My school had Spanish, French, or German.
As a Japanese native, the only foreign language I studied at school was basically English.
However, as part of my ancient Japanese language education, I studied classical Chinese literature written in Chinese characters, from which hiragana and other Japanese characters are derived, so ancient Chinese might also be included in the list of foreign languages I learned.
My middle school had English, German, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek.
That sounds amazing. In my high school I was the only one who signed up for Latin so they put me in Spanish instead…
Everybody picked English as first or second foreign language. Most picked Spanish as second language, the best students (or kids from solidly middle-class families) picked German as a first language, to get into the “good” group. Latin was an elective for nerds, Geek for Über-nerds.
I did grammar school, so we had:
- Dutch (our native language)
- English
- French
- German
- Classical Greek
- Latin
- Chinese (optional course)
Dutch and English were all through school, the other ones you took for 2 years and then picked two languages to follow through on, one of which had to be Greek or Latin. I did German and Greek.
In my part of Australia we had to learn Japanese between the ages of 10 and 14, after that is became optional.
English of course, the language of the invaders
We had to choose 2 of English, German, Spanish, French, Italian. We had the option of Japanese as extracurricular
Man I wish we had japanese when I was in school. I was completely unmotivated to learn french, and yet I still manage to understand some basic sentences. I bet I would have been way more motivated and probably would have remembered more if I had the option to learn japanese.
I only remember French, Spanish, or German (this was back in the 90s). My kids have all those plus Japanese, Mandarin, and ASL to choose from
I know my producer’s schools had only Spanish, though one school he went to had ASL (American Sign Language) in addition to Spanish. However, there was one college that offered Japanese, which he would have loved.
In my hometown, it was Spanish, Latin, German, French, or ASL (I know, I know, not a foreign language. Arguably Spanish isn’t either, but anyway).
But each school only had one, so you only got fo choose if you had enough free periods to drive across town three times a week.
My school had Spanish. I learned Latin once I was in college.
In US, had French and Latin, plus of course English.
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As a German:
- English mandatory from the beginning
- Mandatory choice between Latin and French in 6th grade, Latin possible until 10th/11th grade (EF) and French possible until graduation
- Russian and Spanish possible from EF until graduation
- Korean and Japanese offered as extracurricular activities (Korean was taught by the parent of a student and stopped when said student graduated, Japanese was offered by a teacher who was a weeb so we mostly just watched anime (I think the only thing we actually learned was how to introduce ourselves), but it only started being offered 6 months before Covid shut everything down, don’t know if she continued offering it afterwards)
Mandatory:
- Danish (Native)
- English
- German
- Other Nordic languages: Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic (as part of Danish class)
Optional:
- French
- Spanish
- Latin (mandatory on certain schools)
Spanish, French, German, Latin, and if you wanted to learn Italian, you could go to the sister school in the morning for that class and then come back by bus.
In America it’s French, German and Spanish and in Panama it’s English and French.
