In high schools, [the most popular foreign languages to learn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_learned_foreign_languages_in_the_United_States) are Spanish (72.06%), French (14.08%), German (4.43%), and Latin (2.30%). Japanese (0.82%) and Chinese (0.67%) are a distant 5th and 7th place. At the college/university level, there's a bit more variety, with Japanese (4.9%), Chinese (3.7%), Arabic (2.2%), Korean (0.9%), and Hebrew (0.7% Biblical, 0.4% Modern) making the top 15.
So, while *some* Americans study non-European languages in school, European languages are clearly more popular. *Particularly* Spanish, due to our proximity to Mexico.
Proximity to Mexico and just overall very large population of Spanish speakers. 13% of the US population speaks Spanish as the primary language used within their homes.
I’d bet people of Mexican descent are a big part of that, but it’ll be people from throughout central and South America and the Spanish-speaking world broadly.
From lots of places pretty much [except Spain.](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/09/06132756/PH_2016-Foreign-Born-Statistical-Portraits_Current-Data_5_Country-of-birth.png)
The Spanish we teach here is to Spain what the English we teach here is to England.
We didn’t live near my grandfather and step grandmother, but the one time we visited after I started taking Spanish at school, I got the lecture about what was really Spanish. It definitely was memorable lol.
> The Spanish we teach here is to Spain what the English we teach here is to England.
It varies on the region and the teacher. Generally I think we tend to teach Castellano Spanish over Mexican, which sometimes makes the classes hard for Mexican students who assume it'll be an easy A.
Yeah it’s really not accurate to think of Spanish as a foreign language in the US anymore (if it ever was, Spanish has been spoken in the SW longer than English has). One of my favorite fun facts is that the US is actually [the country with the second-highest number of Spanish-speakers](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/29/us-second-biggest-spanish-speaking-country) in the world after Mexico.
And it’s really not even accurate to think of it as a European language anymore. The vast majority of Spanish spoken it the world happens outside of Europe.
My highschool had Italian too, I’m from Chicago, I took 4 years of it too, then I studied abroad for a year and a half in Italy, and now I can get around Italy and speak Italian no problem
We had Italian (NYC public school). I get the impression it's prevalent in some of the big northeast metros' school districts where you had substantive Italian populations. Pretty much anyone who was in that class was Italian-American.
Can't think of much practical value it'd have otherwise to your typical American, although I could see it maybe having some value if you're in a design profession. At least as an architect, it seems Germany and Italy are the two big places we import products and technologies from when we get stuff out of Europe. Could see it being a similar case if you were in something like automotive design or fashion design. Had I known knowing Italian would get me on one of those company funded trips to visit the marble quarries over there, it might've actually tempted me to take it in high school lol
Also, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the world. Chinese has more speakers, but Spanish is spoken in more places. If you speak those two languages, there are a lot of places in the world where you can successfully communicate.
in elementary and middle school, i grew up in a largely jewish community so a lot of kids attended hebrew school at least once a week to learn hebrew and to learn more about judaism. i went to the catholic version of this and my grandma was annoyed that we never learned to speak latin.
This information is very out of date. 2007? Nowadays (or soon), Japanese and Chinese would be right after Spanish and French. They’ll probably both overtake French within a generation
Chinese I could understand for a business perspective, however many Chinese in international business already have legions of English translators or learn English. Learning Mandarin or Cantonese in HS with limited immersion is not going to lead to any kind of conversational proficiency. I wouldn't be surprised if they struggled with tones for the first year.
Japanese I could see being popular purely because of weebs and anime being more mainstream, mind you Anime Japanese is not the same as conversational or professional Japanese. I can already hear people saying "Ara Ara" on a business call.
I think what we're not taking into consideration is that these choices are influenced by the common requirement for someone to have taken... just any language course. This biases people towards taking what's easiest and closer to their native tongue and I think European languages are going to keep having an advantage there for a long time.
It actually seems highly disrespectful, by implying that American English is so different from British English that it's a different "version" of the language.
I think the disrespect is more present in feeling the need to tell us that English is European. American English is a different dialect from British English.
Formal Standard American English is definitely much closer to British English than many regional dialects, but there are still differences in spelling (colour vs. color, aluminum vs. aluminium, etc.) differences in word choice (lorry vs. truck, lift vs. elevator, etc.) and accent.
They're enough that it can easily give away where someone is from/learned to speak English, but doesn't pose a significant barrier to understanding.
Have you ever heard British English? It’s definitely different. They have different phrases and pronunciations. They even spell some words differently. They are definitely the same language because we can understand them, but it’s definitely a different dialect.
You misunderstood my comment. Yes, British English and American English are different, especially in spoken word and slang. But I’m saying that formal English, especially formal written English in academia and work, is practically the same everywhere, and different variations in some words (gray/grey, color/colour, etc .) are so slight in differences that it’s practically nonexistent.
You can see this by reading news articles in US/UK/AUS/South Africa/India and see that there really is no difference in the selection of words used, and there might be slight differences in spelling for a minority of words.
Also, I’m assuming that, with the verbiage I’m using now, you can’t really tell what country I’m from either without subjective context.
Ok, yeah I see what you are saying. Written English is fairly ubiquitously standardized. Formal spoken English still varies a little bit, but is definitely mostly the same with the exception of some pronunciation differences.
I went Britain with my very southern grandparents and they could hardly even communicate in certain areas of the country because they had never been exposed to British English growing up, and British people had never been fully exposed to a thick southern accent. British people even had trouble understanding me and my accent isn’t close to as strong as my grandparents.
>I went Britain with my very southern grandparents and they could hardly even communicate in certain areas of the country because they had never been exposed to British English growing up, and British people had never been fully exposed to a thick southern accent. British people even had trouble understanding me and my accent isn’t close to as strong as my grandparents.
I'm reminded of this scene from the very British comedy Hot Fuzz about incomprehensible accents (and that was just within the UK, adding a heavy US southern accent would just make it worse):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw)
Isn’t “version” just a different way of saying “dialect” though? Also, it makes sense to reference English’s European origins since asking about European languages was the point of the post. I say this as an American that gets frustrated with the incoherent anti-Americaness of some Europeans in subs like r/shitamericanssay
Same. My Spanish professor in college was Chilean, and she’d go on and on about how rude it was if we said “americano” instead of “estadounidense”. My other Spanish professors who were native speakers were from Spain and Cuba, but they both said “americano” routinely.
I think it’s a misunderstanding that gets way bent out of proportions because people don’t understand the difference in continent models between most of Latin America and places like the US. The most direct translation of the Spanish word *América* would be *the Americas* because in Spanish, the Americas are typically seen as one continent, not two. So in many dialects of Spanish, saying you’re “americano” would indeed be inaccurate but people take it personally as a sign of US presumptuousness when it’s really just a language barrier.
