...........Italian........German........Greek..........Which option for year 9......????........

[RTKangaDYSONMummy]

As well as LATIN and FRENCH

Which would you suggest for year 9 option?

Other option is Spanish but he doesn't want to do that.

He enjoys Latin and French and we can't decide which option to choose

We have no plans to go to Italy or Germany for holidays

{Both DH and I know some German and DH knows a little Greek}

I think he will be more slanted towards English and Drama for A level so I am thinking Greek would be good option

What do you guys think?

What difference will it make for future?

Latin is the basis for most european languages so I would choose that

oh and law and sciences

Latin and French he is doing anyway

It is the choice between

Italian greek or German?

I'd say Italian would be easiest (quite similar to Latin and to a degree French); next hardest German (fiendish grammar later on I'm told, and Germanic rather than Romance in structure so rather different to Latin/French, but some similarities to English) and Greek, probably hardest of all (new alphabet for starters), but potentially more rewarding especially if he likes ancient history. (I did O levels in Latin and French and just 1 term of Greek and German at school and preferred Greek by far)

Greek probably has highest 'ponce' value and least practical use (though I could read and partially understand greek signs when in greece from that). What are his inclinations?

A last consideration might be what the teachers and/or results are like for the different subjects at your school - an excellent teacher might make all the difference.

He started French and Latin in year 7 so yes

He will continue with those and do GCSE in them

So he has to choose a 3rd Language option between Italian German or Greek

I would learn Greek then as Snorkle says due to ancient history

Results are excellent for all three options

He wants to do English and Drama later on

He is deffo more English than Maths/sciences

He wants to be an actor or scrpitwriter as a profession but realises that he needs to have an alternative career

ITALIAN ITALIAN ITALIAN

• much the easiest of the three to actually make proper progress in
• he already has Latin and French so lots of language synergies will make Italian easy
• lovely country that you can take him on holiday too and get him interested in the culture
• not many British pupils study it, so good rarity value - makes him stand out from the crowd

Can you tell I fought my parents aged 14 to study Italian not Greek?

BTW, my partner, aged 39, started Italian lessons three years ago - he needed to learn the language in order to manage his Italian subsidiary.

hanaflower

Latin and Italian are really not that similar.

And Italy is hardly a cultural vacuum.

Waste of time to study Italian at school because if he has French and Latin he can pick it up very easily. So although it is a gorgeous language and one which he may well actually use, he may get more out of one of the others.

He should do German or Greek depending on how much he likes the oral side. Not doing Greek won't stop him doing anything, even Classics at Oxbridge if he should so desire (in fact the German would also be useful for that). But if his favourite part of languages is the literature rather than the communication, he would enjoy Greek.

hanaflower - because in England no-one seems to realise just how long and difficult the path to proper mastery of a language is, hence the wasted resources on language learning.

Italian is not "easy", it is "easier to make proper progress in" ie the OP's child has a chance of actually learning to speak the language (given his background).

I speak French, Spanish, German and Italian and did Latin as my most important subject in my bacc, BTW.

hanaflower - but how many people are looking for "a gifted linguist"? I am one, btw - though a bored one, I don't want to go any further with language learning.

Most jobs require very specific languages - French, Spanish, Chinese. Hence the uselessness of Latin and Greek these days.

Italian is a lovely language to learn and easy if you've done Latin and French first. (it will also help him with the ladies in his twenties as you can just reel off your shopping list in Italian and it sounds amazing )

Italian also useful for Drama too - there's as much of an Italian dramatic tradition as Greek.
HTH

But Anna, given they have no plans to visit Italy there seems little point in studying it unless RTKMs ds wants an easier life with more time to focus on other stuff.

From thinking it through, I'd say Greek for the history/drama/general interest perspective or Italian for an easy life.

A lot of silly and outdated language snobbery on this thread, I fear .

My father read Classics at Cambridge before a law degree and a publishing career entirely in English. However, when he was 46 he started a new job in another country working in French (and needing to work in many other European languages too) and rather regretted he had followed in his father's (Cambridge First in Classics) rather than his mother's (Cambridge First in French) footsteps.

There's a bit of a difference in choosing a classic language over a modern one at degree level than for one (or possibly three) year at age 13 though don't you think Anna? Even if RTKMs ds takes the choice to GCSE level, that's a standard that's not difficult to achieve yourself in a few months in later in life if you need it; whereas the opportunity to learn a bit of Greek is realistically unlikely to come up again.

I don't think it's that different, actually.

I think that language learning can provide a wonderful opportunity to combine education for its own sake with the acquisition of potentially useful skills. And I think it is much more educationally valuable to gain an understanding of contemporary cultures than historical ones, if you have to choose (and the OP's son is doing Latin already). The British are appalling at understanding that there are mindsets/worldviews other than the Anglo-centric one.

When I look at my father or my partner's experience (having to learn, and work in, a language mid-career) I am reminded of this. You cannot do business in another country efficiently and well unless you have a pretty good grasp of a language and culture, and it takes time to get up to speed.

Ah now if we are thinking about the benefits of understanding a different culture, I would recommend Greek all the way!

However, it will take much, much longer for a child to actually get to the point where they can understand Ancient Greek culture than modern day Italian - because mastery of Greek will take longer than mastery of Italian.

So the probability of actually achieving the objective is much less great with Greek than with Italian .

My daughter, in her current school, will learn Spanish as her third language (starting at 8). If she were to go to the alternative bilingual school here in Paris, she would learn Chinese as her third language.

The probability of her actually becoming fluent in Spanish, visiting Spain and learning something of Hispanic culture is very much greater than the probability of attaining the same level in Chinese.

That's probably a fault of our language courses though Anna. My experience (& this may have changed, but I doubt it) is that in the UK modern language GCSE courses focus on the language and not the culture. So on a GCSE Italian course for example you'd be highly unlikely to experience any of the drama/culture that you speak of for example. Classical languages do go into culture much more however.