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Original poster

Which language option to go with French/Latin?

31 replies

elevendollarbills · 17/11/2019 08:16

Interested in any parents' experiences or teacher views. DS is currently doing French and Latin in Y7, needs to add another language for Y8 out of German, Spanish, Russian and Mandarin, and he can't decide which to choose. He's an able linguist, though more interested in the academic side of language learning than the communication side. I doubt whether languages will ultimately be his 'thing', but he really enjoys them at the moment, particularly Latin. Any views on what would be the best fit, any considerations to bear in mind?

OP posts:
ProggyMat · 17/11/2019 09:46

DD (Yr11) did Latin and French in Yr7 then picked up Spanish and Classical Greek -as extra curricular-in Yr8.
Latin helped with the Spanish.
She dropped Spanish in Yr10 to concentrate on the others for GCSE.

crazycrofter · 17/11/2019 09:44

My daughter found Spanish ,French and Latin too confusing - too much overlap. So I wouldn’t do Spanish.

sendsummer · 17/11/2019 09:31

If he is an able linguist in Latin, then German would be the easiest but different enough from French, Russian more of an interesting challenge and Mandarin would be a lot of rote learning and drawing of characters but little structural grammar.
If there is one country of region of the world that particularly fascinates him then that should trump the choice as he would be capable of doing any of them to GCSE level. Along those lines ask him if and where he would be tempted to do a year abroad at university.

MichaelMosleyisagod · 17/11/2019 08:55

I did a Russian degree, having studied it at GCSE and A level. I loved it! Not only the language (which has Latin roots, so although it has a different alphabet, it’s not as far removed from English as it might seem - I also did 12 weeks of Mandarin at one point and found it really hard!) but also the history, the culture and the literature. Good luck with the choice

MillicentMargaretAmanda · 17/11/2019 08:47

If he enjoys Latin and the academic side of language learning, possibly Spanish as he may enjoy starting to understand more about the Romance family of languages, their roots and how they connect together (though he may need to be making some of those connections himself rather than being explicitly taught).
On the other hand, there is significant academic challenge in Mandarin and Russian!

happygardening · 17/11/2019 08:44

My DS is a good linguist and loved Latin and had done French from yr 2, he had a similar choice and did German. He was told the rigour required with Latin vocab. would make German easy thus a good choice. He found German to be very easy. He was also advised that German is easier than say French in the beginning. He did all three at IGCSE and did very well.
Lots will say do Mandarin but I’m not sure how much “useful” mandarin he’ll learn.