'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?

And my point is that 100% of my child's Spanish within state education will be taught at Primary school, because there is no further opportunity for her to learn that at secondary school. If that was replaced with Lithuanian, she would simply never learn Spanish at school.

You seem to be implying that the outcome of this is how well a child does in MFL in their final GCSE -after the 95%. I am arguing that it is better for a Lithuanian child to learn Lithuanian, English, Spanish and French than only Lithuanian, English and then French at secondary school. There are many ways of integrating with a community; it doesn't have to come at the expense of one less language.

Anyway, have to go. Your posts have been really interesting and have made me think a lot about language and transferable skills.

I think we are just coming at it from different angles, really.

I think it's best to have 2/3 languages you really understand and are fluent at, rather than 5 at 'holiday' level.

I started learning French at 5 and didn't take it at GCSE because I would have failed - it does colour my PoV, and maybe I am totally wrong! Who knows.

Lithuanian is a bit of a waste of time as a language to learn, and if it's because there's a high Lithuanian population in the school that's wrong too. Children should all speak English for total immersion and to "raise the bar" on standards of English for everyone. All the multi-lingual schools I know ban the non domestic languages for this reason. Plenty of time to speak it at home, it should be just English in school.

by that i mean multi-lingual private / international schools, not the state schools, I don't think state schools would do such a thing, it's sensible but seen as discriminatory

Ffs I will put money on that learning Lithuanian is about as accurate as saying 'learning sign language' in school.
Hello, drink, good evening and dog.

Hardly an issue really. Just a slight distraction.
Big deal.

No MrsD you are wrong. It is a HUGE issue and soon we will all be talking like Ruskies and wearing bearskin hats and then communism will be reintroduced and everything and where will we be then? It's the thin end of the wegde I tell thee

Will there be blinis? I like those.

Learning French and German like most schools offer is completely pointless. Might as well be a more useful language. Nothing wrong with new things. Delete.

and good vodka

ooo will we have goulash instead of gregs?

blinis with smoked salmon, yum and bison grass vodka. It'll be lovely, if only we could learn Lithuanian too

Lithuanian is actually a really special language according to this blog - "When specialists in Indo-European linguistics try to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language they find that contemporary Lithuanian is as important as the ancient tongues such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit."

1000petals.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/the-mysterious-beauty-of-lithuanian-language/

yes sticky, BUT WILL THEY SPEAK IT IN CHINA?

YANBU. How can learning something interesting such as a new language be a problem?

OR SPAIN?

By the year 2020 everyone will be speaking Spanish, or Lithuanian if the British education system has their way. Except the Chinese who will be speaking Chinese, or possibly Lithuanian

I would definitely delete

Maybe it's a cunning condem plan. They are training up our kids to be sent to work in salt mines to earn their child benefit.

Ask the Facebook pal if they are teaching the words 'faster pig dog imperialist scum'

Have they introduced exciting new PE activities like 'push the trolley' and 'hump the bale'

funny I reckon you are on to something......

Sino-Condemism

When they have cleared tables and are waiting for hometime or any other spare couple of minutes in the school day, teachers often play games, do quizzes, read stories etc. I would think learning a few words of Lithuanian, especially if there was a Lithuanian child in the class, would be a lovely way to fill this time. It isn't likely to be a planned lesson, more just a bit of fun. Yabu to think otherwise. The kids probably love it and it is meaningful learning, to be able to communicate in some way in a different language - even at 5.

zn makes a point of ordering a panino in caffs.

She should be Chief Language Consultant in the Resistance.

what makes me laugh is all this middle class angsting about learning useful languages, and mention Mandarin. As if their children are seriously ever really going to learn it properly.

i am a linguist, speak Polish, Russian among european languages and my husband speaks Arabic and we lived in Asia and learnt Mandarin intensively.

can we do it justice? can we fuck. even the Chinese children couldn't manage it!

besides, lithuanian is an interesting language given it's proximity to finno ugric estonian and other baltic languages.

but don't listen to me. i spent ages learning Sorbian, possibly the most pointless slavic language there is.

My dd2 nursery school did this. For 30 mins a week, they learned a few words in a different language. They picked languages that a parent of someone in the class spoke and the parent if they wanted did phonetic worksheets - it was brilliant. The children loved it, they got maps, globes out etc, learnt capital city etc and they were 3 going on 4 .

They had taster sessions of Polish, Lithuanian, Irish, Greek and a few of the teachers had a bit of German, French, Spanish.

My dd2 is now obsessed with different languages, maps, travelling etc. Its been the best knowledge tool? ever.

I still think it's a waste of time, even half an hour a week, when children are leaing primary without firm grasps of literacy and numeracy, even half an hour at the end of the week after the tables are cleared or whatever. Far better to spend the time with a fun spelling test of weird words or doing times tables.

Compared to taking the register, most assemblies learning Lithuanian is quite constructive.

"I still think it's a waste of time, even half an hour a week, when children are leaing primary without firm grasps of literacy and numeracy, even half an hour at the end of the week after the tables are cleared or whatever"

Do you really think that primary school education should be nothing but the 3 Rs. Should be scrap the school play, PE, Music, Art, RE, PHSCE to concentrate on the 3 Rs.

I seriously doult that a smattering of Luthanian will stop a child learning to read. The biggest issue in schools is discipline. Maybe learning about another culture will teach empathy. Prehaps less bullying will raise standards more than a literacy hour. Who knows?