Why is Russian one of the main languages taught in schools?

[notevenat20]

I have always wondered this. Secondary schools always teach French but if they do more languages it will be German , Spanish or Russian.

Why Russian? It has little importance for business and people don't tend to go there for holidays. There are not many Russian people in the UK either relatively speaking. Where has this idea come from?

I think I am just really out of date. I combined my memory of Russian being taught when I was a child with the fact that DDs school (private) allows you to choose from French, Spanish and Russian in year 7. But if that's really rare, then I accept I am wrong.

Also, very useful if you're hoping to become an astronaut

Cosmonaut. The Russians call them cosmonauts, @altforvarmt

Yes, they do. But if you are an astronaut working for NASA or the ESA, the only way to get to the ISS is by hitching a lift on a Soyuz vessel from Russia.

And for that they're required to have an adequate grasp of Russian.

DC's school offered French German Spanish Italian Latin and Classical Greek at GCSE in year 11 and Russian GCSE as an optional extra in the 6th form. I think largely based on what languages the teachers had between them. Quite a few schools round here offer Mandarin

Russian is not important if you want to be an astronaut.

I meant is important

Ds2 has asd languages were mandatory at primary.... he hated French, the school paid for him and his ta to learn Japanese ;)

But presumably British people won't be working for NASA or ESA, now we've left the EU?

@W00t

But presumably British people won't be working for NASA or ESA, now we've left the EU?

The ESA isn't an arm of the EU.

The UK was one of the founders of the ESA and will continue to contribute to its funding.

So, yes, British people can continue to work for the ESA, even becoming an astronaut if they're lucky.

I didn't know it was

But (I learned it for a while) the pronunciation and intonation are not too weird for an English person.

Boys in particular think they sound silly in French or Italian.

Work at a school where quite a few kids come from Poland so they do a GCSE in Polish.

So some schools might similarly offer Russian GCSE.

I guess it's a bit like the IB where one of the subjects you do is your mother tongue

I only know one school that does Russian.

I would have loved to have learned Russian at school. We were only able to do French, German and Latin. Did some classes at night school years later - and then visited Moscow. Very useful and interesting language, last time I spoke it was in Prague. My Czech is absolutely basic and the museum guide didn’t have much English, but he was able to tell me a lot of interesting facts in Russian.

@ListeningQuietly

Russia's economy is smaller than Spain's and declining.

I know of no schools that teach Russian

Yeah....and hardly anyone speaks Spanish globally😂

I have never heard of a school teaching Russian.

I know. It's a headscratcher, all these inner city comps teaching Russian, Latin and Polo.

Most of eastern europe speaks Russian or at least understands it. Also Tolstoy, Gontajarov, Dostojevsky. Plus that Russia has an interesting history.

I wonder why they still teach French tbh. What good does that do? I can see the point of Russian more than that of French.

I studied Russian at school: only for two years though.

I went to school in the 80s and my school taught Russian, it was the first school in Scotland to do so. I did German instead though, which is probably pretty pointless these days too post Brexit.

My school was just a state comp but an excellent one in a naice area. Russian was quite popular, I think largely because the teachers were excellent.

No school I know of teaches Russian.

All the grammars in our areas taught russian back in the 90s. We used to say it was in case Russia took over the world so that we could all become concubines and save ourselves

I did Russian GCSE in the late 80s in a nice state school. We had a native Russian come in once a week and he was fascinating! He had been allowed to travel to England to teach but his wife and son were not allowed to accompany him in case they all tried to 'escape' and remain in England. He was very discreet but you could tell he was very aware of his responsibilities to his own country and constantly had to 'check in' to confirm his whereabouts. I managed to obtain a grade B somehow!

Russian? I dont know any school that teaches it and we are in the process of applying to several so have looked at loads and it's not offered.
Our school has taught mandatory french for years but now Spanish, Mandarin and German are just as likely.

The languages teacher is Russian at my DCs school so you can do French, German, Russian or Spanish.