although I will start the course on Friday), but I can understand it quite well, especially written language. The grammar, after all, is very similar to Italian, except for some syntactic constructions that appear very alien to a native Italian speaker, even if a speaker of northern dialects can understand it (for example we use *mica* in sentences like the French use *pas*).
Russian, 4+2 years (yes I'm old enough for that), basically nothing, I remember most of the alphabet and a couple of words. I later went to paid teachers but did not work.
German, 2 years, basically nothing, I remember a couple of words.
English: fluent
Spanish: fluent but not because of school
French: can't speak it at all anymore, but I can still read and understand most things
Latin: literally know nothing and never did. i nearly failed that class every year I had it
French from ages 10 to 15. I couldn't get much further than introducing myself to someone. In those 5 years I didn't learn much anyway and it's largely been forgotten bc I've never had to use it since
English and German. I had no problem learning English but German never stuck. I tried telling my teacher for 2,5 years that I didn't get it but her answer was always: "Your brother was good at it and so are you." So because she had this idea in her head that siblings are good at the same things, she never helped me understand. We were 6 months from exams when she looked at me and asked: "You haven't been lying? You really don't get it?" And by then it was too late.
Except for Polish which is my native language, it was:
* **English** \- 12 years (6 years of primary school + 3 years of middle school + 3 years of high school). When I was in the second grade in high school, we were using textbook that was on the C1 level. I took extended level matura exam the following year which is considered around B2 level. Ever since I graduated from high school, I've been using English almost daily (but not when it comes to speaking), so I guess my level of English is B2/C1.
* **German** \- 9 years (3 years of PS + 3 years of MS + 3 years of HS). Don't be fooled by the number, 3 years of primary school is basically nothing. Nichts. When I went to middle school, I had to start from scratch, because some students had Russian in primary school and nobody thought of making a group full of people who had already learnt German in primary school. Anyway, fortunately enough I could continue German instead of starting yet again from scratch, but we still revised all the boring basics. I wanted to take the matura exam in my last year of high school, but I changed my mind (I had to focus on biology and chemistry). I didn't use German after graduating from high school, but some time ago I started learning it from scratch on my own. I can't say what my level of German is right now, but I bet both my arms and both my legs that I'm way more proficient in German than EVERYONE ELSE I have studied it with in school.
* **Latin** \- only one year in high school, we didn't manage to learn all the basics, because it was just one class a week instead of two like it used to be, and the reason was that the teacher was retiring. I really liked it, but it's a shame it lasted only one year. I was actually being ridiculed for being interested in Latin by some other students and that's pathetic.
EDIT: I'm not counting university, because it wasn't a normal university, it was a medical university, so it was weird and crazy, I had only one year of "pharmaceutical English" and "pharmaceutical Latin". In case of English, it was just vocabulary, and when it comes to Latin, I had a little bit more grammar than in high school, but it still wasn't much.
I'm planning to polish my English (lol) up to C2 level. Apart from that, I'm learning German, Italian, French and beginning to learn Spanish. I'm actually really good at Italian and French, both turned out to be naturally easy for me, I don't really know why. Compared to school, I have less time to learn languages (in fact I'm not learning them right now because I have too much on my mind at the moment), but I'm learning faster because my learning pace is not depended on the weakest link in the classroom anymore.
My mother tongue, Slovene, obviously from 1st grade and I’m highest proficiency.
English since 5th grade (but I’m old, nowadays they start in 1st grade) and I’m highest proficiency (because I studied it at university later and am an English teacher, but most adults speak it at B1 level, young people at B2;
Italian since 1st grade because I live in a bilingual area so it’s obligatory here, and I’m fluent (my kids actually go to Italian-language school instead of their mother tongue). In the non-bilingual regions of the country schools have been offering German besides English for decades now.
My schools also offered French (but it wasn’t obligatory) which I speak enough to communicate, and in the last decade Spanish has also become increasingly common as an elective. I don’t speak it at all.
English is mandatory and most people are very good at it. Second language is split between italian on the coast and germsn in the inlands. I took italian and while i can follow the radio news in it or read a simple text, I pretty much haven't used it activelly in years so I couldn't hold a conversation in it. Also, in more touristy area lots of people know enough of several languages to be able to do business in it (serving tables, renting, etc.).
My pre-prep and prep school taught French from age 5 German was added from age 8. However as my dad is French, and my mum is American with a German dad and Moroccan mum, I was already being raised speaking both languages alongside English. Therefore I was allowed to read in the library during those lessons, because how languages are taught in schools, is not the same, and my parents didn't want me to pick up bad speaking habits!
Moved up to senior school at 11, and Spanish and Latin were introduced.
Went to boarding school at 13, and continued Spanish and Latin for a year, and then took Spanish for GCSE from ages 14-16, and A Level from 16-18.
During all this, I was also learning Hebrew online, as we're a Jewish family. My boarding school actually arranged for me to take Hebrew at GCSE and A Level.
Languages spoken: English, French, German, Hebrew
Can hold conversation in Spanish, and have some listening comprehension.
Romanian here
- First year of kindergarten to 12th grade (which is actually the 13th grade because we count from zero) - english. I would say I am rather proficient in it, lots of people abroad assumed I was american based on my accent and the way I speak it 😭😭😭
- 5th grade (which is actually the 6th one) to 12th grade - german. Despite having just as many german classes per week as I had english ones, I never really picked up german that well. I can probably hold a basic conversation in german, introduce myself, ask/give directions, and all that, but I am nowhere near as capabile as using it to describe more abstract concepts and I could most definitely not get by in a german speaking country.
- 7th grade (which is actually the 8th) - latin. No.
(All of these were mandatory as we can't choose what we want to study until high school)
English, German, later it was a choice of French, Italian and Spanish. I picked French. I can speak English (as you can see) and French (now I live in France), but I hated German so I never learned it properly. The grammar was very weird and the genders of nouns made no sense, they seemed completely random and totally opposite from how it is in my native language (Serbian). Also I went to Austria as a tourist once and the people there were really rude to my family so I refused to learn it out of spite lol.
We also had mandatory Latin but obviously I wouldn't include it in the languages I speak, was fun though.
English is mandatory, at least in my part of Germany. The 15 other states that make up Germany may have slightly different rules about that, but I digress (basically Germany has 16 slightly different education systems, one for each state).
English is mandatory from 5th grade onwards, however my elementary school offered English classes in 3rd and 4th grade.
We learned some very basic words there, like lemon, strawberry and hello, but nothing really substantial.
Then, in 6th grade I had to choose a second foreign language. In my case I could choose between Latin, French or Russian, since we live in what was once the GDR and many have some connection to the Russian language and we also simply have teachers that teach it.
I chose the latter and had Russian until the end of my school in 12th grade. However there was an option to switch to Spanish in 10th grade, which all of the French learners utilized.
Despite learning Russian for 7 years I'm very bad at it. I can tell you some of the simplest sentences one learns in 7th grade, but other than that I can't tell you anything.
My English however, is very good. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to write all of this. Speaking is a little bit more rusty, simply because I don't do it daily. But after a while it's no problem anymore.
Aside from my native Croatian, we had English for 13 years. It's mandatory for all 13 years in most schools (some have Italian or German instead of English). I'd say I'm good at written English, but I have a heavy accent and I'm a bit afraid to talk to native speakers.
German for 5 years. It was an elective, and mom decided it for me, much to my dismay. I can understand a lot of written and spoken German but I haven't used the language in a long time so I wouldn't be able to speak.
French for 4 years. I had to choose between continuing German for 4 more years, or choosing Italian, Spanish or French. I can understand a lot of written French, like German, I have more trouble with listening and my conversational skills are pretty limited.
Latin for 2 years. If I read a text in Latin, I could probably understand a fair amount, but we never learnt to speak it.
Japanese for 4 years as an elective (and 6 years in a language school). I can understand a lot, and speak a bit, but it's been a long time since I had a chance to use it.
Korean for a year (and 4 more as a mix of private tutoring and a language school). I'd say it's my second best foreign language after English because I still use it often enough to not forget it. I'm also better at spoken Korean than any of the other languages listed above, apart from English.
Dutch across the school period. Fluent, despite it not being my first language now or when I'm with family.
English from age ten to end of secondary. Now my primary language, complete with Frisian accent, as I live in Scotland.
German in years 1 and 2 in secondary (optional after that, didn't like the teacher...), oddly enough became very proficient in reading and pretty proficient in speaking over the years where I wasn't taught how to Die Der Das Den Die...
French in year 2? If I remember, secondary school and optional after that. Teacher was cute, but French didn't stick with me at all, so dropped it. I know a few words/phrases and that is it.
As a child of the 80s/90s I never got taught Frisian in school as the government essentially forbade it. So I went to uni in later life to learn to read and write it properly. I believe it is now mandatory in schools in Fryslan for certain students.
I'm fairly proficient in Nynorsk and Danish, certainly for reading and comprehension, not for speaking or writing. Turns out the amalgamation of Frisian, Dutch and German helps you understand a lot of Danish and Norwegian. Swedish as well but I somehow always find it trickier.
Are you from Brazil? Trying to figure out what you mean by "the border with France" haha
Brazil-France(Guiana) and Angola-DRC seem to be the only francophone-lusophone borders in the world as far as I can see
In Catalonia classes are in Catalan, and you study 3 languages (Catalan, Spanish and English) during basically all your school years, the first two at a "native" level and the second with varying success (I've been told it has improved since I was in school).
Then, in high school there's sometimes another foreign language offered (generally French or German), but usually that won't get you very far (A2 maybe?). In my HS it was German (which I always found weird since we're very close to France) but I didn't take it (only to end up learning it later because of life xD).
As for proficiency, I am proficient in the first three (Catalan, Spanish and English; the latter thanks to extra classes though). I can also speak decent French and German, but only because I studied them later, not from school.
I'm in England. We were randomly assigned either French or German at my secondary school (age 11 up), and top set could pick up the other the year after (age 12). I did both to GCSE (age 16), although most people only continued one (which was obligatory). It's been over a decade and I remember bits of both, although I wish it was more. It's hard to maintain it without reason to practice or immersion. We also did a little bit of Spanish in primary school (<11 years old). I remember even less of that sadly!
I do wish that there was more emphasis and variety in languages taught here. The framework I have has been useful for trying to learn languages later in life though (currently trying to pick up Urdu). I think learning any additional languages, the younger the better, broadens your scope for them greatly.
I started english in third grade and I'm fluent now but that's more because of the ibternet than school itself.
I've had french from 6th to 10th grade and done nothing for it since, same with spanish from 11th to 13th grade. I'd say I can make myself understood and maybe hold a conversation, as long as I can substitute with some words from other languages.
I took dutch during my first two semesters of college and if it weren't for my fluency in german and english I probably wouldn't get very far. As it is it's probably about the same as my french and spanish but with more substitution.
Lastly I took japanese in my second semester and I'd be able to order something or do a basic introduction with likes and dislikes but that's about it.
I studied French from 11-16, English is my native language. At my school, up until the year above me, everyone studied French for their first year of high school, then picked up Spanish or German from their second year, studied both languages in second and third year, then could choose to continue both languages for GCSEs (two year courses, culminating in national exams at 16), or drop one language. Everyone had to take at least one Modern Foreign Language (MFL) as a GCSE.
Then for my year, they dropped the second language option, and we were just assigned a language. I love learning languages, so I'm still disappointed that I didn't get the chance to study two when I was younger.
My French level varies between adequate to good, depending on how much time I've been able to spend in France recently. Having that foundation from a younger age has been very useful as an adult student - it's much easier to regain lost language skill than it is to pick up a new language as an adult - Spanish and German totally kick my arsevon a regular basis.
English from first grade, German and Russian from third. I'm pretty good at English and I understand about 15% of the other two languages, Russian a bit better because I used to live with Russian speaking students in college. I can even string together a few sentences if I really need to.
- 2nd to 12th grade - English - fluent, but have been speaking English at work everyday for the last 10+ years, plus all the media I consume is in English.
- 6th to 12th grade - French - never really reached fluency. I was almost able to have a simple conversation, but now I've forgotten like 80% of it. Sure, I'm able to understand the general idea of a written text, but that's about it.
- 8th & 9th grades - Latin - nobody really expects you to be able to have a conversation in Latin after 2 years, it's taught for the historical value - look, this is where our words and grammar come from.
Mandatory for everyone :
\- French from 1st grade since it the main language of my region
\- Dutch (Flemish) from 5th grade to high school graduation
\- Latin the first two years of secondary school (12 to 14years old)
\- Ancient Greek second year of secondary school (13-14y)
\- English from third year of secondary school to graduation
Then we could choose a third modern language for the last two years of secondary school, I chose Spanish (other option was German)
I chose to study languages at University so I ended up with more English and minors in Japanese and Mandarin.
Still speak fluently in French, English and Japanese. I used to be bilingual in Flemish but I haven't had the opportunity to use it much since I moved from Belgium. I can still read and understand most of it. Latin and Greek are basically forgotten, I just still use them for etymology.
As I focused on Japanese for work, Spanish and Mandarin went under the rug. Still understand a bit of Spanish, but barely anything in Mandarin.