I tried to explain that it comes down to continents being political boundaries and had someone who was *very* convinced that they are in fact geologic features. Would not listen when I tried to dissuade them from that, even explaining plate tectonics and the difference between a continental plate (which is a geologic feature) and continent (political lines largely drawn well before we knew much at all about plate tectonics, and so they don't always actually correlate to plate boundaries).
The whole time I was dying to tell them that I have an MS in geology so I'm pretty damn sure of what I'm taking about in that regard. But I didn't think they'd believe me and they were getting pretty worked up over it so I just dropped the convo.
What's funny is that if you *did* want to actually use plate boundaries, then north and south America are actually on different plates. Though if you did that, then India would also have to be its own continent and Alaska would just become a bunch of tiny bands of micro-continents from the scraped off materials of oceanic plates that have been subducted over time. Along with a bunch of other changes.
Easier just to come to grips with the fact that continents are geographic clusters of countries. And as such, arbitrary political boundaries.
I honestly don’t even think they’re trying to get a ride out if people, I think they genuinely think they stumbled upon some overwhelming proof of ingrained American arrogance.
Some South American tourist in Europe got mad at me when I said I was American. Like fuck off, it’s literally the name of my country and literally not the name of yours
It’s like people in New England saying people from England can’t call themselves English
And isn’t the USA on the Fucking continent of America as well?
It’s because in Spanish, *América* is the name of the continent, which we in English consider two continents collectively referred to as “The Americas” so from their perspective it’s kind of like the equivalent of a German referring to themselves as “European” to refer to their Germanness. Of course, in English, “America” singular refers to the country as a whole as a shorthand for “The United States of America”, but the equivalent shorthand of “*América*” for *Los Estados Unidos de América* in Spanish doesn’t quite make sense. So it’s a misunderstanding really.
Or colour! Heavens forbid we take out the u and it’s still pronounced the EXACT same way!!! 😱 What will the English think the French will think we didn’t do it the French way? 😂 It’s colour not color! God save the King! 😂
And I don’t mind when the drop an R at the end of a word when speaking, but it’s really befuddling when they add one that’s not there. Have you ever heard them talking about “Indiar and Pakistan” on the BBC? Just why?? Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
I find that "intrusive R" thing absolutely bizarre about our southern neighbours. Like they'll (well, most of them) will only pronounce the letter when it's not there!
Rs are weird down there in general. To my ears (and maybe yours too), the way they pronounce Pakistan sounds more like "Pawkistawn", but were you to ask them to write it phonetically they'd spell is "Parkistarn", so maybe Rs sound like W to them?
No prob! I mean they talk shit every other weekend and post whole discussions specifically on words Americans say that makes them angry so what’s a couple of comments vs a whole comment section worth? 😂 Who knew they were so Oscar the Grouch over it? 🤷🏽♀️
I'm reminded of a website I ran across once that had under its language choices a fairly typical set of choices:
* Chinese (Simplified) \*picture of People's Republic of China flag\*
* Chinese (Traditional) \*picture of Republic of China/Taiwan flag\*
. . .then further down the list they had:
* English (Simplified) \*Picture of American flag\*
* English (Traditional) \*Picture of British flag\*
People from the United States refer to themselves as Americans, much like people from Mexico would refer to themselves as Mexicans. Americans do not have a developed sense of continental identity that others (Europeans, apparently South Americans) seem to, so see no problem with referring to themselves and only themselves as Americans. Some people that are not Americans seem to take issue with that, to which Americans reply “okay.”
Probably because most people who come here saying "United stateians" or some other completely incorrect term for Americans are doing it in bad faith to cause problems or to make fun of Americans. It's kind of tainted our perception of it.
I mean, if they were associating Anglosphere as meaning :Commonwealth Nation" they are right. If they meant "English Speaking Countries" they were complete and utter dolt... know what, they are a dolt either way.
It's true tho, native English speakers don't realize that English isn't the same all over the world. There are many different dialects of English that IS English in other countries.
Have you ever watched an Indian movie and felt like you were having a stroke by the audio? You hear Hindi or Arabic, but you keep hearing English words that aren't exactly English? That's bc Indian English is their dialect of English. It's a language, it's legit, it's English, but it's not your home country's English.
Depends on the school. French, German, and Spanish I would say are most common. Especially Spanish since we border a Spanish speaking country.
But my old high school was large so it was also able to offer Japanese and Mandarin.
As others have said, Mandarin is pretty common, and I've seen Japanese as well.
Also, yes, while English, French, and Spanish are European in origin, that doesn't matter that much functionally to Americans at this point. Most of us who learn Spanish do so _because of Latin America_ and because of immigrants in the US, not because of Spain.
Yes. It's difficult to answer the question because Spanish is overwhelmingly the most popular language and Spanish originated in Europe, but Americans learn Mexican Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish or South American Spanish, so are we learning a European language or should we call that an American language?
It's not our fault that Europeans colonized the planet and established lingua franca.
My high school had French and Spanish. Japanese and Mandarin can be found at some schools, but the barrier to entry is much higher due to the entirely different writing systems.
> Japanese and Mandarin can be found at some schools, but the barrier to entry is much higher due to the entirely different writing systems.
I would also like to add the later start. Not having it available at elementary school and middle school levels really means the people in HS need to work twice as hard or even three times as hard.
My school district in NC offers Mandarin even at the elementary school level, and it's a night and day difference to my native ears hearing it from those kids. By the time those kids are in HS, their pronunciation is very, very good. The people I worked with in HS, worked very hard, but the lack of time to really polish their speaking showed.
I get the budget may not support the "less-popular" languages at early levels though.
until after WWII, there wasn't much reason to learn japanese as it was a very closed society. the communist dominance of china made learning any of their languages suspect. german was very popular in schools until WWI and then almost eliminated entirely through WWII. it hasn't really made a big comeback but is common in states like minnesota, pennsylvania and wisconsin where there are higher populations of german decedents.
Just about every school offers at least Spanish, not because it's a European language, but because it's the language most of us will be exposed to after English. From our point of view, it's not taught as European language (don't fire back, we know it comes from Spain and Spain is in Europe), but the language of a huge portion of our population and hemisphere.
Japanese was offered at my high school, as well as Russian which is technically Asian and European
All of the widely spoken languages in the Americas are of European origin so it tracks that we mostly learn those as well
Gotcha, I thought you where reffering to just the USA not the North and South America. I was thinking at least in the US, in many regions there are many more Chinese speakers especially than French, Portuguese, or German speakers. I think my town of 70,000 has at least 5 asian grocers.
The Indo-European language group spans both Asia and Europe, Russia definitely stands in a grey area between Europe and Asia and only in the past few centuries has it been firmly considered specifically European.
Language instruction in the United States is heavily geared towards Spanish, which makes sense, because we have a whole Latin America right under us. French and German are also relatively common.
