As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not (or at least I never had access to one). Obviously places like Kora or Tibet have been effected in their history (I still want to read your answers 😁), but what about, for example, New Zealand? Or Sierra Leonne? Or Portugal? I’m just curious to see how pervasive the new Global Language already is by this point.
BonusQuestion: Is it mostly following their Belt-and-Road Initiative? Wouldn’t that be something?
Singapore - Mother Tongue is a compulsory subject to take up until Uni. Being classified as Chinese racially, I had to take Mandarin during my formative years - but I’m still not good at it lol
I feel you, I still feel like I barely know how to speak English 🙃
My high school in a semi rural part of the Southern US had a Chinese language class that you could choose to take for your foreign language credit back in the early 2010s. I think it’s a false premise to say that it’s not taught in the US, most kids just choose to take easier languages like German, French, or Spanish
I definitely should’ve worded the post better but yeah I didn’t mean to imply that it’s never taught in the states. Just that my personal experience in the system (also southern but urban) didn’t really give me any chances 😕 But honestly a large reason for that probably just came from my particular setting (I’m NOT typing that whole thing out again but in one of my reply threads I go into more detail on the weird things I grew up learning)
Yes my public high school had it as a language back in the late 1980s/early 90s. This would be New Jersey, USA.
Fair enough. Also thanks for not being one of the comments saying ‘they definitely exist in America how dare you’ 🙄 I could’ve worded it better but the goal of the post was to find edicational systems different than the one I personally went through, not to try to define all of America’s system in a few sentences. I put a fairly detailed description of that in one of my other replies if you’re curious but regardless, thanks for your time 🙂
yes, in France, in business schools, they definitely teach Chinese, as a choice, not mandatory.
I believe it is also possible to take Chinese classes during high school , again as a “3rd language option”, after English and /Spanish / German
Follow-up question: business schools? As in, specialization before high school graduation? I know there are a handful of ‘premier’ schools here in the states but most of them are expensive, exclusionary, and focused on simply getting INTO a better university (prep schools). Most of us just go through general public education which can vary wildly and you definitely do not (in most cases) get to choose between the “business” branch or the “engineering” branch
No, you are confusing “prep class”, which prepare to engineer/business school/university, with business school itself.
Business school is like a University , but private and expensive. It’s higher education (Master degree)
Ireland. I doubt any schools offer it as a curricular, but it is an exam subject. Generally the only people sitting the exam are Chinese native speakers who moved here.
Not in my school anyway. The languages taught here in Austria vary by school AFAIK, in my school everyone had to learn English, then depending on which branch we selected we could learn French, Italian, Spanish and/or Latin (but there was no path to combine French with Italian).
I looked it up and while it is possible for schools to choose other languages than these, Chinese doesn’t seem to be among them, so that could not be made a mandatory subject, probably could be taught as a non-graded elective though.
High school requires at least a second language class to graduate, I believe. Most people take French as it’s the “default” one that all schools offer, but my school also had Spanish, Mandarin, and Japanese, iirc. But that was decades ago.
My school (UK, 1980s) offered Mandarin as an extracurricular course. I signed up, showed up… and was the only student. One-on-one classes the rest of the year :)
(Just don’t try grilling me in Mandarin now, though.)
There was a show on Nick Jr that taught me how to count to three in Chinese while my kids had snack time.
In Australia, my high school offers German and Chinese mandatory in y7-8 but optional afterwards.
Not gonna lie, I can understand the Mandarin since you are geographically neighborly, but the German is surprising. Was that just your high school?
Most high schools offer French and Japanese iirc.
The French education system require to study two foreign language among a long list, so why most people take English + German/Spanish/Italian some people take rare language like Chinese.
To my understanding rare and hard language like Chinese (or Russian) are also a way to be admitted to a better school/class than your local school, so it’s often used by rich kids who want to bypass their local public school and be affected to a good school/class
It’s a good question and I’m not dismissing you! But
As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not
that in itself is such an American thing to say. First the unspoken assumption that everybody understands what you mean by “religious”. And if I looked around here where I live I’m sure I could find a christian (which btw does not mean the same as in the US) school that teaches chinese. And probably even the leaders of such schools have never considered to separate languages into “christian” and “non-christian”.
The second half of your question seems a bit paranoid. Are you implying that every Chinese language class is secretly funded by the PRC? Are you afraid that your country might switch to Chinese at some point? Do you have a problem with English not being the No. 1 langauage, globally? I’m no friend of China’s political system, but this seems excessive.
Valid points, I appreciate that 🙏 Most of your question can be answered by the fact that I was high when I wrote the post and am just tired of using my filter in real life and I feel safe here on Lemmy.
And honestly, my specific Elementary school was very… unique. Looked them up a few months ago and they’re a few degrees of separation from Reformed Calvinists. Like, more than half of the faculty come from 2 small Evangelical universities in the middle of the Great Plains. They taught some usual stuff like math and spelling, but then there was also lots of time dedicated to studying the Bible, learned two different songs to memorize the order of the books, we had a “Bring your Priest to School Day,” yeah it was just a liiiiiiitle off.
I see your point in my (unintentional) divide into “christian/religios vs chinese” and nowadays I would never try to imply anything resembling that. Now that you mention it though, I do remember one day in 1st(?) grade where they had all the students come and listen to a sermon by a guest preacher (this was fairly common) and somehow the topic of ‘Chinese water torture’ came up? (I don’t remember anything more specific than that, I was very young, but I think a connection was made that shouldn’t have been)
As for the paranoia (besides the above annecdote), that was also unintentional. I wish I understood more about
non-Americanculture and as an avid lover of history, I know a lot of times influence is not merely who won which battle and was curious to see if anyone else had more tangible examples than just theories or video game-logic.Overall, the whole point of this was just to talk to somebody so thank you for that 🥰
Damn, I like your reply.
Most of your question can be answered by the fact that I was high when I wrote the post and am just tired of using my filter in real life and I feel safe here on Lemmy.
And that’s valid; but it might reveal things about your sub/halfconscious that other people will point out to you, and will mistake for conviction. But if you’re OK with that…
And thanks for yet another insight into the certainly not boring but terrifying world of the US education “system”.
Damn, I like your reply
Gee, thanks buddy 😁 As for the subconsciousness peeking through and being taken as conviction… yeah, there are pris and cons to either method. Overall though, to me, life is too short to worry about it too much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week 🙂
Chinese is not a global language. And it’s not likely to be in the future. It’s not the raw number of speakers what makes a global language but the number of non-native speakers.
That being said.
In my country, Spain, it is not taught at any level as mandatory, and not even as an option. Of you want to study chinese you have to go to do as an extracurricular thing.
Yeah, my main lesson I’ve learned here is to type the draft while high, but only press Send after I’ve come down 😅 I don’t think it is now or will be in our lifetimes, BUT I do think that if a universal human language were possible, it would be more beneficial to base it on a Tonal system than an Atonal one (sorry Esperanto). But that is just my opinion, feel free to disagree, and thank you for your input 😁
But why would a tonal system be beneficial?
Beneficial… beneficial… am I answering to an AI?
the new Global Language
This is not decided yet.
Russian is still a candidate. English still a possibility despite one large English-speaking country giving up all it’s meaning.
Chinese will never be the official global language and I’ll give you 8,105 simplified reasons why…
I eagerly await lol
It’s a joke about their writing system
I kinda figured, but I also wanted to see if they had a follow-up prepared 😂