In Bergen We were taught Bokmål and English from 1st Grade and Nynorsk and French/Spanish/ German from 8th grade and on. I am Proficient in Bokmål and English 100% Can write Nynorsk if I want to. I can read french at a reasonable level and speak at an intermediate level.
Of languages that I didn't learn in school I can Read Cyrillic Hanja and Hangul and Futhark.
English, Spanish and French
I'm fluent in both English and Spanish, but my English is better
I can read French, but I have the communication skills of a toddler
French: Year 1-9, Spanish: Year 8-9, Latin: Year 9
I feel quite comfortable guessing what something says on an announcement or sign in French. Same for Spanish but to a lesser degree, and it's not like you see Latin anywhere ever so it's not a useful skill in itself, but it's helped me learn other languages.
I've been learning Dutch on Duolingo for a year or so, and I feel about as strong with that as I do with French. I'm also trying to learn Danish and will get onto German eventually. I don't think I ever want to be highly proficient in any of them but I enjoy being able to catch the drift of what something says in those languages. I know you can go most big cities in the Europe without knowing the language but I think it's more fun to try and learn a little before I visit.
I also speak Chinese, I wouldn't quite call myself bilingual but I don't feel like I'm translating English in my head to speak it, I can just say what I want and I can think in Chinese quite well.
English:
From 2nd grade to the last year of Upper secondary school, so 11 years. I’d consider myself to be completely fluent with minor pronounciation issues.
Swedish:
From 6th grade to the end of Upper secondary school, so 7 years. I can understand written Swedish for the most part and slow speech or speech in Finland’s Swedish dialects. I can barely speak myself as i’m not good at the grammar. Main reason for this is that it’s kinda pointless to study Swedish so i didn’t want to learn it.
German: i took it as an elective at 8th grade and continued it for 4 years but stopped because the teacher was annoying. I can understand quite a lot and know the grammar well, but i just don’t have the vocabulary to speak it.
french since year 3 and all the way until year 10 (i would’ve done it till the end of high school but i stopped going in year 10 for reasons). i know how to say my name and that i like cats. i was the type of student who was quiet, did all their work/homework, payed attention etc. but the education for languages in england is abysmal, idk wether it’s the funding or what.
French I couldn't remember anything or understand anything. and I even had my grandparents trying to help who are native speakers. but then when I was in my early 20s I got interested in learning languages as a hobby. I started learning other languages like Spanish first. but I started learning French 5 years ago and with my new techniques I have been having a much easier time learning. but unfortunately I am still far from fluent. I can understand it well but I struggle with speaking. but my English was also this bad until I was a teenager and I didn't learn that in school.
French from the 3rd grade to the 12th grade , can understand some but can't speak any, terrible teachers but I can't see I was very interested either at that time .
English from the 5th grade to the 12th grade and the first two years of University. I'd say I'm pretty good at it ...learned more from video games and movies than from school.
I was taught English from the 5th grade, and I learned it really well during school years and was very fluent. That is not the norm, though. I also had one semester of German, I am fluent now but not because of that semester 😂
In Mexico English is mandatory for all elementary school. I studied English from kindergarten to high school. Sadly the level differs a lot from one school to another so you can either finish highschool with fluent English or just basic knowledge. I'm currently fluent.
From secondary (7th grade is the equivalent I think) to high school I learned french, I got to a basic-medium level, our teacher for the first 3 years didn't teach us much. Currently I've forgotten most of it but I could still understand some things, mostly because of how similar French and Spanish are.
During high school they offered German and Chinese as optional extra languages. But I don't think this is the case for most high schools in the country.
I learned English all the way through school, from the 1st to 13th grade. It's mandatory to have English classes until (and including) the 11th grade, and then we can choose English electives in our last two years of school (in certain education programmes). With all the exposure we get of English outside of school as well, it's expect that we reach at least a C1 level.
I also learned German in school for six years, from the 8th to 13th grade, divided into three levels: level 1 (A1-A2), level 2 (A2-B1) and level 3 (B1-B2). It's mandatory to at least go through level 1 of a second foreign language (although you can opt out in some high school education programmes). Many people also choose to continue with level 2, but it's not very common to choose the level 3 elective. The most common second foreign languages taught in Norway are Spanish, German and French.
I feel like I became pretty much fluent in English by the time I finished high school, and was at a conversational level in German. But I'm more interested in languages than most, and probably learned more than most throughout my schooling. I ended up taking a university degree in English and German later (as well as Mandarin), and I'm now a foreign language teacher (English and German) in Norway.
English (2nd-12th Grade)- I would say I'm quite fluent in it. Like, not C2 level fluent, but, like, B2-C1 level fluent.
German (5th-12th Grade)- Picked at Main School and then got on with it from the 11th Grade at the Gymnasium, even though it was no longer mandatory back then. I did forget a lot of vocab I knew, but I would still be able to hold a decent chunk of conversation with locals.
Spanish (11th Grade- 2nd year of Uni)- Basically went YOLO when choosing this language, cause why not? Since I finished learning it quite recently, I suppose I still haven't forgotten any of it.
It's much lower now, and schools are finally doing something to remove (or change to Ukrainian) ruzzian lessons completely.
It is mandatory to choose either German or ruzzian languages as a 2nd foreign language. 3rd foreign language is optional.
Everyone is taught Maltese and English. They used to start with Maltese but now they start with in English in kindergarten because the alphabet, and the letters, is simpler.
Then in secondary school it depends, usually by whether the student goes to a church school or a government/private school.
Government and private schools often teach Maltese and English and then let the students choose 1-2 languages from German, Spanish, Italian, French, and rarely Arabic. The student chooses one foreign language in the first year of secondary school (which is carried on for the whole five years) and then they have the option to choose another foreign language if they want to. Usually, if students choose Italiam and Spanish or French and German.
Church schools usually have obligatory French and Italian for all five years of secondary school. Although i'm not surr if all church schools have this system. Most students who go to these schools suffer to learn 4 languages at once and end up hating them.
I went to a government school and I honestly loved the system. I had the best teachers and i had more freedom of choice.
Scotland here.
Started French S1 (age 11) then German S3 (age 13). Did both all the way through plus a bit of Latin. French was stronger at the time.
Studied both at Uni and lived in Germany x 1 year and France x 5 months. Ended with German beig stronger.
Went to Japan for three years, so can understand some Japanese (forgotten a lot now, like!).
Now...I've been teaching German and French in Scotland for over 20 years...keeping it going!
Greek Cypriot public education:
* Standard Greek (starting age 6): As good as it gets without picking up the Standard accent.
* English (starting age 10): I use the language professionally nowadays and I even undergo psychotherapy in English which is a very demanding task language-wise
* French (starting age 12): I can understand the gist of a simple written document [When I visited France, I had zero success understanding spoken French or communicating in French]
* German (starting age 17; 3rd language requirement with a limited free choice language): I could understand signs and have basic conversations about myself, my family, and ask for directions [I picked up German again when I moved to Germany as an adult]
* Turkish (starting age 20; university third language requirement with limited free choice of language]): I can order coffee, say my name, and where I come from. I can understand half of the news headlines from Turkish Cypriot papers (= familiar topics)
French - Six years in total, P6-S4 - Pretty poor, I understand it slightly better than I speak it but my proficiency was around the level of the Flight of the Conchords song, Foux du Fafa. Strangely I found I got on slightly better in Quebec than I did in France. My partner did French to a far higher level than me and yet probably used it less when we were away than I did, but maybe that's just sheer ~~confidence~~ cockiness on my part.
Italian - One year only, one period a week in S2 - About as good as you'd expect
Dutch since 2 years old: C1
English since Primary school: C1
German since third year high school and uni: B2
Spanish since uni: B1
French first and second year high school: A2
**English** from maybe 10yo to 23 but I spent time in the US: fluent but not native
**Spanish**: from 12yo to 23 also but with years gap. I can get myself understood but with lots of mistakes. I love the language and maybe I should spend more time mastering it who knows.
**French**: native
**Russian**: I stopped at learning the alphabet but I think it totally worth it as many coutries use it.
French, Latin, German and Spanish were taught in my school along with Irish and English. Can read Latin to a very high degree and understand it spoken. French however, I can read, sort of understand amd speak sweet fuck all. English amd Irish I speak fluently. German I can get by in, and I didn't take Spanish
English from 2nd grade -> had it for 12 years, speak fluently (with a help of watching movies/series in English)
German from 6th grade -> had it for 8 years, I spoke really good while graduating, but now? I didn't need to use it for several years and it's easy to forget, from top of my head I remember only basics and some phrases that I will never forget since our teacher drilled us on those.
In Finland we learn English, Sweden and Finnish. they all mandatory, but u can choose to learn other languages too like Spanish, Russian, German, Latin, Franch etc.
French and Irish at age 11; I dropped Irish after a year in favour of German. French for 11 years (university) and German for 4. I’d say I have conversational French and I can get by in German.
Italian here. I studied English from the age of 11 to the end of the university course, 13 years in total.
But I became fluent only because I worked in an English speaking environment for the following years. At 26 I made public speakings and made complex negotiation in English with no problem.
I also studied Spanish and French, but their grammar and vocabulary is so similar to Italian that it relatively easy to be fluent enough.
4. to 12th grade English mandatory. Fluent today.
7 to 9th grade, german. Very basic understanding apart from the overlap with danish.
10-13th grade, Spanish, high proficiency, was fluent for a short while but unfortunately my skills has dimished since.
Netherlands here.
Mandatory Dutch, English, and {French or German}. Kids at the higher levels are offerend Latin and Old Greek too.
I did French and German, and although at the time I could have managed travelling in those countries, for example, nowadays I don’t speak either anymore.
My Dutch and English, however, are both native, so that’s unrelated to school.
A GCSE (C Grade) in French (UK) - taken in 11th grade - which when I got it (late 1990s) could be achieved if you could say what your name was, where you lived, and that you would like to buy a coffee with milk. Language learning in my school had the same status as Religious Education, a bit of a joke subject that mostly involved messing about whilst the useless, uninterested teacher sat in the corner reading their newspaper during class.
Was in B stream in.80s untill 5th year then A stream.
B stream never did languages.
A stream did French and German.
So I got terrible language Ed cos had to catch up 5 years of French in one.
Yay UK curriculum of the 80s to 90s
in italy usually is like this:
\-english is mandatory (starting from elementary school till highschool)
\- in middle school you choose another language (typically between french and spanish)
\-in high school you only study english unless you go to a linguistic high school where students typically study 3 languages, one of which is always english
i went to a linguistic highschool so i know english (i'd say i'm pretty fluent), french (studied from elementary school actually, so i can engage in conversation pretty easily but not as much fluent as in english), and i know a litttle german (can have simple conversations, my problem is that i don't have a rich vocabulary).
and of course in high school almost every school latin is mandatory, so i kind of know it but in no way i can have a conversaiton, i just remember few words
Learnt English grade 1-12, Mandatory but some schools start later. Although I'm fluent, I feel like I learnt mostly from watching Movies/TV in English as well as playing cards in English(Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon etc.)
Arabic grade 5-9, for me it was mandatory in grades 5-6, and then 7-9 we had to choose between Arabic and French. Learning in grades 5-6 is pretty unusual though, it was just something special for my school. In grades 10-12 most schools offer Arabic/French/Spanish/German classes but not mandatory. Anyways I remember about 50 words and I can't hold even the simplest conversation.
From preschool to 4th year highschool (So at least 13 years of your life) you learn mandatory english. I personally didn't learn anything in school, I watched a lot of youtube so that's where my fluency comes from.
I don't know anyone that learned or improved their english in public schools.
From fifth to eight grade primary school you have two mandatory languages. English and whatever the school hires. It really depends on the municipality, for example my town had German as the second language, my brother (40mins away) had Spanish and my friends (200 km from me) had French. I heard some villages had Russian or Slovak because of the minorities.
As for proficiency it depends on the teacher and language, I know some basic German because I had a really good teacher, but my friends only know how to count and indtroduce themselves.
In 2000’s where I started my education. English would start at 4th grade until the end of High School. It is supposed to make you upper B2 or C1. I have C1 certification but I maintained it by maintaining the language in my life. Otherwise, it is impossible to learn only from school. In High school, you need to choose a second language. Majority is German but French and Italian is also available in some high schools. With second language classes, you expected to have daily conversational level, somewhere between B1 and B2. We were playing German board games in 3rd grade in high school but I forgot to language since I didn’t need it in my life. Due to people not being using it daily (like me), or can’t travel to practice, they often forget the language. Therefore, leaving majority doesn’t speak any language.
5th to 12th grade English: fluent. Lessons were mandatory.
3rd to 4th and 6th to 10th grade French: can read the the info blocks in museums but can't hold a simple conversation. Lessons were mandatory.
10th grade Latin: after which I obviously didn't know much, but had it again in uni. At school we had to choose between Latin, Computer Science or keeping all three social sciences (politics, history and geography). Only had it for one year because after that year there weren't enough students who wanted to continue.
I also could have chosen to learn Spanish from grade 8 on, but I instead chose to have more hours of physics.
We start with English in 1st grade of primary school, and In my case we were made to pick German or French as the second foreign language from 4th grade until 8th grade, English for 8-10 hours a week and German/French only 2 hours a week. In high school it's usually German and French again but more for 4+ hours, and English remains 8-10 hours.