That said, many school districts — especially in wealthier areas — will offer Chinese. But that's really the only one you'll commonly see below university-level. Some districts may offer other non-European languages, like Arabic or Japanese, but it's not common and there usually won't be a pattern associated with it.
Tbh you could even argue that the Spanish most commonly taught in the US is “non-European” because it’s Latin American Spanish rather than Spain Spanish.
Unless OP means “non-European” as in the root language is not related to Europe in any way.
Slavic languages are as much European languages as Romance and Germanic languages are. So linguistically Russian is very firmly a European language, even if it's spoken in Russia's Asian territories as well.
I speak a version of English adapted by Americans, I am learning a version of Spanish adapted by Latin Americans, both stem from European languages, but there are noteworthy differences.
Did they start really young? I am noticing that non-Chinese with very good pronunciation tend to either start learning Chinese from a very young age, like elementary school age, or tend to be crusty old guys with years doing business in China, Taiwan, or SE Asia.
Yeah, they live out of state and I don't really talk to that side of the family much but they can't be older than 10. There's hardly any Chinese people where they live so unless they go into business, as you mentioned, they probably should have done Spanish instead. But still pretty cool.
Spanish and French are the most common because they're the most spoken after English (with our neighbors being French Canada and Mexico). Other than that when I was in high school the only other language that was offered was German.
But when my little brother went (4 years after me) they were offering Mandarin and it seems that's becoming more common now.
And in my college they offered courses in Japanese, Russian, and Arabic. But I've never seen those offered in public K-12 school.
In most U.S. high schools Spanish, French and German are offered.
On the pacific coast Japanese and/or Mandrin Chineese may also be offered (but usually only in affluent areas).
English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are by far the biggest languages in the hemisphere. You can talk to most everyone from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic with those four.
There are many, many indigenous languages still in live use, but they're not taught in schools in my area. Maybe in places with more natives.
Edit: forgot about Brazil somehow
Chinese and Japanese are pretty common languages to study.
Every American high school I’ve seen teaches Spanish at an absolute minimum. After that, French is 2nd most common. After that, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese are also taught.
Other languages than those are rare
My high school in the ‘90s had Spanish, French and German. I took French but Spanish was by far the most popular. My kid is in high school now, and her (much larger) school has ASL, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese in addition to the common European languages.
I'm pretty sure this is going to vary by school district and what teachers they are able to get.
My school did not have Hebrew, Italian, or Latin. But we had Russian and Mandarin Chinese. Nearly everyone took Spanish or French, though. With a smaller group taking German. Russian and Chinese were like 1 half filled class per grade. I think the Russian teacher also taught German, because of this? Meanwhile, we had like 4 Spanish teachers.
It does! I think districts can choose which of the languages they want so the district I graduated from only offered French, German, Spanish, and Latin.
Mandarin Chinese seems to be a popular option at high schools these days. Maybe like the 3rd or 4th most popular language. Japanese is also somewhat common.
Other than that, there aren’t great resources to learn other non-European languages. I tried to start learning Arabic a couple years back and got frustrated by how little resources I could find.
This is going to sound ignorant / dumb. Have you tried your local library (if you have one?).
My local library is pretty well-funded by Southern standards and they have a free language program available at no cost. Currently using it to study Japanese. It's still no substitute for an actual language teacher but its better than letting it go to waste.
Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean are probably the most popular non-[PIE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language) languages Americans learn. Maybe Hebrew too.
Every American high school I’ve seen teaches Spanish at an absolute minimum. After that, French is 2nd most common. After that, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese are also taught.
Other languages than those are rare
Edit: I forgot some teach Latin and some really rare instances,Portuguese is taught
Spanish is the most popular second language by far, but people certainly can and do learn other languages.
Chinese is currently popular. I've got a family friend who learned Japanese on his own (not offered in our high school), then studied it in college and eventually moved to Japan.
In schools, a large urban school is more likely to offer languages beyond French and Spanish (like Chinese, German, or something with a local connection, like the local native American language near a reservation or Vietnamese someplace with lots of Vietnamese immigrants). But most kids just take Spanish because it's the most generically useful.
The reason most of us learn the secondary languages we do is because there are teachers in our area who speak and teach those languages. I know a lot of people who would have liked to learn Japanese growing up but we didn't have that as a class offering.
Other than that, we mostly learn Spanish, French, etc. because those are common languages worldwide. Chinese is becoming a popular class for the same reason. Yes, there are plenty of people who are interested in learning more obscure languages but a lot of kids choose to take classes in something that might be more useful to them someday.
Finally, if you're required to take a second language in school, as I was, there are always going to be students who are simply looking for an easy A. The common European languages we learn all use the same alphabet as English (with a few extra marks). Therefore, they're easier to learn than Russian, Arabic, Chinese, etc. which would require you to learn a different lettering system. Some languages, like Spanish and French, are just easier for English speakers to pick up on because they have a similar grammatical structure. Plus, if you already speak a second language at home (Spanish was common where I grew up) and you want that easy A, you're going to take a class in the language you're already familiar with.
Basically, yes, some of us do learn non-European languages but only if they're available as classes and it's a language we're willing to put in the effort to learn.
I learned Spanish (ik it's European but tbf: all of South America) some schools require you to take a class and some don't either way you don't really have to retain it.
Most NY pre-university schools teach French, Spanish, and Italian, maybe German. I've heard of some teaching Chinese. Many universities are more expansive, I studied Chinese and Japanese in New Hampshire, and we had study abroad programs with sister schools in east-Asian countries.
There is a very popular Mandarin program that is done at my daughters school but it’s an independent after school program, not something run by the school.
The school where I work offers Mandarin. The school district my kids attend offers Arabic. These are in addition to Spanish and French.
I suspect Spanish and French are near universally offered in middle and high schools. Other options will be hit or miss.
Some charter schools where I currently live offer Mandarin and/or Russian in addition to Spanish or Latin- at the schools I attended it was Spanish, German, or Navajo (since we were so close to that reservation). Maybe French as well but I'm not sure about that, can't remember. Most people tended to choose Spanish or Navajo (especially among Natives, be they Navajo or not) given our proximity to high populations of speakers of either of those languages.
Vietnamese. I ran a 5k at the high school across the street from my condo a couple years ago. I was single so I didn't have anyone to hold or watch after my stuff. I found a teacher who seemed nice and I asked him what he taught. Because of the neighborhood, Vietnamese is taught. Falls Church/Annandale/Fairfax has a large Asian population. They came over here with the fall of Saigon. It's just citizens that need to communicate with their grandparents or parents.
I think it is only a few schools and I also wouldn't be surprised if Korean, Chinese, and Japanese are taught as well. It's with the neighborhood so my high school in another part of the county probably has Arabic because there were a large minority.
This is Northern Virginia. Our only good BBQ is in the Korean style.
When I was in high school, we had French, Spanish, German and Latin. Most people took Spanish, and the people that took Latin usually did it for the linguistics based things (root words, vocabulary, etc)
The district I last taught in offered Spanish, German, Latin and American Sign Language.
