this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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i'm in the usa and my school has german, spanish and french. i'm taking spanish all 4 years of high school and german starting this autumn.

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[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I grew up in Hungary and Germany, and lived most of my early adulthood in Hungary. Later in life I moved to Québec, where I reside now.

In Germany, I had English starting grade five.

In Hungary, Russian was mandatory until 1989. After '89 it was elective between Russian, German, English or, in some schools, French. I opted for German starting grade 6 at a German ethnicity school, but felt like it was a mistake, since I was already native level, but the (non-native) teachers kept trying to one-up me in their broken knowledge of the language. Starting grade eight I've transferred to a school that had Russian only, but since I had no prior knowledge of it, but already spoke German and English, I was exempted from it. In high school I've opted for English.

My kids go to French language schools in Montréal and have English as a foreign language. We speak English at home. Almost ten years in and I still don't speak French. My kids don't speak either Hungarian or German.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

USA, too—Spanish and French.

If we’d had a third language it probably would have been Chinese instead of German—the cultural influence of German was minimal in the part of California where I grew up.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago

korea, mostly english but we also have basic chinese or japanese classes for a year or two

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

India - local language, English and Hindi

(Language is a controversial issue in India, and the present situation is more a political compromise than what's most useful, with many rules and exceptions, and some states / schools simply ignoring the whole compromise altogether.)

[–] cactus_head@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I lived in India(in what at the time, was called Hyderabad) for a while, as a foreign Arab. Most of the curriculum was in English, with both Telugu(the official language) and Hindu language subjects. I hated it.

Coming from an Arab country where the most English we were taught was the ABCs, and then being told I had to juggle 3 entirely new language. I wasn't even exempt from it. I would alternative from getting 61 out 75 in a hindui exam to falling the class, depending on if the teacher let's me cheat.

I couldn't even tell you what letters I was writing, I just drew them as a I saw them. My dad even forced me to watch Hindi cartoons in the hopes I will magically pick it up. For a while, I even had a Telugu teacher teaching me the alphabets. None of it stuck.

Honestly that period of my life was really damaging. I left India with full English and not a hint of Arabic. Coming back to the Arab world, to even get to the point of conversing with people again took years, and I still don't know how to read or write beyond a first graders level. Reading still gives me a headache.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's a political compromise. Not what's best for the students. At most the school could have offered you Urdu instead of Hindi, since it uses a modified Arabic script and has a few Arabic words.

It's still 'Hyderabad', by the way! Thankfully the religious nutcases haven't won elections in that state.

[–] cactus_head@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

At most the school could have offered you Urdu instead of Hindi

You know, I never thought of it that way, probably would have made the transition back to Arabic easier too, when I moved back to my country.

[–] JayJLeas@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm in Australia, we had French or Japanese. I took Japanese.

[–] may_be@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

that's a great language to learn!!!

[–] JayJLeas@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I enjoyed it. The teacher had lived in Japan for a while so we also got culture lessons, which was great.

[–] ghost_towels@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

West coast of Canada and in my daughters high school they have French, Spanish, and Hul’q’umi’num, which is the local First Nations language. Which I think is pretty freaking cool. Shes taking French though, since as she says, we are a bilingual country.

I lived overseas growing up so my choices were french, Spanish, and Arabic. I could have been fluent in Arabic! But nooooo, I took spanish. Think I speak spanish at all?

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

i am in the u.s. my high school (~ 40 years ago) offered spanish, french, german, and swedish. the district had asl classes but that was outside of school and open to the community. juniors and seniors could take classes at a nearby college, which opened up other language choices.

[–] FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

US; ASL, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese (which appears to have been replaced with Korean)

I took two years of German, and one each of French and Spanish. I knew that without someone to practice with, I was going to forget the advanced stuff anyway, so opted for basic familiarity of three.

[–] CobraCommander@quokk.au 3 points 1 week ago

In Australia I had Indonesian.

[–] RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

I'm Canadian, so French. I did it for six years and I learned more than I thought, but I still don't really speak French.

USA here. It was Spanish, French or German, too. I took Spanish for extra credit. It was an easy A as I grew up speaking it.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

In australia it was french in primary and high school.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

I'm in australia, and moved around a bit while i was young, I had lessons

in primary schools in:

english, german, japanese, indonesian, sign language, japanese again

in high schools:

english, japanese, french, german, and french again

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago

US, English and Spanish. But we had the option, schedule permitting, to go to one of the other highschools in town to take Latin, German, French, or ASL. One friend took ASL, the rest of us took Spanish. I still speak it every day.

[–] lucg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Netherlands, it depends on the level and where you live:

  • everyone: Dutch and English, and another language for 2 years
  • higher¹ education: French and German, drop one or both after 3 years, keeping the other for another 1 or 2 years
  • for kids that are still bored: +Latin, Greek, or Spanish as typical choices (depends what your regional school offers)
  • in the province of Frysia, Frysian is mandatory
  • in the overseas territories, it can be different again. Not all of them speak Dutch primarily, some don't follow the Dutch education system. I tried looking it up but couldn't easily find how it works in those regions (which may be a "country within the kingdom" or a "special municipality", depending on the island)
  • the existence of sign language did not come up, that I recall. So far as I can find, it's only offered on schools specifically for kids that have some level of hearing disability

¹ "higher" is the term that is officially used. I find it a bit derogatory. Having done some of basically every education level, each one has strengths and it's not like everyone from the "highest" one would be able to get a diploma on the "lowest" one. They're just different. Idk what word is commonly understood for this

[–] Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Brazil, in the 90s. It changed from school to school. I had English for my final 6 years in school (high school was 3 years), but it was mostly useless - nobody learned any English at all in school. We would just go over the same content multiple times - the usual joke was that the only thing we learned was the "to be" verb, but most kids didn't even understand that despite studying it every year.

The current mayor is pushing us to connect more with our twin city in Germany so he managed to add German classes as extra curricular to one of our schools, but after a year it has already changed and now the town simply pays for German classes in a private school for the ones who want it (probably less than 20 kids).

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My schools in the US:

Only English for all of elementary school. Starting in middle school, students can choose to take Spanish, French, Latin or German (in descending order of popularity). A bus would take you to one particular high school in the county for Mandarin, Greek, Russian, Japanese, etc. For the advanced diploma, you needed to take 3 years of a foreign language course. The full sequence offered for Spanish, French, Latin, and German takes 6 years.

[–] Noctambulist@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Germany at a secondary school, grades 5–13:

  • from grade 5: Latin (at least 6 years)
  • from grade 7: English (at least 4 years)
  • from grade 9: French or Ancient Greek (optional)
  • from grade 11: Spanish or Italian or Hebrew (optional)

That was about 20 years ago and learning Latin, let alone Ancient Greek, had become the exception even then.

[–] AuroraSine@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago

Peace be upon you!🌹

I come from Germany, and at my school, we had English and Turkish. Since you're about to start learning German, I'll give you a little heads-up. Watch out for: „der, die, das"! 😂😂😂 Even real Germans sometimes struggle with getting it right!

The USA has just on article „THE" but Germany has three. The positiv thing : Many words in German sound exactly the same like "Hello = Hallo" so that makes things a bit easier.

Good luck with your studies! 😊😊