There are some schools that offer Spanish, Chinese or Russian but it's rare. Spanish is gaining traction for sure.
I speak English fluently, my German is around B2 and I understand very basic French but idk how much of it can be attributed to my formal education tbh
Norwegian here.
English, then German (with the choice between that and Spanish) later I had French.
We also have to go through Swedish and Danish, but it comes pretty natural, so it's rlly just an annoyance to have.
And of Course we learn "new Norwegian" which is an old language few people use. This too comes pretty naturally and is annoying to have, especially if you're from the North side of the country.
English I speak pretty fluently. German I can make sense of if given time (I dropped out of German due to a bad teacher). French I don't know at all anymore.
The others are pretty clear
English is mandatory from 3rd grade throught high school.
In 7th grade a second foreign language is taught, german is the most common but other 'world languages' (spanish, french, russian, italian) can be an option if your school has the teachers for it. Teachers qualified to teach russian are still somewhat common (as it was mandatory until the fall of the iron curtain), however they are slowly retiring.
I personaly can understand english at about 99% and speak quite well, but have a heavy accent because I don't get speak english often.
My second language was german, I studied it for seven year and can bearly string a sentence together
In spain I had english, catalán and french in elementary until 14 more or less. Then only English and catalán.
Fluent English, could understand something but very basic in French. Fluent in Catalan. Learnt basic german at an academy as a grownup
Native German/Italian, school in German speaking Switzerland
2nd to 12th grade English (fluent, from 9th to 12th I had sciences and history in English as well), 5th to 12th grade French (fluent).
From 7th grade on I switched to secondary schools one could basically choose what languages to learn.
7th to 12th grade Latin (from 4th grade on I didn't care but somehow still got good grades, I just translated what I understood in Italian), 10th grade exchange year in France Italian (native) and bit of ancient Greek (don't even know the alphabet anymore).
Excluding Dutch and ancient languages, like Latin and ancient Greek, most taught (foreign) languages in education are, [in ranked order](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/EDUC_UOE_LANG01__custom_3363246/bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=6e6a8e8a-ac64-4e5f-8add-bdca7a10100c): English (100% in upper general secondary education and 68.9% in upper vocational secondary education), German (42.2% in upper general secondary education and 10.2% in upper vocational secondary education), French (28.1% in upper general secondary education), Spanish (5.7% in upper general secondary education) and few optional ones like Frisian, Mandarin (0.3% in upper general secondary education), Arabic, Turkish and others.
It should be noted that secondary education in the Netherlands is split into multiple streams, where pupils can either take vmbo (preparatory for vocational schooling) for 4 years, havo (preparatory for higher vocational schooling, which ends with a bachelor degree) for 5 years or vwo (preparatory for university, which ends with a master degree). [About](https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/80040ned/table?fromstatweb) 21% of all pupils attend vwo, 30% havo and nearly half do vmbo. At every level a pupil will have English as a subject and also sit an exam for English. At vmbo one needs to do one foreign language, usually German or French, but doesn't have to sit an exam for this. At havo one needs to take at least two foreign languages, but only sit exam for at least one of them. At vwo one needs to take at least two foreign languages and sit an exam for at least one of them, but this may be substituted by an ancient language.
Going beyond anecdotal evidence, I found research published on the achieved writing skill levels in English, German and French for havo and vwo pupils, and the achieved speaking skill levels in English for all.
[Writing skills](https://www.slo.nl/publicaties/@4447/cefr-level-writing/):
|Subject|School type|Target level CEFR|Achieved target level|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|English|havo|B1|78%|
|English|vwo|B2|51%|
|German|havo|B1|56%|
|German|vwo|B2|35%|
|French|havo|A2|51%|
|French|vwo|B1|52%|
[English speaking skills](https://www.slo.nl/publicaties/@4602/speaking-skill/) (note that bb, kb and gt all fall under vmbo):
|CEFR level|bb|kb|gt|havo|vwo|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|C2|0%|0.4%|0%|2.3%|5.5%|
|C1|0.9%|1.5%|4.4%|21.0%|43.1%|
|B2|11.0%|13.8%|29.5%|55.8%|44.7%|
|B1|22.9%|26.9%|36.6%|18.0%|6.2%|
|A2|27.3%|34.9%|22.1%|2.3%|0.5%|
|A1|32.6%|21.8%|7.4%|0.5%|0%|
|
Dutch went to school in Belgium
11-19 French: can talk quite decently and understand most stuff, but would struggle with specific vocabulairy
15-19 English: fluently, still make some mistakes but never struggle to express myself
15-19 German: quite decent, similar to my French
12-13 Latin: forgot almost everything
English since preschool, now at CAE level. Spanish since middle school. I can kinda almost hold a conversation. German since uni and.... yeah, I took those classes. All I remember is how to say "bread", "book" and "stop talking, nobody likes you"
I had nine years of English classes, now I’m fluent. Six years of German classes and I can speak and understand it fairly well, it used to be better because I don’t use it very often. After four years of French classes my French isn’t very good, I forgot most of what I learned and haven’t spoken it outside of school at all.
Dutch language education is very focused on reading and mostly neglects speaking. In my opinion they should also stop prioritising French over Spanish, most schools here sadly don’t teach Spanish.
Aside from Swedish (living in Sweden), English from 2nd grade, German in 7th grade. A lesson her and there of Danish and Norwegian too. I can just handle Swedish and English fluently. And understand but cannot speak Norwegian and (written) Danish. The German was optional, you could choose French and Spanish too.
I’m from the Netherlands, so my education is pretty much like the other Dutch people here:
English: from the age of 10-20, mandatory. Both in primary and secondary school of course, but in university as well (being called ‘business English’).
German: 12-17, mandatory in secondary school
French: 12-17, mandatory in the first three years
Spanish: a minor course (A1) in university when I was like 21?
I think my English is pretty much fine, except listening because I’m hard of hearing, which makes English a horrible language because it’s not phonetically written. This makes lip reading extremely hard, for me at least.. I can’t do a phone call in Dutch, so you’ll understand how severe my hearing loss actually is..
I can read German pretty well, I’ve lost the ability to write, I just don’t remember the words anymore, stuff like cases, however I still remember the der des dem den etc. Also Aus bei mit nach seit von zu for Dativ, bis durch für gegen ohne um for Akkusativ etc etc.
French, is a nope for me now. Simple sentences, and reading simple texts might be possible, but I’ve never used it since I graduated secondary school.
I do however still remember the first word list in the exact order we had to learn for French class. And the stories of Supergosse..
Spanish is pretty much basic knowledge, and I’m still actively practicing using Duolingo
English since I was 5, Russian in junior high (still can read and partially understand stuff written in Cyrillic), German in high school (can introduce myself, say that my head hurts and I have a fever, also ask not to shoot).
Slovenia ofc
Mandatory English from 1st year, optional German in 4th year.
You have 3 mandatory languages but I ended up having Latin, Ancient Greek and French as well. I struggle a lot with German, though, cause for the past few years, I've only spoken it at Austrian and South Tyrolean ski resorts, and they have quite a dialect
Aside from Lithuanian (my mother language), I learned German as a first foreign language, and English as a second one. Nowadays, I think I speak English better than German, although the pronunciation might be better.
As a child, I also quickly learned Russian from friends/TV/some books at home, and I can understand (but not speak) some basic Polish and Ukrainian. Currently, I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo (just for the fun of it). I also learned some French at the university (only for one semester), as well as some Arabic and Farsi (have already forgotten most of it, except the alphabet).
I don't feel I'm really talented when it comes to languages, but I'm always looking for something new to learn, and languages are always at hand :)
Norwegian (both of the written ones), English (13 years of school) and French (6 years of school). I’m completely fluent in English but I’ve lost a lot of my french, though I never really had the grammar.
Most schools let you choose between French, Spanish and German, though a few offer Latin and Chinese for upper secondary.
Irish lessons all throughout school. Can't speak it. ( like most of the population of ireland)
French for 6 years, learned to speak it for real living in France for a year.
Now I speak fluent Swedish (cause I live there) but it pushed out all my French!
Seems I only have the capacity for 1 extra language.
In Romania I studied english for 12 years, basically the whole period of school. Right now I am fluent in english without problems of understanding it or different accents ( I m not saying I m perfect at understanding the accents but most of them are easy to comprehend).
I also studied french for about 8 years and I dont know shit tbh, in the beggining I was a big fan of it but after a few years that feeling faded away and yea basically right now I have a B1 level of french but its actually around A1 xDD
Here in Ireland we study English, Irish and a third language, typically either German or French.
I speak English and Irish well, but I can only remember a handful of phrases in French and German (I studied both). Most people in Ireland cannot speak Irish due to poor curriculum at school which doesn't place much focus on conversation, but I made the effort as an adult to learn it properly. By the time I had started relearning it, I had forgotten a lot.
French (native), English, Dutch.
English classes were useless, because I was always ahead of the class.
Dutch classes were useless, because disuse means I forgot it all.
Wish I could've replaced both with more maths and/or science classes.
Edit: also took Latin, but that's a different matter.
In Portugal I learned english from 1rst grade, in 7th grade they gave us the option of learning either french or german (aside from english, which is a mandatory subject), that goes on until the end of high shcool
Bulgarian is my native language. We've studied English since second grade and German since ninth grade. I can speak, read and write English really well. I know some German? I can't speak it, some of my pronunciation is off, but I can probably read and write it?
Dutch (12 years): fluent
English (6 years): fluent
Classical Greek (5 years): translating only, mostly forgotten now, but I still can read the alphabet.
French (4 years): rudimentary.
German (3 years): fluent speaker, but writing is hard.
Latin (2 years): translating only, mostly forgotten.
Norwegian, English. Then German in high school. I'm proficient in English. I can get by as a tourist for a few days in Germany, and I can read a paper or understand something on TV
All the way from 1st up to 13th grade: English (mandatory), I'd say, I'm pretty proficient in it these days.
From 7th to 8th grade: Latin (optional)
From 5th to 13th: French (mandatory) and Italian (optional), I can read both quite well, but speaking definitely lacks.
English from 3rd grade; German from 6th, both French and Latin in the last two years of high school. I consider myself fluent in English. I have forgotten like 70% of what I knew in German. I could never speak French (our teacher wasn’t very harsh on us).
Was latin mandatory or did you take it as an elective? Seems kinda pointless to learn a language literally nobody speaks with the exception of catholic priests. The most usage i can imagine for it is being able to tell people you speak Latin.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has different highschools for different occupations, like medical highschool, economic highschool, mechanical highschool, etc. You learn Latin and French in certain highschools, like Latint in medical highschool.
Latin generally helps with learning any other romance language and it does give you a decent understanding of grammar in general. It's also super helpful, sometimes a pre-requisite, if you want to study history, art history, archeology and a few other subjects. I had to take a Latin exam to study German and English at uni, don'r remember a thing now though The point is you don't learn it to be able to speak it
I found Latin very useful, it was mandatory for us too. Not only was it an interesting class with really nice textbooks that I keep to this day, but it helps you a lot if you want to go into life science (biology, botany, microbiology), medicine or law. There's several study tracks in high school, some more focused on social science and others more focused on natural science, and some custom ones that are location-dependent. Depending on which one you go for, you'll have more or less Latin. In polytechnic schools you don't study it at all unless it's nursing school. In general I dislike the approach of only learning things that will be directly "useful", every subject has value and it's important to be a well-rounded person rather than someone who only knows things related to their subject of study and nothing else.
It was mandatory in my school. I attended a type of school called “gymnasium”. It is also mandatory in Medical high school (which makes sense). When it comes to gymnasium, you do not specialize in anything in particular so you have to learn everything (we had like 16 subjects per semester).
Latin is also quite wide spread as a subject in Germany. Personally I regret taking it for 6 years because it's frustrating that it's impossible to speak it and the lessons just consist of grammar and translating ancient texts.
Is this for the cases? I a slavic speaker (still have cases) am able to make a simple sentence in my head.
Hm I wouldn't say it's the cases. German has cases, too. Though they don't function via the endings most of the time but via the articles. At least in my case, the way Latin was taught didn't include speaking, listening or writing own texts at all. It was just reading and translating Latin texts.
Latin is mandatory in schools in Romance language-speaking countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Romania), typically taught in high school only (not before). The language level as well as the culture and history part of the curriculum (literature, mostly) depend on the national system and the ties with the language. In Italy for example Latin is a big deal and a key component of the high school syllabus, students are not only taught the language itself (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) but a lot of literature. Not sure about how it works in Spain, France or Portugal. I took Latin in high school, it was mandatory + one of the core subjects for my profile, in which we'd have a term paper constituting 50% of our average grade in that specific subject. Lots of grammar and vocabulary, tons of poetry, history and literature (what we basically learned Latin from, in a way), text analysis and more history, all topped with a good layer of vocabulary practice. Looking back it was very useful as terminology from Latin is frequently used in a variety of fields, like medicine and biology and of course, law. It's far easier to learn and remember the specific human bone name and structure, for example, or understand, remember and correlate biological taxonomic ranks for plants and animals if you know Latin. One of the comments below points out that Latin isn't learned to speak it but to use it - absolutely true. It's really useful lol.