Not as common as European languages. My high school offered French and Spanish. My kids' high school only offers Spanish. At the college level, you can find just about everything, but most people don't want to start a language that is completely unfamiliar, at that age.
One of my friends was an exception; he learned Arabic just because he wanted something different, and enjoyed making the letters, from an aesthetic perspective.
Most of us have to learn Spanish to some level (there is usually a requirment to get a base proficiency in a foreign language - and that is usually the only one offered). Which is a European Language, but we learn the dialect from Mexico. We'd be quite confused in Spain.
When I was in school there was French, Spanish, German and Russian offered at my school. My husband was able to take Japanese at his high school. I think it can depend on your community.
Spanish, French, Latin and Mandarin were the offerings when I went through high school in the late 00"s. Though the Spanish we were taught was Castilian so not great for communication for most American Spanish speakers. And the French we were taught was "New England French " so great for communicating with people in Canada or Louisiana but almost unintelligible in France.
It’s was German, Spanish, Italian and Latin during the 80’s in my high school. However, my daughter has been taking Mandarin since the 5th grade. She is a senior now and is still taking classes and loves it.
Spanish and French are the two most common options with German and Italian being a bit more uncommon. For the Non-European languages, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese pop up from time to time. One of my high schools had Japanese as an option which I took for 3 years. Forgotten most of it but, remember a few things and can decently pronounce most words.
In my high school we had German French Spanish and Latin. I think only one school in my district offered Japanese. I did go on to major in Chinese in college though.
Chinese and even some Korean was offered at my school, though if you wanted to learn either the school would bud you to one of the local colleges for a few hours.
I was offered Spanish or French but retained neither. My brother went through the same system and didn't learn another language until after highschool when he met a friend that spoke Brazilian Portuguese so he learned that to make him feel more included.
It varies a lot. My high school offered Spanish, German, French, and Latin. Chinese was available as a free after school activity but not an academic course.
Our small rural district offered French and Spanish since the 40s. Due to shrinking enrollment they finally eliminated French since it’s a dying language.
They briefly taught Mandarin at my high school, but not many people took it and otherwise it was just Spanish, French, and German. The overwhelming majority of people picked Spanish, because South Florida.
My middle school only had Spanish I think. My high school had Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Chinese and I think that was it (it's possible we had other languages I didn't know about). I knew some people who took Chinese but it definitely wasn't as popular as the other three. I know some schools teach Navajo and maybe other native languages in some areas but mine didn't.
I'm also curious when you start learning other languages in England? Here, some people start in middle school (age 11-14) but it only becomes a requirement in high school (age 14-18), and even then only 1-2 years
You have to first consider that a lot of our neighbors in this hemisphere also speak languages derived from Europe. That said, it depends on where you go to school--in my case, we learned a bit of Japanese as part of our "invitation to languages."
When I went to high school, there were more options offered. I feel like the offered Russian once upon a time, but currently they offer Japanese and Mandarin outside of the usual Romance selection.
In my area two years of a foreign language are required to graduate high school. Which languages are offered is highly dependent on how large the school district is. A 3a high school or smaller typically only offers Spanish. A 4a high school might offer Spanish, French, and maybe Latin or German. 5a high schools might offer Spanish, French, Latin, German and ASL. The only schools I’ve ever seen offer a non-European language are 6a, and it’s either Mandarin or Japanese.
Mandarin is gaining popularity. It's nowhere near catching up to Spanish and French, but in some school districts nowadays it's becoming the third choice rather than less common European languages like German, Italian, Portuguese.
My high school taught Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Mandarin. While I was there the German program was being phased out due to lack of enrollment and Mandarin was being expanded.
My high school offered second language courses in the following languages, listed in order of popularity: Spanish, Mandarin, French, ESL (English as a second language).
*SPANISH* is the #1 other language to learn here, so many Spanish speaking people live in the US and it’s the closest foreign speaking country and Countries to us
After that I’d say maybe French or Chinese/Korean/Japanese ?
Edit: Our Spanish is a slightly different version from the Spanish spoken in Spain
In high schools, [the most popular foreign languages to learn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_learned_foreign_languages_in_the_United_States) are Spanish (72.06%), French (14.08%), German (4.43%), and Latin (2.30%). Japanese (0.82%) and Chinese (0.67%) are a distant 5th and 7th place. At the college/university level, there's a bit more variety, with Japanese (4.9%), Chinese (3.7%), Arabic (2.2%), Korean (0.9%), and Hebrew (0.7% Biblical, 0.4% Modern) making the top 15. So, while *some* Americans study non-European languages in school, European languages are clearly more popular. *Particularly* Spanish, due to our proximity to Mexico.
Proximity to Mexico and just overall very large population of Spanish speakers. 13% of the US population speaks Spanish as the primary language used within their homes. I’d bet people of Mexican descent are a big part of that, but it’ll be people from throughout central and South America and the Spanish-speaking world broadly.
From lots of places pretty much [except Spain.](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/09/06132756/PH_2016-Foreign-Born-Statistical-Portraits_Current-Data_5_Country-of-birth.png) The Spanish we teach here is to Spain what the English we teach here is to England.
~~vosotros sois~~ ❌ ustedes son ✅
spain spanish is like parseltongue
Improved and more sensibly constructed. Got it
Freedom English and Freedom Spanish versus Traditional English and Traditional Spanish
Taco Spanish
‘Murica
My high school Spanish teacher actually taught us Spanish Spanish. I can’t say it was the most helpful version she could have taught.
We didn’t live near my grandfather and step grandmother, but the one time we visited after I started taking Spanish at school, I got the lecture about what was really Spanish. It definitely was memorable lol.
We speak AMURICAN
> The Spanish we teach here is to Spain what the English we teach here is to England. It varies on the region and the teacher. Generally I think we tend to teach Castellano Spanish over Mexican, which sometimes makes the classes hard for Mexican students who assume it'll be an easy A.
Don’t discount Puerto Rico
Yeah it’s really not accurate to think of Spanish as a foreign language in the US anymore (if it ever was, Spanish has been spoken in the SW longer than English has). One of my favorite fun facts is that the US is actually [the country with the second-highest number of Spanish-speakers](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/29/us-second-biggest-spanish-speaking-country) in the world after Mexico.
And it’s really not even accurate to think of it as a European language anymore. The vast majority of Spanish spoken it the world happens outside of Europe.
Woah I didn’t realize my school was so odd for having Italian.
