To think Spanish is now more popular than French

[Dappy777]

Would you say Spanish is now a more popular second language than French? I mean in the U.K. I went to a rubbish comprehensive in the late 1980s and French was the only option. They didn’t even teach German (that I remember). Back then, if someone could speak another language it generally seemed to be French.

Today, French seems less popular. My friend’s daughter, for example, is doing an A-level in Spanish. When I asked her why not French she said “oh Spanish is much more useful. You can travel all over central and South America with Spanish. All my friends want to study either Spanish or Italian.” My cousin’s son also dropped French to study Spanish.

Because they might have had a lot of students that had Spanish as a heritage language? Same as why some schools offer Polish or Chinese.

Such a shame. My DC has just started Spanish A level and have heard that native speakers are skewing the results, but not sure how much of an impact it has. Languages aren’t valued unfortunately. Was delighted they chose to do one!

Yes, I agree that it's way too little way too late in the UK.

Yup it’s more widely spoken than French, so more useful.

GCSE choices in our school are French and Spanish. I did French and German.

Only 1/6 of year group at DC school chose French. Teacher said it’s harder to learn than Spanish, but Colleges and Universities generally prefer French because it’s harder so a higher grade in French is more respected than equivalent in Spanish.

Not compulsory at junior is it and at secondary kids can drop out now. Languages was compulsory when I was at school. We also had a French Club so I just naturally took French ch like any other subject didn't know any different. Far too late at secondary to teach kids who haven't really had any teaching French

A-levels aren't marked against a curve. Possibly the grade boundaries are skewed in a language where the vast majority of entrants are heritage speakers (e.g. Polish) however in a subject like Spanish, where the majority are taking it as a second language, I can't see it being an issue.

I think it does skew them (I will see if I can find something about this – I definitely read something recently) but actually non-native speakers can get better results than native speakers. Sometimes native speakers' written language and grammar can be poor, and some of them can think it's "in the bag" and so don't revise sufficiently for the literature/film paper or are not familiar enough with the topics for the speaking exam.

Well done to your DC for choosing Spanish! I wish them well with it.

This is from a few years ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/21/german-native-speakers-a-level-grades-ofqual

They have apparently taken steps to try and mitigate the effects.

Our local comp offers Chinese and Spanish. But they've struggled to find Spanish teachers, so can't actually offer it to every year group. The dire state of languages was a reason for us to send DD1 to another school. She had done French club from year 1 and wanted to continue French. Her school offers 6 MFL subjects plus Classics at GCSE. But even then only 13 out of 600 A Levels taken this year were in mfls. The state of mfl education in the UK is concerning. Maybe because everyone just assumes you can translate using an app and don't appreciate the value in studying languages.

Wow 6 subjects that's fantastic. Could get a French Club at DS school but archery yes how is that a life skill!!!!!

Yes, the value isn't really shown clearly. For me, speaking three foreign languages isn't even the main thing I got from studying languages! It actually massively improved my knowledge of language generally and English in particular and I've made a career/living out of this more than the foreign languages themselves.

Thank you 💙

Yeah I think you get significant numbers of native speakers taking Spanish. In one of the sixth form tasters DS did he said it was about a third in the class. This is inner city, not suggesting anything like that nationally, but not negligible. As ever, put the graft in and you’ll have a good chance 🤞🏻🤞🏻

Yes it’s spoken in South America so it’s good for travelling - but French is the language of Europe alongside English. We trade a lot more with France. Macron is always involved in world politics & I don’t see Spain involved in any major political decisions such as Ukraine or Gaza. I can’t think of a major Spanish company that we trade with. We trade with BAE, EDF, pharmaceuticals, automotive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United_Kingdom

Germany is our second biggest trading partner after the US yet we have almost completely phased it out in state schools.

Spanish is great for holidays, socialising, dancing, eating etc but not the most important economically to the UK.

It’s worth remembering that French is the main European language in large swathes of Africa but I would also agree that Spanish is probably more useful than German.

German is a beautiful language though, and my part of the UK gets a lot of German visitors, so it could be potentially useful.

I asked copilot - it obtained the info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Yes it's definitely more common now. Does anyone know when that changed? When I was at school in the 80s/90s Spanish wasn't even offered there was only ever French and German.

I would say early 2000s was when Spanish started to be offered more, based on my own observations.

Ah ok. I'm quite jealous I would have much preferred to do Spanish!

I'm confused by the logic there. If the point of learning spanish over french is that it gives access to south america, then what on earth is the point of italian ? Can't speak it anywhere but Italy and some small parts of Switzerland...
Portuguese would make more sense.
Russian or Chinese would also make sense as they would open the door to two huge countries/economies plus most of eastern Europe.

Cynical me suspects the real reason is pure laziness, Spanish is a fairly easy language. Easier than Russian or Chinese (I should know as I studied all three).

I did French and German at school to A-level.

ended up working for a company that was bought out by a Spanish Co so then had to learn Spanish in a business & contemporary context (v different to the language you learn at school!!)
then married a half-German man so picked that up again! I get a bit muddled between languages at times, particularly if I go to France and speak Spanish! But all have been very useful so far in my life.

Went to school in the west of Scotland which is traditionally quite divided - Catholic or Protestant (really it’s non denominational) and the catholic schools tended to do French and Spanish while the non dom schools did French and German.

this was a few years ago now and I don’t think it’s quite like that now. I did Spanish and absolutely loved it.

More useful than French. Easier to learn. The gender agreement in Spanish makes sense, it doesn't in French.

I don't really see the point of teaching any language in UK schools other than Spanish or Mandarin. I've worked all the way around the world and because of Hollywood/American TV virtually lots who does well at school/is interested seems to learn English as their 2nd or 3rd langauge to a really good level.

For native English school children really the most useful to learn nowadays is first Spanish (spoken by so many in the world) and then Mandarin. If you can speak English, Spanish and Manderin you can get by almost anywhere.

I read about how English are an embarassment about their really poor 2nd lanaguage abilities but a lot of that is to due with there are too many 2nd lanaguage choices for them (whereas most other countries the default 2nd/3rd is English as its so useful) and the lack of oppertunities to practice in the 2nd lingo where as for other countries the Hollywood effect makes it easier to get listening practice.

I currently work in a lab where the 1st language is Mandarin with 2 native English speakers out of ~35 people, ~30 are fluent in English, 3 more are okay for small conversations and probably only 2 really struggle to communicate. Our big weekly everyone in meeting is held in English (95%) and Mandarin (5%).

The way they do films and TV Shows here is they play them in the progonal English but put Mandarin subtitles up, its done that way on purpose so its quicker to get the films shown and also to expose the locals to spoken English.

How many Brits living in Spain speak Spanish? Or even go there on holidays?