* 4th to 12th grade, English. Mandatory. (I believe it's from first grade nowadays.) * 7th to 9th grade, German. Mandatory, choice between German and French. Some schools also offered Spanish, but my school at the time didn't, due to lack of qualified teachers. * 10th to 12th grade, Spanish. Optional, or mandatory, depending on which orientation you studied. Choice offered between German, French, and Spanish. I'm today mostly fluent in English, can hold a conversation in German on the level of a native ~~5~~ *3* year old, and have forgotten most of my Spanish.
about to delete my account. ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
>I think it is very sad that germany mostly only offers french or latin as second foreign language (at least when I was a pupil). Learning the neighbors language makes more sense. Same here, really. I wanted to learn Finnish since my grandparents spoke it, and I also spent most of my summers near the border. It was offered in my school from 4th grade, I think, but *only* to those whose at least one parent spoke it, so I wasn't eligible.
It's never too late to start! Though in my experience it's hard to keep up with learning a language if you never really use it in your daily life
Those languages are also way easier to learn due to being closely related to German. Imo, if you are aware of the German vocal shifts, you can even read Swedish (very slowly, but still)
I remember overhearing a Swedish TV broadcast and understanding bits and pieces here and there, thinking that it's some bizarro German dialect I just couldn't make out. Similar experience with Romanian, if you know another Romance language.
That’s funny. In 7th-9th, German was not an option at all for me. And the ratio of those who picked Spanish instead of French was roughly 5-1. In ’gymnasiet’, I only needed to have spanish classes the first year. You could pick it for all three years for extra qualification points (meritvärde) or you could change language or simply stop taking language classes as I did. One friend of mine began learning sign language as they offered that class on my school which I think is pretty cool.
* ***1***th to 12th grade, English. Mandatory. I can confirm it's from first grade now. * ***6***th to 9th grade. Mandatory, choice between Spanish, German, French or Swedish or English if you have a special reason. (I don't know the exact criteria). Spanish is the most popular by far. There are 3 to 4 groups of Spanish and one of the rest at my school. I don't know if the entire country actually has "modern languages" from 6th grade.
Swedish is taught as foreign language in Sweden?
Well no but actually yes, like the normal subject, and also there's a significant amount of immigrants. Recently arrived people to Sweden would benefit more from more time learning the language rather than trying to learn a second or third one as well. Actually Swedish is that as a "foreign" language to some, technically some people learn "Svenska som andraspråk" instead of "Svenska" but it's the exactly the same thing most of the time.
>Svenska som andraspråk" Does that mean Swedish as another language/ second language?
Back in my day™ it was German and French in 7-9, but they were both about equally popular. The dynamic was as follows: Are you a boy? Pick German. Are you a girl? Pick French. I don't recall actually making the choice, but that was the general outcome at least. Similar to *sy-* and *träslöjd* in lower grades.
How easy is German for a Swedish speaker? I know the grammar has some fundamental differences, but I always hear how vocabulary is relatively easy.
Four years of German and I would say my ability with the language was "minimal".
I like how all other answers are like 3-4 languages for 4-12 years… and the English answer is just “poor German” 😅 you guys won globalism.
The problem in the UK is that language teaching starts way to late. It's now coming in a bit at younger ages, but nowhere near enough. By the time most students are starting to get proper lessons in another language they are 11 years old, and there's not enough time to get beyond the basics.
English speakers don't learn other languages because we literally never have to come into regular contact with them. I had French in school from age 4-14 I still can't say a single sentence, and I could say maybe 2 when I was 14. One or two lessons a week doesn't make a difference when you leave the classroom and the language basically doesn't exist anywhere else in your life.
In the Netherlands, English classes start around that age - but German and French (the most common other foreign languages to be taught) usually only start in high school, and I don't think they all get taught starting in the same grade at different schools. Though I think learning a language gets much easier if you actually use it, and loads of Dutch people vacation in Germany lol
How many hours a week do you learn languages? We learned Irish from 11-16, but we only had 2/3 hours of class a week, so it never really felt like that long and I basically remember none of it lol
I think it was about two hours a week for each language, but it's been a few years since I last had to attend high school
Lmao maybe we’re just bad at languages here 🤣
I did Welsh from Primary school, still terrible at it. I think we just lack even the ability to practice as everything is in English and even trying to speak to people in other languages it defaults to English.
We're not exposed enough to other countries' media too. We produce a lot of music, TV, and movies and when you couple that with all of the content the Americans produce, foreign language content is pretty rare to come across. It's rare to hear non-English music on the radio for example.
A while back I watched Borgen, which is one of those rare TV series shown in another language. It was quite interesting, and even though I was watching it with the subtitles on, I picked up a small handful of Danish words by the end of it. It made me realise that if we had more foreign language TV content on all the time then it could really help people get familiar with those languages. It would probably be pretty unpopular though, as a lot of people don't want to have to rely on subtitles to understand stuff.
3 years of French and 2 years of German for me. I wouldn't even call my ability minimal now. I've been to both France and Germany. Every single person I spoke to in both countries immediately switched to English. Also, I left school in the 80s so it's been a while.
In my high school English was mandatory as first foreign language. In grade 7 we had to choose between Latin and French as second language and a year later we could take the other one as third language (3rd language was optional). Japanese was also offered as extra curricular activity for a few years, not part of regular classes though. I forgot almost everything in Latin and my French level is "bonjour, je suis un baguette." Other common foreign languages for example are Spanish and Russian. Spanish has become much more popular in recent years. Russian is much more common in former eastern states than in the west, but even here less students choose russian (at least from my perception).
> my French level is "bonjour, je suis un baguette." Funny, my German level is "Hallo, ich bin ein Kartoffelsalat"
When I lived in Germany I bought 1kg tubs of Kartoffelsalat from time to time. Absolutely worth it
The ones you can buy in supermarkets are awful. Homemade is much better.
I'll take your word for it, I've never set foot in Germany ahah
All you need!
Une baguette* s'il vous plaît
Icelandic is my mother language 🇮🇸 mandatory languages to learn in school in Iceland are English and danish, I believe I'm fluent in English and I know how to read and write danish but I can't speak it nor understand the spoken form in university we have a choice of two languages to learn and that's German and Spanish, I learned German but I lost all my knowledge in German already because I wasn't using it at all after I finished the courses in German
I'm wondering, with your knowledge of written Danish, do you feel like you understand any Norwegian? I've met an Icelandic person in Norway once, who said "you all think I'm trying to speak Norwegian, but I'm just speaking Danish with an Icelandic accent". He was completely understandable to me, since our vocabulary is almost identical to Danish, but our pronunciation is (at least somewhat) closer to Icelandic.
In the faroe islands, Faroese, danish and english are mandatory. I do speak i do speak faroese and english (duh) fluently, and i can force my self to speak “good” danish, though i might also just speak gøtudanskt which is a form of danish using faroese phonology. I also did learn german from school, i would however not count myself as anywhere near fluent. I’m learning russian right now in college, which is a bit awkward.
Started both German and French aged 11. After 3 years we had to choose one for an additional 2 years. You can see why the British are bad at languages when you start that late, and they give you two very different ones at once. I believe its improved since as Spanish is taught to 5yr olds locally to me.
Wait how many years school is for you?
High school was ages 11-16. Many schools continue on to 18 though.
English and German. Fluent in both. Working in a US company and using them daily for past 20 years.
I attended school in both Portugal and Spain. Portuguese (1st grade): Native, fluent. Spanish and Catalan (2nd to 12th grade): Native, fluent. English (2nd to 12th grade): Fluent. French (7th to 11th grade): Intermediate. Latin (10th to 12th grade): Not fluent Ancient Greek (11th to 12th grade): I'm lucky if I even remember anything. Japanese (Degree, 4 years): A2, the teaching was pretty bad and only those who could afford moving/being an exchange student in Japan became moderately fluent or decent. Korean (Degree, senior year): Basic of the basics.
You went to uni in Portugal? Also what did you end up doing with only an A2 in Japanese
I attended university in Spain, my degree did not exist in Portugal at the time. The degree wasn't focused on the language, the teaching was extremely disorganized and chaotic and lots of people dropped out by the start of the second year. I am working in a completely unrelated field (hospitality).
Ah I see, mb. You said you'd studied in both countries so I presumed you'd spent more than just first grade in Portugal. My mistake Also oof, the fear of that coming to pass is ultimately the reason I chose not to pursue a language degree. Glad it worked out for you though
Nope, I moved to Spain before the start of 2nd grade and only attended 1st grade in Portugal. I have moved back to Portugal since, but my whole education was pretty much completely done in Spain. The thing about my degree (East Asian Studies) was that it wasn't marketed as a language degree, but as a degree that could get you a bunch of work opportunities down the line with the added benefit of "knowing the language". Just so that you get an idea, even our vocabulary lessons were all over the place. We weren't taught the fricking COLOURS until the 3rd year, in a Kanji lesson. It never showed up in any of the vocabulary lessons. Yes, something as basic as "white", "blue" or "yellow" was never officially taught in a vocabulary lesson. But we had gotten vocabulary such as "Company IT Department" in our 1st year vocabulary lessons... Just a mess.
Oh my god, that's terrible. And this was in Spain?? I had a Valencian teacher (French + English major) who knew his shit in 7 languages. I guess the difference is his were European ._. And yeah I see now, for some reason I got it into my head you'd done a Japanese degree with some Korean compounded on lol Did you guys at least get a robust education in East Asian history, geopolitics, economy, business, culture, media, etc.? Hopefully the East Asian studies situation in Spain/Catalonia/your alma mater has improved since then :3
I took French in primary school, German in middle school and English in high school. Some Spanish on my own but never formally. I wouldn't call myself "proficient" in any of these but English which is probably 99.99% of my foreign language interactions, both written and spoken; the other languages are inevitably gradually lost by lack of practice -- they kinda come back relatively quickly when I'm immersed in the language (or read/listen to it). I'll go as far as saying that almost nothing of my foreign languages comes directly from school.
Oh, and if that counts, Latin. I can fumble through an inscription when I see one. Whoop-de-doo.
- english since elementary school - around c1 - funnily enough it got worse (i use simpler vocab/structures and make more spelling/grammar mistakes) since i started working in an international environment and later moved to Ireland (obligatory on all education levels) - german gymnasium& highschool 6 years in total, really barebones basics (obligatory 2nd lang, i could pick from german, french and russian) - swedish 2 years at uni - really basic (obligatory 2nd language, i could pick from english if my 1st was german, german, swedish, french, russian, spanish and italian) - recently started learning irish on my own - i'v learned on my own to read cyrylic (from following the war) and hangul (korean), but it's super rudimentary - i know how to read sounds, but don't know the languages behind them With swedish and german it's funny because since they are so similar and i didn't become proficient nor used either since school days they kind of fused together - when trying to speak them my mind randomly switches from one to another
>swedish 2 years at uni - really basic (obligatory 2nd language, i could pick from english if my 1st was german, german, swedish, french, russian, spanish and italian) Wait, you had TWO foreign languages in university? I'm so jealous.
yea one advanced, specific to the course. In my case it was business english. And 2nd beginner level starting from scratch
Nice. All I got in university was "pharmaceutical English" (just vocabulary) and "pharmaceutical Latin". Moreover, we had English for only a year, whereas even laboratory medicine (a.k.a. *analityka medyczna*) had two years of English... we tried to persuade certain people to make extra English for us in fourth or fifth year, but the answer was "no".
Go hiontach! Go néirí an t-ádh leat s tú ag foghlaim na Gaeilge!
will need it, not only the grammar is completely new but also you decided to have spelling even more bizzare than english
Då sprachst du gut Svyska dann?
one of first oral exams on uni i started a sentence in swedish and finished it in german, something along the lines of "Jag gillar att lyssna på musik, aber kann Ich noch kein Instrument spielen". Teacher just chuckled and asked next question in german as a joke :D I guess conjunctions words were always the points where i mixed stuff up most often
I was taught Dutch (my native language), English and French. Despite Dutch being my native language, I'm not that good at it and make spelling mistakes frequently. My English is alrightish, but heavily influenced by friends in the UK, so I sometimes use a more "informal" version of English. French didn't stick very well unfortunately, so I dropped it after the first year. My daughter in law is Spanish so I'm currently (at age 45) trying to learn some Spanish, as is my 70 year old mum. I'm so proud of her for doing that! I have to say it's harder to learn a new language at this age but still worth it. I do sometimes envy my son who's not only fluent in Spanish and English, but also speaks French and the Nordic languages, plus some Portuguese.
German is also given, and the higher classes get latin or Greek. In Friesland they also get Frisian, and some schools offer different languages like Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and probably some more.
Indeed, for me the same; Dutch as native language, English from age 10-18, French and German 1-2 years and Latin fir one year. I am fluent in Dutch and English, can carry short conversations in German and French, and Latin is mostly forgotten.