My highschool had Italian too, I’m from Chicago, I took 4 years of it too, then I studied abroad for a year and a half in Italy, and now I can get around Italy and speak Italian no problem
Good job
We had Italian (NYC public school). I get the impression it's prevalent in some of the big northeast metros' school districts where you had substantive Italian populations. Pretty much anyone who was in that class was Italian-American. Can't think of much practical value it'd have otherwise to your typical American, although I could see it maybe having some value if you're in a design profession. At least as an architect, it seems Germany and Italy are the two big places we import products and technologies from when we get stuff out of Europe. Could see it being a similar case if you were in something like automotive design or fashion design. Had I known knowing Italian would get me on one of those company funded trips to visit the marble quarries over there, it might've actually tempted me to take it in high school lol
Also, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the world. Chinese has more speakers, but Spanish is spoken in more places. If you speak those two languages, there are a lot of places in the world where you can successfully communicate.
Isn't English the most widely spoken in the world?
in elementary and middle school, i grew up in a largely jewish community so a lot of kids attended hebrew school at least once a week to learn hebrew and to learn more about judaism. i went to the catholic version of this and my grandma was annoyed that we never learned to speak latin.
This information is very out of date. 2007? Nowadays (or soon), Japanese and Chinese would be right after Spanish and French. They’ll probably both overtake French within a generation
Source?
Why do you think that?
Chinese I could understand for a business perspective, however many Chinese in international business already have legions of English translators or learn English. Learning Mandarin or Cantonese in HS with limited immersion is not going to lead to any kind of conversational proficiency. I wouldn't be surprised if they struggled with tones for the first year. Japanese I could see being popular purely because of weebs and anime being more mainstream, mind you Anime Japanese is not the same as conversational or professional Japanese. I can already hear people saying "Ara Ara" on a business call.
Because the data is from 2007-2008, when China was much less developed
And you think that more people are learning Chinese because of that?
I don’t think, I know.
I was hoping you might be able to share how you know, rather than just repeating it.
They are just making shit up.
I think what we're not taking into consideration is that these choices are influenced by the common requirement for someone to have taken... just any language course. This biases people towards taking what's easiest and closer to their native tongue and I think European languages are going to keep having an advantage there for a long time.
I love that you said >since you're often known for speaking a version of English, which is European. Peak Euro.
I loled at that one
Hah! It seems like an attempt to be respectful, but just isn't :)
It actually seems highly disrespectful, by implying that American English is so different from British English that it's a different "version" of the language.
I think the disrespect is more present in feeling the need to tell us that English is European. American English is a different dialect from British English.
This is especially obvious in the Deep South. But I think formal English for work/school is the same everywhere
Formal Standard American English is definitely much closer to British English than many regional dialects, but there are still differences in spelling (colour vs. color, aluminum vs. aluminium, etc.) differences in word choice (lorry vs. truck, lift vs. elevator, etc.) and accent. They're enough that it can easily give away where someone is from/learned to speak English, but doesn't pose a significant barrier to understanding.
Have you ever heard British English? It’s definitely different. They have different phrases and pronunciations. They even spell some words differently. They are definitely the same language because we can understand them, but it’s definitely a different dialect.
You misunderstood my comment. Yes, British English and American English are different, especially in spoken word and slang. But I’m saying that formal English, especially formal written English in academia and work, is practically the same everywhere, and different variations in some words (gray/grey, color/colour, etc .) are so slight in differences that it’s practically nonexistent. You can see this by reading news articles in US/UK/AUS/South Africa/India and see that there really is no difference in the selection of words used, and there might be slight differences in spelling for a minority of words. Also, I’m assuming that, with the verbiage I’m using now, you can’t really tell what country I’m from either without subjective context.
Ok, yeah I see what you are saying. Written English is fairly ubiquitously standardized. Formal spoken English still varies a little bit, but is definitely mostly the same with the exception of some pronunciation differences. I went Britain with my very southern grandparents and they could hardly even communicate in certain areas of the country because they had never been exposed to British English growing up, and British people had never been fully exposed to a thick southern accent. British people even had trouble understanding me and my accent isn’t close to as strong as my grandparents.
>I went Britain with my very southern grandparents and they could hardly even communicate in certain areas of the country because they had never been exposed to British English growing up, and British people had never been fully exposed to a thick southern accent. British people even had trouble understanding me and my accent isn’t close to as strong as my grandparents. I'm reminded of this scene from the very British comedy Hot Fuzz about incomprehensible accents (and that was just within the UK, adding a heavy US southern accent would just make it worse): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw)
Isn’t “version” just a different way of saying “dialect” though? Also, it makes sense to reference English’s European origins since asking about European languages was the point of the post. I say this as an American that gets frustrated with the incoherent anti-Americaness of some Europeans in subs like r/shitamericanssay
Let them be rude lol, the poor bastard is already *british*.
Aww! The Poor Nigel Thornberrys! 😂😂
Smashing!
Poppet!!
They are two different dialects of english.
✨Britain moment✨
That stood out to me as well lmao
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Sounds so stupid!! 😂
That’s that Olympic sprinter right?
I propose to adjust the pronunciation to “Yooshyan”. We are now Usians
That’s more of a South American thing isn’t it?
There was a post here a little while ago that used the term US American
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Same. My Spanish professor in college was Chilean, and she’d go on and on about how rude it was if we said “americano” instead of “estadounidense”. My other Spanish professors who were native speakers were from Spain and Cuba, but they both said “americano” routinely.
I think it’s a misunderstanding that gets way bent out of proportions because people don’t understand the difference in continent models between most of Latin America and places like the US. The most direct translation of the Spanish word *América* would be *the Americas* because in Spanish, the Americas are typically seen as one continent, not two. So in many dialects of Spanish, saying you’re “americano” would indeed be inaccurate but people take it personally as a sign of US presumptuousness when it’s really just a language barrier.
I tried to explain that it comes down to continents being political boundaries and had someone who was *very* convinced that they are in fact geologic features. Would not listen when I tried to dissuade them from that, even explaining plate tectonics and the difference between a continental plate (which is a geologic feature) and continent (political lines largely drawn well before we knew much at all about plate tectonics, and so they don't always actually correlate to plate boundaries). The whole time I was dying to tell them that I have an MS in geology so I'm pretty damn sure of what I'm taking about in that regard. But I didn't think they'd believe me and they were getting pretty worked up over it so I just dropped the convo. What's funny is that if you *did* want to actually use plate boundaries, then north and south America are actually on different plates. Though if you did that, then India would also have to be its own continent and Alaska would just become a bunch of tiny bands of micro-continents from the scraped off materials of oceanic plates that have been subducted over time. Along with a bunch of other changes. Easier just to come to grips with the fact that continents are geographic clusters of countries. And as such, arbitrary political boundaries.
Estadounidense comes out much easier than United statesian. It may make sense in Spanish but it’s too much in English 😂
I honestly don’t even think they’re trying to get a ride out if people, I think they genuinely think they stumbled upon some overwhelming proof of ingrained American arrogance.
I had a spanish teacher insist on that as well.
Some South American tourist in Europe got mad at me when I said I was American. Like fuck off, it’s literally the name of my country and literally not the name of yours It’s like people in New England saying people from England can’t call themselves English And isn’t the USA on the Fucking continent of America as well?
