Languages stupid question.

My dd was home educated until she went to school for y9 - she had done Spanish at home and had to do French and Spanish at school. She had thought she'd just get through a year of French then drop it and do Spanish for GCSE, but she ended up doing both for GCSE, then both for A level, and is now doing an MFL degree in French, Spanish and ab initio German. And is planning on doing some Italian in her second year So yes, in imo and experience it's possible.

Ds and dd3 are both doing GCSE in the MFL they started second at school as well. Not quite the same, but still the one with less time.

I began secondary school in 1991, we all started French in yr 7, then Russian in yr 8 (not sure if everyone or if this excluded the bottom set). It was totally acceptable then for us to do Russian at GCSE, it wasn't treated any differently to French we'd all started the year earlier. Good luck to her. GCSE standards for languages really not that high if I recall but big leap up to A level.

Dd started French in yr9 & got an A*. Other friends of hers started Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German & Russian. Ancient Greek was another option. She had been learning German & Latin from Yr7 but dropped Latin at the end of yr9. Back in the 1980s we did an O level language in a year if we wanted in Yr 12.

for Russian, Urdu, Chinese, Greek

I did a third language (Russian) in only two years. Got a B. The grade boundaries for lower iirc because the language/alphabet was deemed to be harder. Not sure whether that is the case now.

TBH, being familiar with the level of enthusiasm for languages in your average British year nine (i.e. none - I'm talking each lesson goes in one ear and straight out the other with very little retention or progress), I'd say if your DD studied the relevant language in Duolingo for a few months before starting GCSE, she'd be at a better level of vocabulary and knowledge than most of them already. But if she's at school, I suppose it's down to the school to deem whether she can join at that stage.

Curiosity and enthusiasm are the most important things - if she's the type of person who responds to not knowing something by looking it up in the dictionary and finding out how to say it, that self-sufficiency will take her far.

I am British born, no languages in my family or anything, and speak French, German, Spanish and Swedish and am learning Russian, purely out of a lifelong curiosity! So if she has the bug, definitely let her run with it. There are so many wonderful free apps and resources now to support language learning.

The standards in language GCSEs are so low that logically there is no reason someone could not start from scratch in Year 9. Someone with a few weeks on Duolingo could pass a GCSE with flying colours.

Whether the school will allow it is another thing. Also, if she wants to do languages at university for example it's not always necessary to have a GCSE in the language.

For example I know people who studied Japanese/Korean/Welsh/Norwegian at uni and they just had 1-2 A Levels in the usual European languages. I did Spanish as part of my degree for a while and all I had was GCSE French!

Definitely, especially if they had already studied another language and had the aptitude.

A lot of KS3 language teaching moves incredibly slowly, in the worst cases all they do for 3 years is put together pre-fab blocks of language (e.g. j'aime... parce que c'est...) given to them by the teacher and don't even learn grammatical concepts such as verb conjugation (source: former languages teacher). Someone with the aptitude who was able to pick up grammatical concepts quite easily and had basic dictionary skills to start looking up and using language for themselves would be able to catch up very easily.

Short answer: yes, it's possible.