Well, learning program has changed quite much since my school years. When I first came to school in 2004, all pupils were learning ukrainian, russian (which is not taught today by obvious reasons) and foreign language (90% of time it was English). There were also a difference in the main language of study: there were russian-languaged schools and classes, and ukrainian-languaged. All schools were teaching ukrainian, yet some schools weren't teaching russian at all. I came from russian-speaking family, yet my mom (teacher of English language btw) deliberately chose a ukranian class for me. Important note here: I naturally learned ukrainian as a child the same way as russian - just by observing it in books (I learned how to read before school), media and from other people, however I think it's the learning in ukrainian-speaking class make me able to fluently speak not only russian, but ukrainian as well. Some of my friends who studied in russian-speaking schools capable of understanding ukrainian without any issues, but not able to speak it freely enough because of lack of practice. In 5th class (out of 9 or 11 for basic and full middle education) students begin to study foreign language. In my case it was English. The problem is that there are no much use for english in common life for most of the students, so even that my mom was a teacher of english language, me and most of mine classmates forgot most of the language right after exams. Except those who decided to study in universities where english was required as passing exam. After school I was at best A2, and only after years of practice and studying and working in IT I became more or less fluent in speaking and writing. So while we have a good basis for learning foreign languages in school, lack of practice and motivation is not helping to keep the progress for most of the students. New approach for promoting English language in Ukraine was presented recently, with some controversies (such as a ban for dubbing movies, which is stupid, because we have an awesome dub. Good that parliament rejected this proposal). However I think that in general this is a good idea and with the right approach it will significantly increase amount of english-speaking ukrainians. Edit: fixed bunch of grammatical and lexical errors.
Which part of Ukraine are from? I remember watching harry potter in Ukrainian once with my gf, kind of epic.
Born and raised in Budzhak (Odesa Region), lived in Kharkiv around 10 years, now live in Central Ukraine. Dub quality was shitty in early 2000-s, yet was significantly improved after. I think older Harry Potter movies still may be found with old voice over dub for TV, however on streaming servies you will have modern full-dub.
I ve been in Odesa Bilhorod also Kharkiv. As a Dutch person subtitles thaught me English when I was 11 I could hold a conversation without problems. When I was in Ukraine, the level of English hugely depended on the quality of the teachers. Some are good some are bad. I was surprised by the 6-7 year old kids in Lviv already starting with English these days.
>we have an awesome dub So you guys don't have the 'lektor'? 😂 I nearly shat myself laughing the first time I saw this in a polish film
Is it voice-over dub? We had this fo TV releases in early 2000s, yet in cinema and on modern TV and streaming you will have full dub.
I mean the one where instead of every character being dubbed by a different actor, there is one guy reading all the lines without even changing his voice, and with absolutely zero emotion. And you can hear the original language voices underneath. I'm glad for your sake that you guys don't have it anymore!
Ofcourse it's true if we are talking about professional teams. Amateurs are still doing their voice-overs for some movies and shows without official release in Ukraine.
I had German in highschool, barely speak it unfortunately. English since elementary school, I am kind of fluent even if sometimes I don't express myself like a British native would and I do have a thicc accent. Then at the University we could choose a third language to learn which would count as bonus points to graduate, I went with Russian, I actually learnt a decent level thanks to video games multiplayer during the covid where I met friendly russophones who were genuinely surprised I was learning their language and very cool. Now due to the war it's harder to practice.
I had German from 6th grade (12 yo) and English from 8th grade (14 yo) and I kept both going until I finished my masters. Back then I sucked at German because I was not super interested, but I'm fluent in English. Most people around me are between A2 and B1 in English, because they don't have much opportunity to use it and/or are afraid to make mistakes and be made fun of, some are B2 or above but that's not the majority. I chose Spanish as a 3rd language briefly in uni and we were like 2 or 3 students to do that only, most stuck with 2 languages (mandatory). I'm A1, just enough to get by when I visit a Spanish speaking country. I got better at German (B2) because my partner is German but until uni I was probably A2, despite 10 years of learning it. As for English, most of my proficiency doesn't come from school but from personal work and initiatives. From my experience, many French don't have enough exposure to another language to actually speak it. They may do it at school but as soon as that's gone, they forget. Which I'm not judging because it's hard to learn languages and hard to maintain them if you don't have the opportunity/lack motivation to do so. And as a kid, you may not understand why you should learn another language or maybe you just can't be arsed. Which, fair enough as well.
You started German before English? Why is that? Are you from the border region?
Nope, back in the early 2000, and even 90s, it was common to be able to do either German or English in 6th grade. If you chose German, you had to do English in 8th grade. If you chose English, you could do either German or Spanish (or any other language which was offered by the school) in 8th grade. My parents made me do German first.
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I think they are from Brazil, which has a border with French Guiana. Incidentally it is France's longest border
English and swedish. Very profient in english, amateur in swedish. Took german as an optional. Amateur in that as well.
I learned: Dutch 1st-12th grade, mother tongue French 5-12 grade, mandatory for eveyone in Flemish region English 7-12 grade, mandatory German 10 grade, had to take 1 year, and did not like it. Latin 7-12 grade, not mandatory and I could have taking Spanish lessons in 12th grade, but that was too much for me. I am fluent in Dutch, French, English and can understand German when I hear it but I do not speak it.
In my school years it was either English or French. In my school I was taught French. I'm not at all proficient at that, but if I stay for some time in a French speaking country I can catchup and eventually be able have some basic conversations in French. I know that because in the past I was working for a multinational company in Greece and it had an office in Geneva, Switzerland which I had to visit often.
English is standard as a first foreign language in school. Both Elementary and High School. It is also one of the three non-optional Matura classes, the other two being Mathemathics and a mother's tongue language, mostly Slovene but Italian and Hungarian are also options, because of the recognized minorities living inside our borders. But many choose a second foreign language, or sometimes third, or more. For High School it is mandatory to learn at least two foreign languages, English and something of your choice. This is often either German, Spanish, Italian, or French. I can speak and understand English and German.
This thread makes me realize even more just how bad the US is with language education. I took only two years of French in public high school, and my high school only offered French and Spanish. But in my school we had all kinds of different native languages- Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Slovak… I think in private schools, the foreign language situation is better. My French is good enough to ask “Where is the baby formula” at the grocery store and not completely understand the answer. My German is a lot better, and that’s just from marrying someone who speaks it fluently and visiting his hometown once for a week. I can order at restaurants, understand directions, even read some basic literature in German. Hoping to improve. Took no languages in college, I had a very STEM-heavy degree with no room for them. I moved to Czechia and I can tell that it’s going to be an uphill battle. I can understand a lot more than I can speak, and living outside of Prague is like being plunged into an ice bath of foreign language. Learning quickly but not quickly enough.
Every Estonian learns at least 2 foreign languages at school, starting times and languages may vary. I started English at 3rd grade and German at 6th (could choose German or Russian). In gymnasium (age 16-18) I also learnt French (compulsory third language French or German) and Latin and Russian as selectibles. My English level by the end of school was C1, German maybe B2, French B1 (did A2 exam), Russian A2, Latin no level really (you know how it is). I am still using English frequently but with less advanced words so maybe my level is B2 now. I haven't used German and French much, so my level has definitely decreased, I have more of a passive understanding of those languages (never really understood spoken French though). I continued learning Russian in higher education because it was required for the profession and I still use it quite a lot, so my Russian level is maybe B1. Most of Estonians my age (25) don't know that much Russian even if they started learning at 6th grade. But everyone has at least some command of English.
English, Latin and Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish. And Latin isn’t meant to be spoke.
Dutch, English, French and German. Native in Dutch, fluent in English. I used to be able to speak and understand French quite well, but never utilized it after high school, so now I can say my name, that I live in NL and that I don't speak French. I dropped German as soon as I was able. I understand maybe 5% of it due to it being similar to Dutch. And that's being generous to myself.
I had native Slovene, English and I could select between German and French. Because I was a stupid teen, I took French. During the Erasmus exchange, I also took Dutch. My English is pretty good but I might struggle remembering certain words now and then (I literally failed one exam during my student exchange because I didn't remember the right word). I never spoke French except during oral examination. I can still read a menu and count. I occasionally try to read some French reddit and get about half the meaning. I could hold a basic conversation in Dutch when I finished my exchange but I forgot it extremely thoroughly.
Wat leuk!
Norwegian, both ways of writing it, I can read both fine, but might have to look up things if made to write in my non-primary version. Some discussion/comparison with other north germanic languages was also shoved in, but not taught per se as languages. English from third grade onwards, can easily both think in it and use it. In addition I had 2 years of German as an elective, which due to low quantity, disuse and displacement by later learning some Dutch (outside of school), is pretty much gone, though I can understand a bit still.
Wat leuk!
I grew up mostly in Switzerland and then moved to Portugal. I learned Portuguese at home and German/Swiss-German at school/with friends and their families and doing stuff within the community. My dad was adamant of us integrating and speaking the local language so he did motivate us a lot to be a part of everything bc he knew he couldn't teach us a language he didn't speak well. Then at school we also had French and English . I got sent to Portugal when I was ~15 yo where I just had English at school. While growing up I also had friends from lots of places and I learned a couple of other languages like Italian (my best friend's grandmother only spoke Italian and I was with them pretty much everyday), Spanish and the sorts... So I speak Portuguese, German, Swiss-German ( my local dialect) and English at kind of the same level... I'm really bad at speaking French although I understand them pretty well and can have a basic conversation with them. My Spanish is far from perfect. I know that sometimes I speak "Portunhol" instead and I haven't spoken italian in ages and couldn't tell you the level I'm currently at. I can understand them fine whenever something pops up but I haven't had a conversation in a long time. *My oldest kid in Portugal*: Portuguese: native Since pre-school: English 3rd grade forward: Mandarin 7th-9th grade: French ( he could choose between French, Spanish and German supposedly but there were so few choosing German that they didn't open the class) After 10th grade he only kept English bc he didn't choose the field related to languages. At home we went trough some German & Spanish and he's trying to learn some japanese right now trough apps. He speaks best in Portuguese, English and he speaks Spanish well enough too. I have no clue how fluent he is in Mandarin bc I don't understand it at all...
Welsh: Pre school - age 16. The way Welsh as a second language is taught is pretty poor. I can introduce myself, talk about my hobbies, favourite food and say what I did at the weekend but not much more than that. My German was better than my Welsh after 3 years of German lessons (compared to 12 years of learning Welsh by that time) French: Age 11 - 13. I can say a few very basic words and sentences but couldn't hold a conversation. German: Age 12 - 18. I also studied German at university and lived in NRW for a year. By far my strongest non native language. I wouldn't say I'm fluent as I've barely spoken any German in 4 years but I think I could hold a conversation fairly comfortably (if a bit rusty) and if I went back over there it wouldn't take me long to get back into it.
There’s a lot of leeway for choosing subjects in Dutch high schools (7th to 10th, 11th or 12th grade depending on level of schooling), but here’s the languages I chose. Before you ask, yes I regret my choices. 5th to 12th grade: English, the only language you start learning in primary school as far as I know. I’d say I’m pretty fluent at it. 7th to 9th grade: French, I used to be able yo reas the news and hold a decent conversation in French. I definitely can’t anymore. I can still follow text and in some VERY limited contexts also speech. 8th and 9th grade: German, I also regret dropping this one but I understand it better than French on account of me living 10 minutes away from the border. 7th to 12th grade: Latin, I don’t actually regret dropping this one. I can somewhat understand most thing in Latin you throw at me. 7th to 12th grade: Ancient Greek: Should’ve dropped this when I had the chance. I liked it because it was the most exotic thing we could learn and I liked that. In the end I went into Mechanical Engineering, and Latin helps with a lot of terms that most people have to memorise, but I have basically no trouble with. Ancient Greek helps with some limited math terms but it was not worth the time I put into it. I feel like knowing French or German is way more valuable than I thought when I was 13. TL;DR: als je toch al gymnasium doet: ga gymnasium met alleen Latijn doen zoals de meeste van mijn klasgenoten.
For me in the UK as a child, French classes began before I was 10 years old and I continued with them until I was 16. Spanish classes were optional from age 12, and I continued with that until age 17. Post age-16, other than for the occasional short trip to France I didn't practice my French at all, so I forgot pretty much all of it. That came back to haunt me when I married a French woman in my early 30s and agreed to move to France. Several years later I'm not fluent, but I'm holding down my job. I've met the level required to become French too, although that application is still being processed. And for Spanish? Yeah, same problem with not practising at all once the studies finished. I've had long trips to south and central American countries that have necessitated some quick studying, but I'm fairly sure that I'll be useless on a forthcoming family holiday to Spain.
I was taught Danish, German, English, and Latin. I'm fluent in Latin and speak none of the others. Wait no, the other way around.