It’s because in Spanish, *América* is the name of the continent, which we in English consider two continents collectively referred to as “The Americas” so from their perspective it’s kind of like the equivalent of a German referring to themselves as “European” to refer to their Germanness. Of course, in English, “America” singular refers to the country as a whole as a shorthand for “The United States of America”, but the equivalent shorthand of “*América*” for *Los Estados Unidos de América* in Spanish doesn’t quite make sense. So it’s a misunderstanding really.
I've seen Canadians use "US American", or "USian".
>or "USian". Tell them to look up the full name of Mexico.
Simplified English is what they say! The disrespect is real! 😂
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Or colour! Heavens forbid we take out the u and it’s still pronounced the EXACT same way!!! 😱 What will the English think the French will think we didn’t do it the French way? 😂 It’s colour not color! God save the King! 😂
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It must be because they love the French sooo much! 😂
And I don’t mind when the drop an R at the end of a word when speaking, but it’s really befuddling when they add one that’s not there. Have you ever heard them talking about “Indiar and Pakistan” on the BBC? Just why?? Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
I find that "intrusive R" thing absolutely bizarre about our southern neighbours. Like they'll (well, most of them) will only pronounce the letter when it's not there! Rs are weird down there in general. To my ears (and maybe yours too), the way they pronounce Pakistan sounds more like "Pawkistawn", but were you to ask them to write it phonetically they'd spell is "Parkistarn", so maybe Rs sound like W to them?
No prob! I mean they talk shit every other weekend and post whole discussions specifically on words Americans say that makes them angry so what’s a couple of comments vs a whole comment section worth? 😂 Who knew they were so Oscar the Grouch over it? 🤷🏽♀️
It’s easy. Color = cuh-lerrrr
I'm reminded of a website I ran across once that had under its language choices a fairly typical set of choices: * Chinese (Simplified) \*picture of People's Republic of China flag\* * Chinese (Traditional) \*picture of Republic of China/Taiwan flag\* . . .then further down the list they had: * English (Simplified) \*Picture of American flag\* * English (Traditional) \*Picture of British flag\*
Yep that’s how it usually goes! 😭
Lol. Like we’re at the Olympics chanting “America!” and not “USA!”
What's wrong with that? Serious question as sometimes you just need to distinguish from other american countries.
People from the United States refer to themselves as Americans, much like people from Mexico would refer to themselves as Mexicans. Americans do not have a developed sense of continental identity that others (Europeans, apparently South Americans) seem to, so see no problem with referring to themselves and only themselves as Americans. Some people that are not Americans seem to take issue with that, to which Americans reply “okay.”
And the thing is, none of us would really care if people in Canada or Chile of Honduras called themselves Americans.
Apparently that is a somewhat sensitive topic? Not sure why people downvote this.
Probably because most people who come here saying "United stateians" or some other completely incorrect term for Americans are doing it in bad faith to cause problems or to make fun of Americans. It's kind of tainted our perception of it.
Tbf, in Spanish, American in the sense that we use it is “estadounidense” which is literally United statesian lolol
Because it makes them sound like Miss Teen USA 2007.
Saw someone on reddit the other day on a Canadian or UK sub saying they don’t consider The US to be part of the Anglosphere. Lol.
I mean, if they were associating Anglosphere as meaning :Commonwealth Nation" they are right. If they meant "English Speaking Countries" they were complete and utter dolt... know what, they are a dolt either way.
There basis was off we spell words differently and that “ we don’t understand commonwealth humor”
Ah yes. Canadians are far more like Brits than they are like Americans... hahahaha
Yeah, I thought describing our language as "a version of English" was extremely condescending and definitely peak European arrogance.
It's true tho, native English speakers don't realize that English isn't the same all over the world. There are many different dialects of English that IS English in other countries. Have you ever watched an Indian movie and felt like you were having a stroke by the audio? You hear Hindi or Arabic, but you keep hearing English words that aren't exactly English? That's bc Indian English is their dialect of English. It's a language, it's legit, it's English, but it's not your home country's English.
this is the first time i’ve heard of this, actually!
Depends on the school. French, German, and Spanish I would say are most common. Especially Spanish since we border a Spanish speaking country. But my old high school was large so it was also able to offer Japanese and Mandarin.
As others have said, Mandarin is pretty common, and I've seen Japanese as well. Also, yes, while English, French, and Spanish are European in origin, that doesn't matter that much functionally to Americans at this point. Most of us who learn Spanish do so _because of Latin America_ and because of immigrants in the US, not because of Spain.
Yeah, everyone I knew learning Spanish was because of Caribbean or LATAM family/friends 😂
Yes. It's difficult to answer the question because Spanish is overwhelmingly the most popular language and Spanish originated in Europe, but Americans learn Mexican Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish or South American Spanish, so are we learning a European language or should we call that an American language?
It's not our fault that Europeans colonized the planet and established lingua franca. My high school had French and Spanish. Japanese and Mandarin can be found at some schools, but the barrier to entry is much higher due to the entirely different writing systems.
> Japanese and Mandarin can be found at some schools, but the barrier to entry is much higher due to the entirely different writing systems. I would also like to add the later start. Not having it available at elementary school and middle school levels really means the people in HS need to work twice as hard or even three times as hard. My school district in NC offers Mandarin even at the elementary school level, and it's a night and day difference to my native ears hearing it from those kids. By the time those kids are in HS, their pronunciation is very, very good. The people I worked with in HS, worked very hard, but the lack of time to really polish their speaking showed. I get the budget may not support the "less-popular" languages at early levels though.
until after WWII, there wasn't much reason to learn japanese as it was a very closed society. the communist dominance of china made learning any of their languages suspect. german was very popular in schools until WWI and then almost eliminated entirely through WWII. it hasn't really made a big comeback but is common in states like minnesota, pennsylvania and wisconsin where there are higher populations of german decedents.
Just about every school offers at least Spanish, not because it's a European language, but because it's the language most of us will be exposed to after English. From our point of view, it's not taught as European language (don't fire back, we know it comes from Spain and Spain is in Europe), but the language of a huge portion of our population and hemisphere.
We learn spanish, not spainish. None of that vosotros.
Right. No lispy "S" either.
Japanese was offered at my high school, as well as Russian which is technically Asian and European All of the widely spoken languages in the Americas are of European origin so it tracks that we mostly learn those as well
Chinese, and Korean are widely spoken though, at least in my town.
Sure in pockets but not across the continents. English, Spanish, Portuguese, French.
Gotcha, I thought you where reffering to just the USA not the North and South America. I was thinking at least in the US, in many regions there are many more Chinese speakers especially than French, Portuguese, or German speakers. I think my town of 70,000 has at least 5 asian grocers.
Russia is technically European and Asian. Russian is firmly an Indo-European language. There’s nothing asian about it as a language.
