How many languages do you plan to teach?

[mama25angels]

I'm hoping to get Latin, Greek and Spanish.

[waa510]

I plan on teaching Latin and Spanish. If languages are the passion of either of my girls, however, I'll obviously add in the ones they're interested in during the rhetoric stage, or in the logic if they've determined their life's interest by then (which I doubt but we'll see). I think adding in Greek might be beneficial too, but I will probably just go with learning word roots, if at all.

[silliness7]

OK, I am a language buff. I spend my spare time learning new languages (or whatever spare time I have now which is almost nonexistent :tongue_smilie:). Anyway, I am not going to push languages onto my kids (except for Latin) unless they share my love of languages.

 

I am starting with German because I speak it well and have a passion for it. I am definitely doing Latin starting somewhere around 3rd grade). I was also hoping to do Spanish at some point.

 

I would love to hear what you all do in regards to foreign language!

 

I love languages too. I took French and Spanish in highschool....Spanish, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew in college.

 

It is quite teacher intensive, though to teach a language. At least, ime.

We are committed to Latin and I plan to start Greek in the fall with Song School and Alphabet Code Cracker from CAP. That's very gentle. We'll put off serious study for another year. My highschooler (come fall) is going to start Spanish because he needs a modern foreign language for his college of choice. He's happy to ditch Latin and will not be joining us for Greek. :glare:

[ocelotmom]

However many seem right.

 

We've started with Latin, and will probably take a slow and steady approach to that throughout. We've started SSL already. I'm hoping DS is reading well enough by next school year to start in on a more rigorous program. With DD1 (who is *way* more into the SSL than DS), I'm hoping that SSL2 really does appear, as I think it'll be a few years before she's ready for a "real" program.

 

After that's well established, DH would like to do German. Actually, he'd rather do Old Norse, but German seems a reasonable compromise. That'll be something with somewhat different roots from Latin.

 

Then probably Spanish a few years after that (or another Romance language, but Spanish seems both most practical in the US and one where getting real-life exposure should be relatively easy), which hopefully will be relatively painless to pick up if we've really continued with Latin.

 

Really, I'd be thrilled if they obtain relative fluency in one other language. But starting early, this seems like a reasonable plan.

 

If they decide to go beyond that, I suppose we'll let them choose. I'd also let them choose something else in place of Spanish if they felt strongly about it and had the drive to do it without a lot of help on my part.

 

It'll also depend on life circumstances. If we spend a year in some other country, the chance for immersion would certainly take precedence over any of our pre-made plans!

 

 

Honestly, I think that knowing a language like German or Italian would set kids apart from the pack when applying to college or applying for a job. Someone on Hive Mind told me that there are plenty of native speakers of Spanish in this country for all of the job requiring Spanish so it is helpful to know other languages. That made a lot of sense to me!

The "leave those jobs for the native speakers" mindset assumes that those jobs are undesirable and there are plentiful alternate jobs available for people who don't speak Spanish. I've been passed over for jobs for which I was otherwise well-qualified because I don't speak relatively fluent Spanish. And those jobs were basically all that was available within my field of interest.

Edited April 15, 2011 by ocelotmom