'Am I wrong to be disgusted that my 5yo is learning Lithuanian?'

[scentednappyhag]

This is a status on my Facebook newsfeed this morning.
She goes on to say there's nothing wrong with learning French or Spanish, but she's 'notimpressed.com'.

AIBU to delete this person on the grounds that their inner arsehole is hanging out?

my Dcs school learns a few basic words of a different language each half term - so they learn greetings, 'my name is..' please, thank you, goodbye etc in languages like urdu, punjabi, mandarin,spanish, french, german, gujurati. Could it be something like that? I think it's great to give them an introduction to some of the languages used in their school community.

Ireland had a brief but huge boom despite being a small country, so quite possible IMO for other small countries to have big booms in the future,

anyway I don't see how leaning ANY language can be useless, because it teaches the skill of learning languages and an enthusiasm and confidence which transfers to learning others later

Yes, you don't know what a specific child will want to do. So you educate them in the things that they are more likely to want or to have opportunities in. And that isn't Lithuanian.

The vast majority of situations a person is going to end up in that involve languages will involve one of the major languages. If, for example, a child wants to become a scientist, it is much more likely that at some point they may want to read a research paper that is in French or Spanish than one in Lithuanian. The same is true for historians, sociologists, psychologists, geographers and so on. There was a course when I was an undergraduate that I wanted to take but couldn't because it was a requirement of the course that you could read German to GCSE standard as some of the material was only available in German. I doubt the same happens very often for people who can't read Lithuanian.

you really think if at 5 a child learns a little bit of a language for one year/term they will still remember it at 18?

I soent 3 years (11-14) learning french and 5 years learning Italian, have an Italian GCSE B but cant speak a word of it now.

"So you educate them in the things that they are more likely to want or to have opportunities "

being capable of tackling foreign languages is one of these things, the skill itself can start with ANY language, Just like learning music can start with any instrument.

Learning lithuanian will not hinder anyones French or German, it'll only make em more likely to tackle it!

It wouldn't bother me. I'd be pleased my child had the chance to have a go at something new.

At DD's school all the primary learn french, and they also have opportunities to learn Spanish, German and Mandarin. But have had snippets of other languages at times if there has been a willing volunteer who has offered to teach them.

In my Y1 class we have had a go at learning some Japanese this year - we have a child in the class where this is her mum's first language and the child's additional language - both mum and child have taught us some fairly regularly. We have also learnt to count and say common greetings in Urdu and other languages too - linked to the children we have in our class.

Cherie, my daughter has done Spanish at primary school and will do French at secondary school. There is no option for her to continue with Spanish at secondary school. If she wants to learn other languages or continue with Spanish, it will involve night school which costs time and money. We are lucky that a local school offers Spanish at night school to all ages. A lot of places only have night schools for adults.

The space for subjects at primary and secondary schools is small and squeezed. If you push a subject out, there is no guarantee that children will have opportunities to pick them up elsewhere.

It certainly isn't a waste of time to learn Lithuanian, but it is less directly useful to learning a major language than just being taught a major language in the first place.

But they are FIVE.

Learning a bit of Lithuanian now is not going to stop them from learning any other language.

Even if they learn it all the way through primary school it is not going to stop them from learning other languages at secondary school. They will be at JUST at much of an advantage as children who learnt the languages they will take at GCSE from five, because it is is the act of learning the language which is relevant at this stage NOT what the language is.

I also imagine that it is a grand total of about half an hour a week out of the timetable too - so hardly an issue regardless of which langauge it is.

TeWi, what makes you think that all secondary schools offer the opportunity to learn multiple languages? That is not my experience. DS has done four. DD will be going to a school where she will only get to learn one.

DD's primary is like Hulababy's school. They do one major language and then haven learnt bits of other when the opportunity arises - Russian because they communicate with Russian children through a school link. That is perfectly sensible and entirely different to arguing that a major language should be replaced with one that is a minor language globally.

At most schools you get a choice of at least 2 though don't you?