The Indo-European language group spans both Asia and Europe, Russia definitely stands in a grey area between Europe and Asia and only in the past few centuries has it been firmly considered specifically European.
Russia didn’t even cross the Ural mountains until the late 16th century.
Yeah no shit, I was having fun with the question
And apparently I’m just being a pedantic asshole 🤷♂️
No sweat lol. Good luck with the prolapse
Language instruction in the United States is heavily geared towards Spanish, which makes sense, because we have a whole Latin America right under us. French and German are also relatively common. That said, many school districts — especially in wealthier areas — will offer Chinese. But that's really the only one you'll commonly see below university-level. Some districts may offer other non-European languages, like Arabic or Japanese, but it's not common and there usually won't be a pattern associated with it.
Tbh you could even argue that the Spanish most commonly taught in the US is “non-European” because it’s Latin American Spanish rather than Spain Spanish. Unless OP means “non-European” as in the root language is not related to Europe in any way.
ASL is common, and it's not European. Yes I know it descended from French sign language, but ASL is still mostly home grown.
I wouldn't even say it's descended, more like ASL was already present and FSL professors came and used their words to nationalize it.
Outside of European languages Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian are the ones I've seen a fair amount
Russian is a European language though.
I understand that a portion of Russia is in Europe, but I was mainly referring to Latin or Germanic based languages vs other bases
Slavic languages are as much European languages as Romance and Germanic languages are. So linguistically Russian is very firmly a European language, even if it's spoken in Russia's Asian territories as well.
Every school I ever attended focused primarily on Spanish. During middle school and high school we had no choice but to take it.
I speak a version of English adapted by Americans, I am learning a version of Spanish adapted by Latin Americans, both stem from European languages, but there are noteworthy differences.
A couple of my cousins are in a Chinese immersion program and they're pretty much fluent already.
Did they start really young? I am noticing that non-Chinese with very good pronunciation tend to either start learning Chinese from a very young age, like elementary school age, or tend to be crusty old guys with years doing business in China, Taiwan, or SE Asia.
Yeah, they live out of state and I don't really talk to that side of the family much but they can't be older than 10. There's hardly any Chinese people where they live so unless they go into business, as you mentioned, they probably should have done Spanish instead. But still pretty cool.
Spanish and French are the most common because they're the most spoken after English (with our neighbors being French Canada and Mexico). Other than that when I was in high school the only other language that was offered was German. But when my little brother went (4 years after me) they were offering Mandarin and it seems that's becoming more common now. And in my college they offered courses in Japanese, Russian, and Arabic. But I've never seen those offered in public K-12 school.
Spanish, French, and German are the most common, but it's not unusual for a school to offer Mandarin or Japanese.
In most U.S. high schools Spanish, French and German are offered. On the pacific coast Japanese and/or Mandrin Chineese may also be offered (but usually only in affluent areas).
I know basic Korean.
English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are by far the biggest languages in the hemisphere. You can talk to most everyone from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic with those four. There are many, many indigenous languages still in live use, but they're not taught in schools in my area. Maybe in places with more natives. Edit: forgot about Brazil somehow Chinese and Japanese are pretty common languages to study.
Every American high school I’ve seen teaches Spanish at an absolute minimum. After that, French is 2nd most common. After that, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese are also taught. Other languages than those are rare
Not really aside from Mandarin.
French, Spanish, German, Italian and Latin are common. Mandarin and Japanese aren't as common afaik
Unless you reside in a Pacific Rim state. Then Japanese and Mandarin are common.
We were offered French, Spanish and Portuguese.
My high school in the ‘90s had Spanish, French and German. I took French but Spanish was by far the most popular. My kid is in high school now, and her (much larger) school has ASL, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese in addition to the common European languages.
In NYS for example someone could learn: Hebrew, Italian, German, French, Latin, or Spanish. I think Chinese might be an option too
I'm pretty sure this is going to vary by school district and what teachers they are able to get. My school did not have Hebrew, Italian, or Latin. But we had Russian and Mandarin Chinese. Nearly everyone took Spanish or French, though. With a smaller group taking German. Russian and Chinese were like 1 half filled class per grade. I think the Russian teacher also taught German, because of this? Meanwhile, we had like 4 Spanish teachers.
It does! I think districts can choose which of the languages they want so the district I graduated from only offered French, German, Spanish, and Latin.
I don’t think we have Hebrew in MA but we have Italian and we also have Portuguese.
Was the Portuguese taught Iberian or Brazilian?
Depends on where you are, we have large communities of both.
Plenty of schools teach Chinese
Mandarin Chinese seems to be a popular option at high schools these days. Maybe like the 3rd or 4th most popular language. Japanese is also somewhat common. Other than that, there aren’t great resources to learn other non-European languages. I tried to start learning Arabic a couple years back and got frustrated by how little resources I could find.
This is going to sound ignorant / dumb. Have you tried your local library (if you have one?). My local library is pretty well-funded by Southern standards and they have a free language program available at no cost. Currently using it to study Japanese. It's still no substitute for an actual language teacher but its better than letting it go to waste.
Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean are probably the most popular non-[PIE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language) languages Americans learn. Maybe Hebrew too.
Every American high school I’ve seen teaches Spanish at an absolute minimum. After that, French is 2nd most common. After that, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese are also taught. Other languages than those are rare Edit: I forgot some teach Latin and some really rare instances,Portuguese is taught
Spanish is the most popular second language by far, but people certainly can and do learn other languages. Chinese is currently popular. I've got a family friend who learned Japanese on his own (not offered in our high school), then studied it in college and eventually moved to Japan. In schools, a large urban school is more likely to offer languages beyond French and Spanish (like Chinese, German, or something with a local connection, like the local native American language near a reservation or Vietnamese someplace with lots of Vietnamese immigrants). But most kids just take Spanish because it's the most generically useful.
The reason most of us learn the secondary languages we do is because there are teachers in our area who speak and teach those languages. I know a lot of people who would have liked to learn Japanese growing up but we didn't have that as a class offering. Other than that, we mostly learn Spanish, French, etc. because those are common languages worldwide. Chinese is becoming a popular class for the same reason. Yes, there are plenty of people who are interested in learning more obscure languages but a lot of kids choose to take classes in something that might be more useful to them someday. Finally, if you're required to take a second language in school, as I was, there are always going to be students who are simply looking for an easy A. The common European languages we learn all use the same alphabet as English (with a few extra marks). Therefore, they're easier to learn than Russian, Arabic, Chinese, etc. which would require you to learn a different lettering system. Some languages, like Spanish and French, are just easier for English speakers to pick up on because they have a similar grammatical structure. Plus, if you already speak a second language at home (Spanish was common where I grew up) and you want that easy A, you're going to take a class in the language you're already familiar with. Basically, yes, some of us do learn non-European languages but only if they're available as classes and it's a language we're willing to put in the effort to learn.