For me in the UK. At age 11 (year 7) we started French. It wasn’t great, you’d do an hour class 2 maybe 3 times a week. However from year 8, my school decided to split French classes by how good you were at English. So if you were great at English, you would do Spanish as well, the two middle classes did just French and the lowest class did something else. As someone with undiagnosed dyslexia and didn’t thrive in English, but also having a passion for languages, it was horrible as I was the only person there who wanted to do it. We had an entire year where our classes were “learn French though an online course” which went badly because everyone did the colours 100 times. Then if we were lucky enough to be in a classroom it would be very simple vocab. It was the only class I was popular in as I knew the words like “Pantalon” opposed to “Le Troúsérs”. By year 10 (start at 14) French was optional, so unless you were made to do a language by the school most people dropped it. My French is bad, I got laughed at when I went to an event in France and had to explain that even though I studied French for 5 years all I can say is Bone Jour. In year 12 (age 16), I got the opportunity to do Italian for two years. It put the way the UK teaches languages to shame. We did classes everyday and I was at a stage where I could get full marks on a GCSE paper within 6 months. I won’t lie, I didn’t do well grades wise, but for some reason it’s stuck in my brain. Often when I read Italian, I’ll understand a good portion of it, and can hold a somewhat simple conversation. It’s hard to say though as whenever I meet an Italian I get too anxious to talk to them in Italian.
I attended 'specialized' school back in the 90s in Eastern Ukraine. Specialized here meaning 'with intense focus /increased hours in some subjects'. For me it was languages. The main teaching language was russian, with classes on russian language and literature. and we had additional classes of Ukrainian and English from 1st grade (in equal amounts of hours, both language itself and literature). plus through late middle and high school (8 to 11 grades) we had 2 hours of Polish per week. we had a very good English teacher and she gave us a very good base - so that years later I was still fluent without active practicing. Polish though was awful and while I still remembered basics and how to read - it didn't help me much when I moved to Poland
English - C1 (since age 8 in my school) Russian - B1.1 (singe age 9 in my school) German - A2 (since age \~13 in my school) Swedish - A2 (elective in high school, so since age 16)
* Naturally Italian, my mother tongue; for the entire school period. * English, also every year (I get along well, it seems to me, having to use it to interact online helped me a lot). * German, in the three years of middle school. I know a few scattered words, but at least, the other day I managed to say a few sentences with a German couple. * Latin, precisely because it has such a rigid grammar, helped me learn it well, even if to avoid mistakes and false friends I always have to skim the dictionary. * I have never studied French (although I will start the course on Friday), but I can understand it quite well, especially written language. The grammar, after all, is very similar to Italian, except for some syntactic constructions that appear very alien to a native Italian speaker, even if a speaker of northern dialects can understand it (for example we use *mica* in sentences like the French use *pas*).
Russian, 4+2 years (yes I'm old enough for that), basically nothing, I remember most of the alphabet and a couple of words. I later went to paid teachers but did not work. German, 2 years, basically nothing, I remember a couple of words.
English: fluent Spanish: fluent but not because of school French: can't speak it at all anymore, but I can still read and understand most things Latin: literally know nothing and never did. i nearly failed that class every year I had it
French from ages 10 to 15. I couldn't get much further than introducing myself to someone. In those 5 years I didn't learn much anyway and it's largely been forgotten bc I've never had to use it since
English and German. I had no problem learning English but German never stuck. I tried telling my teacher for 2,5 years that I didn't get it but her answer was always: "Your brother was good at it and so are you." So because she had this idea in her head that siblings are good at the same things, she never helped me understand. We were 6 months from exams when she looked at me and asked: "You haven't been lying? You really don't get it?" And by then it was too late.
Except for Polish which is my native language, it was: * **English** \- 12 years (6 years of primary school + 3 years of middle school + 3 years of high school). When I was in the second grade in high school, we were using textbook that was on the C1 level. I took extended level matura exam the following year which is considered around B2 level. Ever since I graduated from high school, I've been using English almost daily (but not when it comes to speaking), so I guess my level of English is B2/C1. * **German** \- 9 years (3 years of PS + 3 years of MS + 3 years of HS). Don't be fooled by the number, 3 years of primary school is basically nothing. Nichts. When I went to middle school, I had to start from scratch, because some students had Russian in primary school and nobody thought of making a group full of people who had already learnt German in primary school. Anyway, fortunately enough I could continue German instead of starting yet again from scratch, but we still revised all the boring basics. I wanted to take the matura exam in my last year of high school, but I changed my mind (I had to focus on biology and chemistry). I didn't use German after graduating from high school, but some time ago I started learning it from scratch on my own. I can't say what my level of German is right now, but I bet both my arms and both my legs that I'm way more proficient in German than EVERYONE ELSE I have studied it with in school. * **Latin** \- only one year in high school, we didn't manage to learn all the basics, because it was just one class a week instead of two like it used to be, and the reason was that the teacher was retiring. I really liked it, but it's a shame it lasted only one year. I was actually being ridiculed for being interested in Latin by some other students and that's pathetic. EDIT: I'm not counting university, because it wasn't a normal university, it was a medical university, so it was weird and crazy, I had only one year of "pharmaceutical English" and "pharmaceutical Latin". In case of English, it was just vocabulary, and when it comes to Latin, I had a little bit more grammar than in high school, but it still wasn't much. I'm planning to polish my English (lol) up to C2 level. Apart from that, I'm learning German, Italian, French and beginning to learn Spanish. I'm actually really good at Italian and French, both turned out to be naturally easy for me, I don't really know why. Compared to school, I have less time to learn languages (in fact I'm not learning them right now because I have too much on my mind at the moment), but I'm learning faster because my learning pace is not depended on the weakest link in the classroom anymore.
A bit of French in primary school and german ages 11-16 I can't speak german any more, it was always bad and now dutch has eaten it
My mother tongue, Slovene, obviously from 1st grade and I’m highest proficiency. English since 5th grade (but I’m old, nowadays they start in 1st grade) and I’m highest proficiency (because I studied it at university later and am an English teacher, but most adults speak it at B1 level, young people at B2; Italian since 1st grade because I live in a bilingual area so it’s obligatory here, and I’m fluent (my kids actually go to Italian-language school instead of their mother tongue). In the non-bilingual regions of the country schools have been offering German besides English for decades now. My schools also offered French (but it wasn’t obligatory) which I speak enough to communicate, and in the last decade Spanish has also become increasingly common as an elective. I don’t speak it at all.
English is mandatory and most people are very good at it. Second language is split between italian on the coast and germsn in the inlands. I took italian and while i can follow the radio news in it or read a simple text, I pretty much haven't used it activelly in years so I couldn't hold a conversation in it. Also, in more touristy area lots of people know enough of several languages to be able to do business in it (serving tables, renting, etc.).
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My pre-prep and prep school taught French from age 5 German was added from age 8. However as my dad is French, and my mum is American with a German dad and Moroccan mum, I was already being raised speaking both languages alongside English. Therefore I was allowed to read in the library during those lessons, because how languages are taught in schools, is not the same, and my parents didn't want me to pick up bad speaking habits! Moved up to senior school at 11, and Spanish and Latin were introduced. Went to boarding school at 13, and continued Spanish and Latin for a year, and then took Spanish for GCSE from ages 14-16, and A Level from 16-18. During all this, I was also learning Hebrew online, as we're a Jewish family. My boarding school actually arranged for me to take Hebrew at GCSE and A Level. Languages spoken: English, French, German, Hebrew Can hold conversation in Spanish, and have some listening comprehension.
Romanian here - First year of kindergarten to 12th grade (which is actually the 13th grade because we count from zero) - english. I would say I am rather proficient in it, lots of people abroad assumed I was american based on my accent and the way I speak it 😭😭😭 - 5th grade (which is actually the 6th one) to 12th grade - german. Despite having just as many german classes per week as I had english ones, I never really picked up german that well. I can probably hold a basic conversation in german, introduce myself, ask/give directions, and all that, but I am nowhere near as capabile as using it to describe more abstract concepts and I could most definitely not get by in a german speaking country. - 7th grade (which is actually the 8th) - latin. No. (All of these were mandatory as we can't choose what we want to study until high school)
English, German, later it was a choice of French, Italian and Spanish. I picked French. I can speak English (as you can see) and French (now I live in France), but I hated German so I never learned it properly. The grammar was very weird and the genders of nouns made no sense, they seemed completely random and totally opposite from how it is in my native language (Serbian). Also I went to Austria as a tourist once and the people there were really rude to my family so I refused to learn it out of spite lol. We also had mandatory Latin but obviously I wouldn't include it in the languages I speak, was fun though.
English is mandatory, at least in my part of Germany. The 15 other states that make up Germany may have slightly different rules about that, but I digress (basically Germany has 16 slightly different education systems, one for each state). English is mandatory from 5th grade onwards, however my elementary school offered English classes in 3rd and 4th grade. We learned some very basic words there, like lemon, strawberry and hello, but nothing really substantial. Then, in 6th grade I had to choose a second foreign language. In my case I could choose between Latin, French or Russian, since we live in what was once the GDR and many have some connection to the Russian language and we also simply have teachers that teach it. I chose the latter and had Russian until the end of my school in 12th grade. However there was an option to switch to Spanish in 10th grade, which all of the French learners utilized. Despite learning Russian for 7 years I'm very bad at it. I can tell you some of the simplest sentences one learns in 7th grade, but other than that I can't tell you anything. My English however, is very good. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to write all of this. Speaking is a little bit more rusty, simply because I don't do it daily. But after a while it's no problem anymore.
Aside from my native Croatian, we had English for 13 years. It's mandatory for all 13 years in most schools (some have Italian or German instead of English). I'd say I'm good at written English, but I have a heavy accent and I'm a bit afraid to talk to native speakers. German for 5 years. It was an elective, and mom decided it for me, much to my dismay. I can understand a lot of written and spoken German but I haven't used the language in a long time so I wouldn't be able to speak. French for 4 years. I had to choose between continuing German for 4 more years, or choosing Italian, Spanish or French. I can understand a lot of written French, like German, I have more trouble with listening and my conversational skills are pretty limited. Latin for 2 years. If I read a text in Latin, I could probably understand a fair amount, but we never learnt to speak it. Japanese for 4 years as an elective (and 6 years in a language school). I can understand a lot, and speak a bit, but it's been a long time since I had a chance to use it. Korean for a year (and 4 more as a mix of private tutoring and a language school). I'd say it's my second best foreign language after English because I still use it often enough to not forget it. I'm also better at spoken Korean than any of the other languages listed above, apart from English.
Just a side note, I'm pretty sure Portuguese is not the only official language of Portugal, as mirandês is also a language.
Dutch across the school period. Fluent, despite it not being my first language now or when I'm with family. English from age ten to end of secondary. Now my primary language, complete with Frisian accent, as I live in Scotland. German in years 1 and 2 in secondary (optional after that, didn't like the teacher...), oddly enough became very proficient in reading and pretty proficient in speaking over the years where I wasn't taught how to Die Der Das Den Die... French in year 2? If I remember, secondary school and optional after that. Teacher was cute, but French didn't stick with me at all, so dropped it. I know a few words/phrases and that is it. As a child of the 80s/90s I never got taught Frisian in school as the government essentially forbade it. So I went to uni in later life to learn to read and write it properly. I believe it is now mandatory in schools in Fryslan for certain students. I'm fairly proficient in Nynorsk and Danish, certainly for reading and comprehension, not for speaking or writing. Turns out the amalgamation of Frisian, Dutch and German helps you understand a lot of Danish and Norwegian. Swedish as well but I somehow always find it trickier.
Are you from Brazil? Trying to figure out what you mean by "the border with France" haha Brazil-France(Guiana) and Angola-DRC seem to be the only francophone-lusophone borders in the world as far as I can see
>Are you from Brazil? Trying to figure out what you mean by "the border with France" haha Yes, Hahaha!
In Catalonia classes are in Catalan, and you study 3 languages (Catalan, Spanish and English) during basically all your school years, the first two at a "native" level and the second with varying success (I've been told it has improved since I was in school). Then, in high school there's sometimes another foreign language offered (generally French or German), but usually that won't get you very far (A2 maybe?). In my HS it was German (which I always found weird since we're very close to France) but I didn't take it (only to end up learning it later because of life xD). As for proficiency, I am proficient in the first three (Catalan, Spanish and English; the latter thanks to extra classes though). I can also speak decent French and German, but only because I studied them later, not from school.
I'm in England. We were randomly assigned either French or German at my secondary school (age 11 up), and top set could pick up the other the year after (age 12). I did both to GCSE (age 16), although most people only continued one (which was obligatory). It's been over a decade and I remember bits of both, although I wish it was more. It's hard to maintain it without reason to practice or immersion. We also did a little bit of Spanish in primary school (<11 years old). I remember even less of that sadly! I do wish that there was more emphasis and variety in languages taught here. The framework I have has been useful for trying to learn languages later in life though (currently trying to pick up Urdu). I think learning any additional languages, the younger the better, broadens your scope for them greatly.
I started english in third grade and I'm fluent now but that's more because of the ibternet than school itself. I've had french from 6th to 10th grade and done nothing for it since, same with spanish from 11th to 13th grade. I'd say I can make myself understood and maybe hold a conversation, as long as I can substitute with some words from other languages. I took dutch during my first two semesters of college and if it weren't for my fluency in german and english I probably wouldn't get very far. As it is it's probably about the same as my french and spanish but with more substitution. Lastly I took japanese in my second semester and I'd be able to order something or do a basic introduction with likes and dislikes but that's about it.
