What Language to study?

[EthanDC]

My household only speaks English & I'm enthusiastic about us all learning a second language together as we have a baby boy on the way & I think it would be great if we could all learn together. Baby included.

What are the most useful languages to help get into a good school & further his education?

I'm currently considering Latin or Mandarin. Any experiences win these?

Thank you in advance for your help :)

And I am utterly amazed at the idea of learning Latin as a family. Presumably you are intending to go to Latin America for holidays so you can use it?

Naughty but funny.

OP, you do understand that Latin is now an academic subject and not a spoken language don't you ? (or am I just being wound up here ?)

Mandarin is not a good choice for a Dc who is grounded in european languages as another language IMO (especially as he/ she is not yet born! sheesh. ) . It relies (DS tells me) very much on tone / tonality. GCSE chinese is very much learning the alphabet / vocab by rote. If you think that because some (so called) "good" schools offer Mandarin / Latin as options - forget it - is my advice. And I do speak as one whose nieces and nephews are bilingual Japanese / English. It's a different thing. They live there.

Crikey, someone send me a memo that I have risen to the bait here (haven't I )

Russian could be useful. I imagine learning Cyrillic is tricky though. DH says it follows rules ( he speaks Polish, Russian and English and finds the latter's inconsistencies infuriating).

The Cyrillic is a doddle all, but the six cases and bazillion exceptions are really tough.

DS is trying to learn Russian with Duolingo. I quite like the idea of learning enough to read Cyrillic.

Is it not very confusing to learn totally different script (if that's the right word)?

I'm useless at languages. I just cannot seem to learn them beyond a GCSE c grade type level. Which is annoying as I really admire people who speak multiple languages.

I agree that Russian might be fun.
I can speak German and Russian and once you've got past the Cyrillic and can read it, I found it much easier than German

And it sounds beautiful

Op's Dc is not yet born. But interesting thread.

We have 3 languages at home. From all that I have read, it is important (very) that the parents speak to their young children in their own language.

Unless you are extremely proficient in the second language, it might be better that you leave the teaching of that language to another person.

ps. this craze sour Mandarin reminds me of the Perestroika times, when Russian became very popular because the USSR was opening up and therefore it was "important" that you learned their language as everybody assumed there would be a lot of trade (it didn't).

I think exactly the same is happening today with Mandarin, and despite China's economic prowess (apparently already in decline), I think that you are unlikely to be able to practice it much in order to be able to learn it properly., so... A bit of a waste of time (unless you really enjoy Chinese arts and culture)

I think that before you select a second language to learn, you need to know what do you want it for.

HocusCrocus - China is & will remain the 2nd largest economy in the world which means that many companies would be interested in hiring graduates of various disciplines who speak the language. I found out about this while researching secondary schools for DDs, in actual fact Mandarin is compulsory at Y7 in Oxford high who had a record breaking 40% acceptance by Oxbridge a couple of years ago
oxfordhigh.gdst.net/mandarin/

The mentality behind Spanish is the same as its spoken by over 450m people (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela) ... so it can open a lot of doors, more so than the traditional trio of German, French, Italian.

Hocus

Perhaps the OP's MN-ing device has collapsed under the weight of 57 versions of Duolingo?

I'm sad to see the Latin dismissal here. It can actually be rather fun as a family project. Though pointless until a child has a fairly solid grasp of the structure of their own language.

There does seem to be some renewed enthusiasm for making Latin available in state schools. Whether it's all talk or actually happening I couldn't say.

The majority of traditional, academically ambitious preps do teach Latin from yr 5 or 6. I doubt that a child entering later would be turned away for lack of it - but a willingness to begin would be a positive element in an application. Though the same might be said of any language a school teaches and of course the focus may be entirely elsewhere in ten years time.

I'm not dismissing Latin.

I am dismissing it as a language for all the family, including a baby, to learn as a second language. It's a bonkers idea!

Main advantage of Latin is that once you know the basics you can deduct what people are saying in Latin based languages.

It also happens if you understand several languages. I am fluent in 2 languages and understand another 3 to a high level (but don't speak them anymore). I found it really interesting that, once I was bored in an airport, I got a design magazine in Dutch because I liked the pictures and realised that if I tried to read the text without stopping on every word, I could get a good gist of what the magazine said.

I second sign language! Might not get entry into a good school or university but can be seen as a fantastic asset in almost any career

I think the only additional language I would try to teach a baby is sign language, it saved us a lot of tantrums and misunderstandings even when DS' sign vocabulary was limited to about 15 words.

Young children can communicate via signs long before their voice box is ready to start talking. We only started signing with him when he was about 6 months old but he started signing back a couple of months later. His first "word" was "Don't touch"

I am absolutely not dismissing learning Latin or Chinese. It is just that I am not sure either are the right choice for a baby in an English speaking household. Plenty of time later on. Especially if the rationale is to get into a "good school" .

Anyway...

I'm still here & intrigued by all the different advice & experiences I am reading up on here.

I have a child on the way & I want the best for it & to give it the best opportunities in life.

I know learning a second or third language whilst young is easier than learning it at an older age so I am trying to prepare for this. I have already bought DinoLingo Latin. I chose Latin as I heard it makes learning other languages easier (especially European ones).

Talking with other parents though it seems Spanish may be a better choice as it's easier to be around Spanish speakers, enjoy Hispanic culture & visit countries where this is the mother tongue.

I don't know now whether to start with a foundation of Latin & move on to Spanish or get straight to it.

I hope to make this a fun experience for my son & the rest of my family but I wish for it to be beneficial.

Thank you for all your help & advice :)

Oh & I will be doing BSL as well, this is going to be interesting LoL

Oh - so this is a joke thread?

Italian or Dutch. Dutch is like beginners German. Italian is phonetic and it's a great place to have holidays anyway.

I cannot imagine how you can assume you are going to manage to get Latin into baby at a time when not even puréed broccoli will do.

There are a lot of products marketed to anxious first time parents, products that will never have a significant impact on your child's education. When DS was born (years ago) there was a floor mat with flowers lights which turned on while Mozart music was playing (great for maths, the advertising said). I really thought that my son was going to be certainly affected if I didn't pay for the overpriced mat.

DS is good at maths, but his father is a gifted mathematician and he certainly never had mat like that, so with time I have come to accept that his mathematical ability has nothing to do with the stupid mat but I'm saving it for the grandchildren just in case

Children don't particular learn languages better than adults, IMHO, they learn them differently. A five year old is not expected to have a huge vocabulary and can make all kinds of any grammatical mistakes in their native language, whereas an adult who has spent five years immersed in a language would be expected to be near perfect.

I'm a great believer in multi-lingualism, but these methods for teaching babies languages are just a rip-off.

There's a great report by the British Council at

www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/languages-for-the-future-report.pdf

You'll get many differing views from this site on what matters, and the report makes sense of it all - you can get a differing view depending on whether you count native speakers, business importance, etc. Our son is doing German, Latin and Mandarin from next year, entirely through his own choice but reading this report gave us the confidence to support his choices on a rational basis. But you can make different choices depending on what you think is important. I suggest you have a read. Considering how shit some of the written automatic translators are I think that using audio variations is a bit far away from realistic use.

If I were really serious about having a bilingual child, I would either get an au pair who speaks the desired language for at least a third of their waking time, or I would move to a country where they speak it otiside the home p. I actually did the latter for that very reason and have a perfectly bilingual child. Languages get quickly forgotten when not used. You need to find a language that is accessible in spoken form, even if just babysitters or play groups.