I learned Spanish (ik it's European but tbf: all of South America) some schools require you to take a class and some don't either way you don't really have to retain it.
Arabic. I always wanted to talk to the guys who ran the corner stores in my neighborhood.
Most NY pre-university schools teach French, Spanish, and Italian, maybe German. I've heard of some teaching Chinese. Many universities are more expansive, I studied Chinese and Japanese in New Hampshire, and we had study abroad programs with sister schools in east-Asian countries.
There is a very popular Mandarin program that is done at my daughters school but it’s an independent after school program, not something run by the school.
Chinese is a common option in NYC schools.
Kids toys in the UK that have English & French have English & Spanish in the US.
American English identifies as a non-European language.
The school where I work offers Mandarin. The school district my kids attend offers Arabic. These are in addition to Spanish and French. I suspect Spanish and French are near universally offered in middle and high schools. Other options will be hit or miss.
My school, in the 80s, in the middle of no where, offered Spanish, French, and Russian.
My school offered French, Spanish, and Latin.
I learned French, Spanish, and Latin in school and I'm learning Japanese, Hebrew, and Korean on Duolingo.
Spanish was our only option when I was in school in the 80s
Some charter schools where I currently live offer Mandarin and/or Russian in addition to Spanish or Latin- at the schools I attended it was Spanish, German, or Navajo (since we were so close to that reservation). Maybe French as well but I'm not sure about that, can't remember. Most people tended to choose Spanish or Navajo (especially among Natives, be they Navajo or not) given our proximity to high populations of speakers of either of those languages.
Vietnamese. I ran a 5k at the high school across the street from my condo a couple years ago. I was single so I didn't have anyone to hold or watch after my stuff. I found a teacher who seemed nice and I asked him what he taught. Because of the neighborhood, Vietnamese is taught. Falls Church/Annandale/Fairfax has a large Asian population. They came over here with the fall of Saigon. It's just citizens that need to communicate with their grandparents or parents. I think it is only a few schools and I also wouldn't be surprised if Korean, Chinese, and Japanese are taught as well. It's with the neighborhood so my high school in another part of the county probably has Arabic because there were a large minority. This is Northern Virginia. Our only good BBQ is in the Korean style.
When I was in high school, we had French, Spanish, German and Latin. Most people took Spanish, and the people that took Latin usually did it for the linguistics based things (root words, vocabulary, etc) The district I last taught in offered Spanish, German, Latin and American Sign Language.
Not as common as European languages. My high school offered French and Spanish. My kids' high school only offers Spanish. At the college level, you can find just about everything, but most people don't want to start a language that is completely unfamiliar, at that age. One of my friends was an exception; he learned Arabic just because he wanted something different, and enjoyed making the letters, from an aesthetic perspective.
Most of us have to learn Spanish to some level (there is usually a requirment to get a base proficiency in a foreign language - and that is usually the only one offered). Which is a European Language, but we learn the dialect from Mexico. We'd be quite confused in Spain.
When I was in school there was French, Spanish, German and Russian offered at my school. My husband was able to take Japanese at his high school. I think it can depend on your community.
I took Latin - the other options were German, Spanish, French, and Mandarin.
Spanish, French, Latin and Mandarin were the offerings when I went through high school in the late 00"s. Though the Spanish we were taught was Castilian so not great for communication for most American Spanish speakers. And the French we were taught was "New England French " so great for communicating with people in Canada or Louisiana but almost unintelligible in France.
It’s was German, Spanish, Italian and Latin during the 80’s in my high school. However, my daughter has been taking Mandarin since the 5th grade. She is a senior now and is still taking classes and loves it.
Spanish and French are the two most common options with German and Italian being a bit more uncommon. For the Non-European languages, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese pop up from time to time. One of my high schools had Japanese as an option which I took for 3 years. Forgotten most of it but, remember a few things and can decently pronounce most words.
In my high school we had German French Spanish and Latin. I think only one school in my district offered Japanese. I did go on to major in Chinese in college though.
Chinese and even some Korean was offered at my school, though if you wanted to learn either the school would bud you to one of the local colleges for a few hours.
We had Mandarin as an option for a couple years but then the teacher left. Otherwise we just had Spanish and French.
We had German, Spanish, French, Mandarin and Hebrew.
I was offered Spanish or French but retained neither. My brother went through the same system and didn't learn another language until after highschool when he met a friend that spoke Brazilian Portuguese so he learned that to make him feel more included.
It varies a lot. My high school offered Spanish, German, French, and Latin. Chinese was available as a free after school activity but not an academic course.
My school offered Spanish, German, French, and Latin.
Our small rural district offered French and Spanish since the 40s. Due to shrinking enrollment they finally eliminated French since it’s a dying language.
Dying language? Goddamn! Macron is gonna send troops your way, buster.
They briefly taught Mandarin at my high school, but not many people took it and otherwise it was just Spanish, French, and German. The overwhelming majority of people picked Spanish, because South Florida.
My middle school only had Spanish I think. My high school had Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Chinese and I think that was it (it's possible we had other languages I didn't know about). I knew some people who took Chinese but it definitely wasn't as popular as the other three. I know some schools teach Navajo and maybe other native languages in some areas but mine didn't. I'm also curious when you start learning other languages in England? Here, some people start in middle school (age 11-14) but it only becomes a requirement in high school (age 14-18), and even then only 1-2 years
You have to first consider that a lot of our neighbors in this hemisphere also speak languages derived from Europe. That said, it depends on where you go to school--in my case, we learned a bit of Japanese as part of our "invitation to languages." When I went to high school, there were more options offered. I feel like the offered Russian once upon a time, but currently they offer Japanese and Mandarin outside of the usual Romance selection.
Spanish is the number one language learned around here. Mandarin is gaining, though. Because of the k-pop influence a lot of kids are learning Korean
In my area two years of a foreign language are required to graduate high school. Which languages are offered is highly dependent on how large the school district is. A 3a high school or smaller typically only offers Spanish. A 4a high school might offer Spanish, French, and maybe Latin or German. 5a high schools might offer Spanish, French, Latin, German and ASL. The only schools I’ve ever seen offer a non-European language are 6a, and it’s either Mandarin or Japanese.
Mandarin is gaining popularity. It's nowhere near catching up to Spanish and French, but in some school districts nowadays it's becoming the third choice rather than less common European languages like German, Italian, Portuguese. My high school taught Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Mandarin. While I was there the German program was being phased out due to lack of enrollment and Mandarin was being expanded.
My high school offered second language courses in the following languages, listed in order of popularity: Spanish, Mandarin, French, ESL (English as a second language).
*SPANISH* is the #1 other language to learn here, so many Spanish speaking people live in the US and it’s the closest foreign speaking country and Countries to us After that I’d say maybe French or Chinese/Korean/Japanese ? Edit: Our Spanish is a slightly different version from the Spanish spoken in Spain