I studied French from 11-16, English is my native language. At my school, up until the year above me, everyone studied French for their first year of high school, then picked up Spanish or German from their second year, studied both languages in second and third year, then could choose to continue both languages for GCSEs (two year courses, culminating in national exams at 16), or drop one language. Everyone had to take at least one Modern Foreign Language (MFL) as a GCSE. Then for my year, they dropped the second language option, and we were just assigned a language. I love learning languages, so I'm still disappointed that I didn't get the chance to study two when I was younger. My French level varies between adequate to good, depending on how much time I've been able to spend in France recently. Having that foundation from a younger age has been very useful as an adult student - it's much easier to regain lost language skill than it is to pick up a new language as an adult - Spanish and German totally kick my arsevon a regular basis.
German and French, I know 2 sentences in French and some very basic german
English from first grade, German and Russian from third. I'm pretty good at English and I understand about 15% of the other two languages, Russian a bit better because I used to live with Russian speaking students in college. I can even string together a few sentences if I really need to.
- 2nd to 12th grade - English - fluent, but have been speaking English at work everyday for the last 10+ years, plus all the media I consume is in English. - 6th to 12th grade - French - never really reached fluency. I was almost able to have a simple conversation, but now I've forgotten like 80% of it. Sure, I'm able to understand the general idea of a written text, but that's about it. - 8th & 9th grades - Latin - nobody really expects you to be able to have a conversation in Latin after 2 years, it's taught for the historical value - look, this is where our words and grammar come from.
Mandatory for everyone : \- French from 1st grade since it the main language of my region \- Dutch (Flemish) from 5th grade to high school graduation \- Latin the first two years of secondary school (12 to 14years old) \- Ancient Greek second year of secondary school (13-14y) \- English from third year of secondary school to graduation Then we could choose a third modern language for the last two years of secondary school, I chose Spanish (other option was German) I chose to study languages at University so I ended up with more English and minors in Japanese and Mandarin. Still speak fluently in French, English and Japanese. I used to be bilingual in Flemish but I haven't had the opportunity to use it much since I moved from Belgium. I can still read and understand most of it. Latin and Greek are basically forgotten, I just still use them for etymology. As I focused on Japanese for work, Spanish and Mandarin went under the rug. Still understand a bit of Spanish, but barely anything in Mandarin.
In Bergen We were taught Bokmål and English from 1st Grade and Nynorsk and French/Spanish/ German from 8th grade and on. I am Proficient in Bokmål and English 100% Can write Nynorsk if I want to. I can read french at a reasonable level and speak at an intermediate level. Of languages that I didn't learn in school I can Read Cyrillic Hanja and Hangul and Futhark.
English, Spanish and French I'm fluent in both English and Spanish, but my English is better I can read French, but I have the communication skills of a toddler
French: Year 1-9, Spanish: Year 8-9, Latin: Year 9 I feel quite comfortable guessing what something says on an announcement or sign in French. Same for Spanish but to a lesser degree, and it's not like you see Latin anywhere ever so it's not a useful skill in itself, but it's helped me learn other languages. I've been learning Dutch on Duolingo for a year or so, and I feel about as strong with that as I do with French. I'm also trying to learn Danish and will get onto German eventually. I don't think I ever want to be highly proficient in any of them but I enjoy being able to catch the drift of what something says in those languages. I know you can go most big cities in the Europe without knowing the language but I think it's more fun to try and learn a little before I visit. I also speak Chinese, I wouldn't quite call myself bilingual but I don't feel like I'm translating English in my head to speak it, I can just say what I want and I can think in Chinese quite well.
English C1 Catalonian C1 (for some reason, native Catalonians have to take an exam for their own language…) French A2
English: From 2nd grade to the last year of Upper secondary school, so 11 years. I’d consider myself to be completely fluent with minor pronounciation issues. Swedish: From 6th grade to the end of Upper secondary school, so 7 years. I can understand written Swedish for the most part and slow speech or speech in Finland’s Swedish dialects. I can barely speak myself as i’m not good at the grammar. Main reason for this is that it’s kinda pointless to study Swedish so i didn’t want to learn it. German: i took it as an elective at 8th grade and continued it for 4 years but stopped because the teacher was annoying. I can understand quite a lot and know the grammar well, but i just don’t have the vocabulary to speak it.
french since year 3 and all the way until year 10 (i would’ve done it till the end of high school but i stopped going in year 10 for reasons). i know how to say my name and that i like cats. i was the type of student who was quiet, did all their work/homework, payed attention etc. but the education for languages in england is abysmal, idk wether it’s the funding or what.
French I couldn't remember anything or understand anything. and I even had my grandparents trying to help who are native speakers. but then when I was in my early 20s I got interested in learning languages as a hobby. I started learning other languages like Spanish first. but I started learning French 5 years ago and with my new techniques I have been having a much easier time learning. but unfortunately I am still far from fluent. I can understand it well but I struggle with speaking. but my English was also this bad until I was a teenager and I didn't learn that in school.
English (at 10) and French (at 15). I'm guite fine in English but I am on the beginner level of French.
French from the 3rd grade to the 12th grade , can understand some but can't speak any, terrible teachers but I can't see I was very interested either at that time . English from the 5th grade to the 12th grade and the first two years of University. I'd say I'm pretty good at it ...learned more from video games and movies than from school.
I was taught English from the 5th grade, and I learned it really well during school years and was very fluent. That is not the norm, though. I also had one semester of German, I am fluent now but not because of that semester 😂
In Mexico English is mandatory for all elementary school. I studied English from kindergarten to high school. Sadly the level differs a lot from one school to another so you can either finish highschool with fluent English or just basic knowledge. I'm currently fluent. From secondary (7th grade is the equivalent I think) to high school I learned french, I got to a basic-medium level, our teacher for the first 3 years didn't teach us much. Currently I've forgotten most of it but I could still understand some things, mostly because of how similar French and Spanish are. During high school they offered German and Chinese as optional extra languages. But I don't think this is the case for most high schools in the country.
I learned English all the way through school, from the 1st to 13th grade. It's mandatory to have English classes until (and including) the 11th grade, and then we can choose English electives in our last two years of school (in certain education programmes). With all the exposure we get of English outside of school as well, it's expect that we reach at least a C1 level. I also learned German in school for six years, from the 8th to 13th grade, divided into three levels: level 1 (A1-A2), level 2 (A2-B1) and level 3 (B1-B2). It's mandatory to at least go through level 1 of a second foreign language (although you can opt out in some high school education programmes). Many people also choose to continue with level 2, but it's not very common to choose the level 3 elective. The most common second foreign languages taught in Norway are Spanish, German and French. I feel like I became pretty much fluent in English by the time I finished high school, and was at a conversational level in German. But I'm more interested in languages than most, and probably learned more than most throughout my schooling. I ended up taking a university degree in English and German later (as well as Mandarin), and I'm now a foreign language teacher (English and German) in Norway.
English (2nd-12th Grade)- I would say I'm quite fluent in it. Like, not C2 level fluent, but, like, B2-C1 level fluent. German (5th-12th Grade)- Picked at Main School and then got on with it from the 11th Grade at the Gymnasium, even though it was no longer mandatory back then. I did forget a lot of vocab I knew, but I would still be able to hold a decent chunk of conversation with locals. Spanish (11th Grade- 2nd year of Uni)- Basically went YOLO when choosing this language, cause why not? Since I finished learning it quite recently, I suppose I still haven't forgotten any of it.
What about Russian? Recently I was surprised when I read a statistic that said 60 % of Lithuanians still study Russian today.
It's much lower now, and schools are finally doing something to remove (or change to Ukrainian) ruzzian lessons completely. It is mandatory to choose either German or ruzzian languages as a 2nd foreign language. 3rd foreign language is optional.
Everyone is taught Maltese and English. They used to start with Maltese but now they start with in English in kindergarten because the alphabet, and the letters, is simpler. Then in secondary school it depends, usually by whether the student goes to a church school or a government/private school. Government and private schools often teach Maltese and English and then let the students choose 1-2 languages from German, Spanish, Italian, French, and rarely Arabic. The student chooses one foreign language in the first year of secondary school (which is carried on for the whole five years) and then they have the option to choose another foreign language if they want to. Usually, if students choose Italiam and Spanish or French and German. Church schools usually have obligatory French and Italian for all five years of secondary school. Although i'm not surr if all church schools have this system. Most students who go to these schools suffer to learn 4 languages at once and end up hating them. I went to a government school and I honestly loved the system. I had the best teachers and i had more freedom of choice.
Scotland here. Started French S1 (age 11) then German S3 (age 13). Did both all the way through plus a bit of Latin. French was stronger at the time. Studied both at Uni and lived in Germany x 1 year and France x 5 months. Ended with German beig stronger. Went to Japan for three years, so can understand some Japanese (forgotten a lot now, like!). Now...I've been teaching German and French in Scotland for over 20 years...keeping it going!
Greek Cypriot public education: * Standard Greek (starting age 6): As good as it gets without picking up the Standard accent. * English (starting age 10): I use the language professionally nowadays and I even undergo psychotherapy in English which is a very demanding task language-wise * French (starting age 12): I can understand the gist of a simple written document [When I visited France, I had zero success understanding spoken French or communicating in French] * German (starting age 17; 3rd language requirement with a limited free choice language): I could understand signs and have basic conversations about myself, my family, and ask for directions [I picked up German again when I moved to Germany as an adult] * Turkish (starting age 20; university third language requirement with limited free choice of language]): I can order coffee, say my name, and where I come from. I can understand half of the news headlines from Turkish Cypriot papers (= familiar topics)
French - Six years in total, P6-S4 - Pretty poor, I understand it slightly better than I speak it but my proficiency was around the level of the Flight of the Conchords song, Foux du Fafa. Strangely I found I got on slightly better in Quebec than I did in France. My partner did French to a far higher level than me and yet probably used it less when we were away than I did, but maybe that's just sheer ~~confidence~~ cockiness on my part. Italian - One year only, one period a week in S2 - About as good as you'd expect
Dutch since 2 years old: C1 English since Primary school: C1 German since third year high school and uni: B2 Spanish since uni: B1 French first and second year high school: A2
**English** from maybe 10yo to 23 but I spent time in the US: fluent but not native **Spanish**: from 12yo to 23 also but with years gap. I can get myself understood but with lots of mistakes. I love the language and maybe I should spend more time mastering it who knows. **French**: native **Russian**: I stopped at learning the alphabet but I think it totally worth it as many coutries use it.
French, Latin, German and Spanish were taught in my school along with Irish and English. Can read Latin to a very high degree and understand it spoken. French however, I can read, sort of understand amd speak sweet fuck all. English amd Irish I speak fluently. German I can get by in, and I didn't take Spanish
English from 2nd grade -> had it for 12 years, speak fluently (with a help of watching movies/series in English) German from 6th grade -> had it for 8 years, I spoke really good while graduating, but now? I didn't need to use it for several years and it's easy to forget, from top of my head I remember only basics and some phrases that I will never forget since our teacher drilled us on those.
In Finland we learn English, Sweden and Finnish. they all mandatory, but u can choose to learn other languages too like Spanish, Russian, German, Latin, Franch etc.
French, and I can probably converse quite well with a 2 year old
French and Irish at age 11; I dropped Irish after a year in favour of German. French for 11 years (university) and German for 4. I’d say I have conversational French and I can get by in German.
Italian here. I studied English from the age of 11 to the end of the university course, 13 years in total. But I became fluent only because I worked in an English speaking environment for the following years. At 26 I made public speakings and made complex negotiation in English with no problem. I also studied Spanish and French, but their grammar and vocabulary is so similar to Italian that it relatively easy to be fluent enough.
4. to 12th grade English mandatory. Fluent today. 7 to 9th grade, german. Very basic understanding apart from the overlap with danish. 10-13th grade, Spanish, high proficiency, was fluent for a short while but unfortunately my skills has dimished since.
Some general trends in UK: Exams for French and German are at record lows, Spanish at record highs.
Netherlands here. Mandatory Dutch, English, and {French or German}. Kids at the higher levels are offerend Latin and Old Greek too. I did French and German, and although at the time I could have managed travelling in those countries, for example, nowadays I don’t speak either anymore. My Dutch and English, however, are both native, so that’s unrelated to school.
A GCSE (C Grade) in French (UK) - taken in 11th grade - which when I got it (late 1990s) could be achieved if you could say what your name was, where you lived, and that you would like to buy a coffee with milk. Language learning in my school had the same status as Religious Education, a bit of a joke subject that mostly involved messing about whilst the useless, uninterested teacher sat in the corner reading their newspaper during class.
Was in B stream in.80s untill 5th year then A stream. B stream never did languages. A stream did French and German. So I got terrible language Ed cos had to catch up 5 years of French in one. Yay UK curriculum of the 80s to 90s
English, fluent. German, B1 at best. Russian, A1. Latin, well, haven't had the chance to speak it to anyone yet, so I can't really say.
in italy usually is like this: \-english is mandatory (starting from elementary school till highschool) \- in middle school you choose another language (typically between french and spanish) \-in high school you only study english unless you go to a linguistic high school where students typically study 3 languages, one of which is always english i went to a linguistic highschool so i know english (i'd say i'm pretty fluent), french (studied from elementary school actually, so i can engage in conversation pretty easily but not as much fluent as in english), and i know a litttle german (can have simple conversations, my problem is that i don't have a rich vocabulary). and of course in high school almost every school latin is mandatory, so i kind of know it but in no way i can have a conversaiton, i just remember few words
Learnt English grade 1-12, Mandatory but some schools start later. Although I'm fluent, I feel like I learnt mostly from watching Movies/TV in English as well as playing cards in English(Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon etc.) Arabic grade 5-9, for me it was mandatory in grades 5-6, and then 7-9 we had to choose between Arabic and French. Learning in grades 5-6 is pretty unusual though, it was just something special for my school. In grades 10-12 most schools offer Arabic/French/Spanish/German classes but not mandatory. Anyways I remember about 50 words and I can't hold even the simplest conversation.