" arguing that a major language should be replaced with one that is a minor language globally"

noone is arguing that and there is nothing in the OP to suggest that this is what has happened

The facebook status didn't say "french/spanish no longer available, been replaced with lithuanian, notimpressed.com", she is objecting to the learning of it full stop!

TeWi, that is not the impression I have got from MN, from teachers, from the comprehensive schools where I live or from the comprehensive schools my nieces and nephews attend in other parts of the UK.

Cherie, yes, people have argued on here that it would be perfectly acceptable to replace the teaching of a major language at primary school with the teaching of a minor one. I pointed out in my first post that the Lithuanian in the school in question was probably just a few phrases. Read the thread.

It is very unlikely that the 'main' language this child is learning is actually Lithuanian.

But if it was, and if the reason it was that there were children in the school with Lituanian as a first language, then this would be a better grounding in languages for the students then starting straight away with, say Spanish, when none of the children came from a Spanish background.

If the end result was wanting all the DC to speak Spanish, starting with learning a second language passably well at as an early age as possible (possible, if there are a high number of second language speakers) they will then pick up the chosen language (Spanish) very quickly later on.

Purely because of the way our brains react to learning languages.

My children are not a secondary level so I have no idea what options they got - when I was at secondary school I had a choice of 4 MFL.

How is it helpful to the Lithuanian children to not learn Spanish?

the Lithuanian children are already bilingual, they don't need any help learning languages.

They may need help intergrating with the English as a first language students, and learning a common language would help them do this.

Yes, I was able to choose two from three options at a comprehensive school. DS is at a grammar and has been able to choose four from five options. But as a MFL is no longer compulsory at GCSE, most schools have cut back on MFL teaching.

I've just looked it up and there are 3 MFL offered at my local state comp, though you can only take 1.

That is just prejudice. You are effectively saying that bilingual children has less rights to MFL provision. Of course bilingual children still require help if they are to learn to a new language, and have as much right to learn a new language as any other child. You can't offer them fewer opportunities just because they can help out some English kids.

well thinking about it further I take that back a bit as I actually DO now think that Lithuanian taught in a fun engaging way with proper accent etc would have done me more good then the dull as french lessons I had which put me off learning languages for life!

so it depends really, I still think it is about learning to learn languages more than anything else, you can combine your degree with a new language that you've never done but I never dreamt of doing that despite how useful it would be, however only people who have done OTHER languages in school do this I think? Same with secondary school, easier to take on a new one if you've enjoyed an old one..

It's a life long skill, you can hop languages if you can DO languages

And actually Lithuanian would be far more useful in my job then french or German or Spanish, French/German/Spanish patients I've had always had good enough english and didn't need translaters. However having portugese/polish/lithuanian etc on your application for the NHS trust I work in would be a definite bonus for a candidate.

What a load of fuss. As pp have said he is not learning the language just a few words ffs.
Why don't you ask her why she is not impressed.com?

Call her on it. Get her to spell out why she is upset that he 5 year old's linguistic and communication skills are being improved.

DD's school has 2 but each child is only taught one, but you are placed in either the French or Spanish population and can only then learn that language for the whole of your time in that school. They could offer 47 but it is largely irrelevant if you can only be taught one. Unless she carries on like Jude the Obscure and educates herself in her spare time, which is possibly what will happen.

Look - my point of view is based entirely on the fact that a good 95% of your actual proper MFL language learning (vocab, grammar etc) takes place at secondary school.

Everything you do at primary school is just getting children's brains to work at the right way for the things they teach you at secondary level to actually sink in. The bilingual from birth children would still be better at MFL at secondary level (where they will all get the same number of choices of subject) than any child who only starts learning a second language at 5. They bilingual children are at no disadvantage at all waiting to learn a 3rd language until they are in secondary, in terms of their learning. They would be other social advantages to integrating well within the local community.

So there are benefits on both sides as far as I'm concerned.

All of which is irrelevant, because it's not what's happening anyway.

I think they should teach Lithuanian to primary children exclusively. No other language, not even English, because the Eastern Europeans are taking all our jobs after all so when England becomes annexed to Lithuania it will be useful to be able to talk to them.