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 :)

DD2 learns French, German, Spanish and Latin, but is likely to drop German in two years for GCSE. DD1 dropped Spanish instead. I think it's good to learn languages early, but if it's not your own language, I would wait until maybe three. And I prefer the more 'standard' languages rather than choosing less obvious ones for their career potential.

School tried to get the girls into Mandarin at primary school, but they were not keen, so they didn't bother. Children will soon make their minds up what they want to learn.

Don't learn a dead language though, in my view. Learn one that they can actually use. DDs have used all three languages abroad in Germany, Austria, Spain, France and Morocco, and we are learning some Italian informally before our holiday this year.

Languages can really open up the world. I find the idea of translation chips really depressing for some reason, and I didn't think I was out of touch!

Very small children pick up language because they need to through immersion. They learn through constant exposure. That means having native/fluent speakers around them for a large proportion of the time, not having lessons. I have bilingual relatives and they are either at immersion schools or have parents who speak different languages to them.

My dh is currently learning Japanese, it's very hard, apparently one of the hardest language for an English speaker. Mandarin is one of the very few harder languages! dh is six months into seriously learning Japanese. He spends between 2-3 hours every day learning words and grammar and says he is really not at all good, mainly because Japanese works on such different grammatical rules so it's quite alien.

Nooka, my ex also spent quite a good time trying to learn Japanese without success. DS picked it up quite a bit without problem or need just by hearing his dad trying to learn it with audio CDs in the car on the way to school!