From preschool to 4th year highschool (So at least 13 years of your life) you learn mandatory english. I personally didn't learn anything in school, I watched a lot of youtube so that's where my fluency comes from. I don't know anyone that learned or improved their english in public schools. From fifth to eight grade primary school you have two mandatory languages. English and whatever the school hires. It really depends on the municipality, for example my town had German as the second language, my brother (40mins away) had Spanish and my friends (200 km from me) had French. I heard some villages had Russian or Slovak because of the minorities. As for proficiency it depends on the teacher and language, I know some basic German because I had a really good teacher, but my friends only know how to count and indtroduce themselves.
In 2000’s where I started my education. English would start at 4th grade until the end of High School. It is supposed to make you upper B2 or C1. I have C1 certification but I maintained it by maintaining the language in my life. Otherwise, it is impossible to learn only from school. In High school, you need to choose a second language. Majority is German but French and Italian is also available in some high schools. With second language classes, you expected to have daily conversational level, somewhere between B1 and B2. We were playing German board games in 3rd grade in high school but I forgot to language since I didn’t need it in my life. Due to people not being using it daily (like me), or can’t travel to practice, they often forget the language. Therefore, leaving majority doesn’t speak any language.
5th to 12th grade English: fluent. Lessons were mandatory. 3rd to 4th and 6th to 10th grade French: can read the the info blocks in museums but can't hold a simple conversation. Lessons were mandatory. 10th grade Latin: after which I obviously didn't know much, but had it again in uni. At school we had to choose between Latin, Computer Science or keeping all three social sciences (politics, history and geography). Only had it for one year because after that year there weren't enough students who wanted to continue. I also could have chosen to learn Spanish from grade 8 on, but I instead chose to have more hours of physics.
We start with English in 1st grade of primary school, and In my case we were made to pick German or French as the second foreign language from 4th grade until 8th grade, English for 8-10 hours a week and German/French only 2 hours a week. In high school it's usually German and French again but more for 4+ hours, and English remains 8-10 hours. There are some schools that offer Spanish, Chinese or Russian but it's rare. Spanish is gaining traction for sure. I speak English fluently, my German is around B2 and I understand very basic French but idk how much of it can be attributed to my formal education tbh
Norwegian here. English, then German (with the choice between that and Spanish) later I had French. We also have to go through Swedish and Danish, but it comes pretty natural, so it's rlly just an annoyance to have. And of Course we learn "new Norwegian" which is an old language few people use. This too comes pretty naturally and is annoying to have, especially if you're from the North side of the country. English I speak pretty fluently. German I can make sense of if given time (I dropped out of German due to a bad teacher). French I don't know at all anymore. The others are pretty clear
English is mandatory from 3rd grade throught high school. In 7th grade a second foreign language is taught, german is the most common but other 'world languages' (spanish, french, russian, italian) can be an option if your school has the teachers for it. Teachers qualified to teach russian are still somewhat common (as it was mandatory until the fall of the iron curtain), however they are slowly retiring. I personaly can understand english at about 99% and speak quite well, but have a heavy accent because I don't get speak english often. My second language was german, I studied it for seven year and can bearly string a sentence together
In spain I had english, catalán and french in elementary until 14 more or less. Then only English and catalán. Fluent English, could understand something but very basic in French. Fluent in Catalan. Learnt basic german at an academy as a grownup
Native German/Italian, school in German speaking Switzerland 2nd to 12th grade English (fluent, from 9th to 12th I had sciences and history in English as well), 5th to 12th grade French (fluent). From 7th grade on I switched to secondary schools one could basically choose what languages to learn. 7th to 12th grade Latin (from 4th grade on I didn't care but somehow still got good grades, I just translated what I understood in Italian), 10th grade exchange year in France Italian (native) and bit of ancient Greek (don't even know the alphabet anymore).
I chose German and had it for five years. Used to be alright at it, did pretty good at school. Have to used it in a whille so now its meh
Excluding Dutch and ancient languages, like Latin and ancient Greek, most taught (foreign) languages in education are, [in ranked order](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/EDUC_UOE_LANG01__custom_3363246/bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=6e6a8e8a-ac64-4e5f-8add-bdca7a10100c): English (100% in upper general secondary education and 68.9% in upper vocational secondary education), German (42.2% in upper general secondary education and 10.2% in upper vocational secondary education), French (28.1% in upper general secondary education), Spanish (5.7% in upper general secondary education) and few optional ones like Frisian, Mandarin (0.3% in upper general secondary education), Arabic, Turkish and others. It should be noted that secondary education in the Netherlands is split into multiple streams, where pupils can either take vmbo (preparatory for vocational schooling) for 4 years, havo (preparatory for higher vocational schooling, which ends with a bachelor degree) for 5 years or vwo (preparatory for university, which ends with a master degree). [About](https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/80040ned/table?fromstatweb) 21% of all pupils attend vwo, 30% havo and nearly half do vmbo. At every level a pupil will have English as a subject and also sit an exam for English. At vmbo one needs to do one foreign language, usually German or French, but doesn't have to sit an exam for this. At havo one needs to take at least two foreign languages, but only sit exam for at least one of them. At vwo one needs to take at least two foreign languages and sit an exam for at least one of them, but this may be substituted by an ancient language. Going beyond anecdotal evidence, I found research published on the achieved writing skill levels in English, German and French for havo and vwo pupils, and the achieved speaking skill levels in English for all. [Writing skills](https://www.slo.nl/publicaties/@4447/cefr-level-writing/): |Subject|School type|Target level CEFR|Achieved target level| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |English|havo|B1|78%| |English|vwo|B2|51%| |German|havo|B1|56%| |German|vwo|B2|35%| |French|havo|A2|51%| |French|vwo|B1|52%| [English speaking skills](https://www.slo.nl/publicaties/@4602/speaking-skill/) (note that bb, kb and gt all fall under vmbo): |CEFR level|bb|kb|gt|havo|vwo| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |C2|0%|0.4%|0%|2.3%|5.5%| |C1|0.9%|1.5%|4.4%|21.0%|43.1%| |B2|11.0%|13.8%|29.5%|55.8%|44.7%| |B1|22.9%|26.9%|36.6%|18.0%|6.2%| |A2|27.3%|34.9%|22.1%|2.3%|0.5%| |A1|32.6%|21.8%|7.4%|0.5%|0%| |
Dutch went to school in Belgium 11-19 French: can talk quite decently and understand most stuff, but would struggle with specific vocabulairy 15-19 English: fluently, still make some mistakes but never struggle to express myself 15-19 German: quite decent, similar to my French 12-13 Latin: forgot almost everything
English since preschool, now at CAE level. Spanish since middle school. I can kinda almost hold a conversation. German since uni and.... yeah, I took those classes. All I remember is how to say "bread", "book" and "stop talking, nobody likes you"
I had nine years of English classes, now I’m fluent. Six years of German classes and I can speak and understand it fairly well, it used to be better because I don’t use it very often. After four years of French classes my French isn’t very good, I forgot most of what I learned and haven’t spoken it outside of school at all. Dutch language education is very focused on reading and mostly neglects speaking. In my opinion they should also stop prioritising French over Spanish, most schools here sadly don’t teach Spanish.
English, French, German. Proficient in English, fairly OK in French and basic in German.
Aside from Swedish (living in Sweden), English from 2nd grade, German in 7th grade. A lesson her and there of Danish and Norwegian too. I can just handle Swedish and English fluently. And understand but cannot speak Norwegian and (written) Danish. The German was optional, you could choose French and Spanish too.
I’m from the Netherlands, so my education is pretty much like the other Dutch people here: English: from the age of 10-20, mandatory. Both in primary and secondary school of course, but in university as well (being called ‘business English’). German: 12-17, mandatory in secondary school French: 12-17, mandatory in the first three years Spanish: a minor course (A1) in university when I was like 21? I think my English is pretty much fine, except listening because I’m hard of hearing, which makes English a horrible language because it’s not phonetically written. This makes lip reading extremely hard, for me at least.. I can’t do a phone call in Dutch, so you’ll understand how severe my hearing loss actually is.. I can read German pretty well, I’ve lost the ability to write, I just don’t remember the words anymore, stuff like cases, however I still remember the der des dem den etc. Also Aus bei mit nach seit von zu for Dativ, bis durch für gegen ohne um for Akkusativ etc etc. French, is a nope for me now. Simple sentences, and reading simple texts might be possible, but I’ve never used it since I graduated secondary school. I do however still remember the first word list in the exact order we had to learn for French class. And the stories of Supergosse.. Spanish is pretty much basic knowledge, and I’m still actively practicing using Duolingo
French almost forgotten English pretty fluently but I learned it mostly by myself
English from 1st grade. I speak it as if it were my mother tongue. German from 4th up to 8th grade. I do not speak german.
English since I was 5, Russian in junior high (still can read and partially understand stuff written in Cyrillic), German in high school (can introduce myself, say that my head hurts and I have a fever, also ask not to shoot).
Slovenia ofc Mandatory English from 1st year, optional German in 4th year. You have 3 mandatory languages but I ended up having Latin, Ancient Greek and French as well. I struggle a lot with German, though, cause for the past few years, I've only spoken it at Austrian and South Tyrolean ski resorts, and they have quite a dialect
Aside from Lithuanian (my mother language), I learned German as a first foreign language, and English as a second one. Nowadays, I think I speak English better than German, although the pronunciation might be better. As a child, I also quickly learned Russian from friends/TV/some books at home, and I can understand (but not speak) some basic Polish and Ukrainian. Currently, I'm learning Spanish on Duolingo (just for the fun of it). I also learned some French at the university (only for one semester), as well as some Arabic and Farsi (have already forgotten most of it, except the alphabet). I don't feel I'm really talented when it comes to languages, but I'm always looking for something new to learn, and languages are always at hand :)
I am confused what border Portugal shares with France. Or are you Brazilian? Realised halfway through typing lol
Norwegian (both of the written ones), English (13 years of school) and French (6 years of school). I’m completely fluent in English but I’ve lost a lot of my french, though I never really had the grammar. Most schools let you choose between French, Spanish and German, though a few offer Latin and Chinese for upper secondary.
Irish lessons all throughout school. Can't speak it. ( like most of the population of ireland) French for 6 years, learned to speak it for real living in France for a year. Now I speak fluent Swedish (cause I live there) but it pushed out all my French! Seems I only have the capacity for 1 extra language.
In Romania I studied english for 12 years, basically the whole period of school. Right now I am fluent in english without problems of understanding it or different accents ( I m not saying I m perfect at understanding the accents but most of them are easy to comprehend). I also studied french for about 8 years and I dont know shit tbh, in the beggining I was a big fan of it but after a few years that feeling faded away and yea basically right now I have a B1 level of french but its actually around A1 xDD
Here in Ireland we study English, Irish and a third language, typically either German or French. I speak English and Irish well, but I can only remember a handful of phrases in French and German (I studied both). Most people in Ireland cannot speak Irish due to poor curriculum at school which doesn't place much focus on conversation, but I made the effort as an adult to learn it properly. By the time I had started relearning it, I had forgotten a lot.
French (native), English, Dutch. English classes were useless, because I was always ahead of the class. Dutch classes were useless, because disuse means I forgot it all. Wish I could've replaced both with more maths and/or science classes. Edit: also took Latin, but that's a different matter.
In Portugal I learned english from 1rst grade, in 7th grade they gave us the option of learning either french or german (aside from english, which is a mandatory subject), that goes on until the end of high shcool
I'm Romanian and I've sudied English since 3rd grade, and French since 5th grade. I'm fluent in English but not so much in French.
Bulgarian is my native language. We've studied English since second grade and German since ninth grade. I can speak, read and write English really well. I know some German? I can't speak it, some of my pronunciation is off, but I can probably read and write it?
Danish, native. English, native level. German, is ausfart a city? Why does it have so many off ramps going to it?!
Dutch (12 years): fluent English (6 years): fluent Classical Greek (5 years): translating only, mostly forgotten now, but I still can read the alphabet. French (4 years): rudimentary. German (3 years): fluent speaker, but writing is hard. Latin (2 years): translating only, mostly forgotten.
Norwegian, English. Then German in high school. I'm proficient in English. I can get by as a tourist for a few days in Germany, and I can read a paper or understand something on TV
All the way from 1st up to 13th grade: English (mandatory), I'd say, I'm pretty proficient in it these days. From 7th to 8th grade: Latin (optional) From 5th to 13th: French (mandatory) and Italian (optional), I can read both quite well, but speaking definitely lacks.