Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > World Forums > World
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 05-30-2014, 04:02 PM
 
131 posts, read 167,962 times
Reputation: 85

Advertisements

In the USA
1. Spanish...everyone takes it here, you go to California, Florida and Texas and that's all that is spoken
2. Chinese,I'm surprised no one has said this yet but now in days many students take Chinese, I actually know several schools that cancelled french and replaced it with Chinese
3. French...It slowly declining since the 1950s but its still popular
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 05-30-2014, 06:38 PM
 
Location: Brisbane
5,059 posts, read 7,467,412 times
Reputation: 4526
It varies a lot by region in Australia, each school gets so select which languages they teach from a selection of 11 nationally identified languages.

In Brisbane's cities government run state schools, the 11 languages taught in order are.

Japanese - 44 schools
Mandarin - 44
German - 30
French - 29
Italian - 7
Spanish -6
Indonesian - 6
Vietnamese - 5
Greek - 3
Arabic - 2
Korean - 0

The data is available directly from the Queensland Government Website.

The most spoken languages after English in Brisbane City are Mandarin, Vietnamese and Cantonese.

Last edited by danielsa1775; 05-30-2014 at 08:00 PM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-30-2014, 06:53 PM
 
Location: Colorado
1,523 posts, read 2,856,508 times
Reputation: 2220
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vergodela View Post
In the USA
1. Spanish...everyone takes it here, you go to California, Florida and Texas and that's all that is spoken
2. Chinese,I'm surprised no one has said this yet but now in days many students take Chinese, I actually know several schools that cancelled french and replaced it with Chinese
3. French...It slowly declining since the 1950s but its still popular
Chinese? Maybe in your particular area but in general it is Spanish, then French, then a plethora of all languages taken by single digit percentages of students. Chinese is definetly nowhere near #2. Chinese is taken by a whopping 3%, behind Italian, Japanese, and German. Also, French has not declined and has actually slightly increased in popularity over the last decade.

List of most commonly learned foreign languages in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-30-2014, 11:28 PM
 
Location: Taipei
8,863 posts, read 8,396,060 times
Reputation: 7402
In Taiwan-judging by the popularity of languages taught in my college,and the private-owned language teaching programs out there.
1.Japanese.Japan is nearby and people love Japan in general.The rest of the languages are not even close to the popularity of Japanese.
2.German.Academically,German is always a powerful language.German is mainly taught in universities,it's not very popular outside the campus though.
3.Korean.It got popular fairly recently because of all the Korean dramas and Korean pop musics
4.French or Spanish

The rest are all very unpopular.

Actually learning a second foreign language is kinda pointless in Taiwan because most people don't even speak proper English.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 05:43 AM
Status: "Wishing all the best of health and peace!" (set 10 days ago)
 
43,459 posts, read 44,172,248 times
Reputation: 20474
In the USA, I would say Spanish and then Chinese in many parts of the country. But in large cities like NYC, one also hears many languages. In my area, Russian is the dominant second language (and after that Spanish, Hebrew and then Chinese).

In Israel, Arabic is the second national language besides Hebrew. Also Russian is very common. Many years ago, signs were also in French but everything has been converted to English.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 06:17 AM
 
177 posts, read 268,041 times
Reputation: 161
In Korea, besides English the next popular would be Mandarin and Japanese.
People try to learn French and German but hardly any succeed in mastering it. Too foreign and scarcely used in the Far East.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 06:17 AM
 
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
10,646 posts, read 15,972,029 times
Reputation: 5285
in the Netherlands:
1.German
2.Arabic
3.Turkish
4.French
5.Polish

6-10 (not in order):
Papiamento
Portuguese
Spanish
Indonesian
Mandarin

11-13 (not in order):
Italian
Serbian
Russian

Those are the most spoken languages, not sure if they are the most studied.

Last edited by Davy-040; 05-31-2014 at 06:31 AM..
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 06:52 AM
 
545 posts, read 863,867 times
Reputation: 642
In France it's
Spanish
German
Arabic
Italian
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 07:06 AM
 
Location: The Netherlands
2,885 posts, read 5,231,068 times
Reputation: 3425
German and French have a special status above all other foreign languages (apart from English, obviously). This becomes clear if you look at the data of the number of students participating in the Central Exam 2013 for all the foreign languages:

VWO

English: 40,574
German: 20,979
French: 16,719
Latin: 7,284
Greek: 2,805
Spanish: 1,421
Frisian: 22
Arabic: 18
Russian: 12
Turkish: 7

HAVO

English: 57,891
German: 18,932
French: 11,903
Spanish: 568
Arabic: 19
Turkish: 18
Frisian: 16
Russian: 3

VMBO GL/TL

English: 59,512
German: 25,075
French: 3,944
Spanish: 355
Frisian: 33
Turkish: 21
Arabic: 13

VMBO KB

English: 23,767
German: 2,183
French: 143
Spanish: 36
Turkish: 27
Arabic: 6

VMBO BB

English: 20,221
German: 690
Turkish: 16
French: 7
Arabic: 1

To be clear: VWO is the highest level of secondary education, VMBO BB is the lowest. The central exam is a single exam (of about 3 hours) taken by all students at the end of the final year and is worth as much as the average result of all the exams of the previous 2/3 years combined. A student can only sit for the CE in a subject if has taken exams in that subject in the previous years as well (otherwise it's not possible to calculate the final result). So the data above does not represent all the students that have studied a certain language in secondary school, only the ones who studied it from beginning to end. Depending on the level of education or the kind of profile the student choose (e.g. science/mechanics), students will sometimes have to drop certain languages as they enter the second phase of secondary school.

English is a mandatory subject for all students at all levels, that is why the number of students taking the English CE is so high compared to other languages.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-31-2014, 07:30 AM
 
Location: The Netherlands
2,885 posts, read 5,231,068 times
Reputation: 3425
Quote:
Originally Posted by Davy-040 View Post
in the Netherlands:
1.German
2.Arabic
3.Turkish
4.French
5.Polish

6-10 (not in order):
Papiamento
Portuguese
Spanish
Indonesian
Mandarin

11-13 (not in order):
Italian
Serbian
Russian

Those are the most spoken languages, not sure if they are the most studied.
I think Turkish is spoken more than Arabic, and French far exceeds both. Virtually nobody speaks Turkish or Arabic outside of the Turkish and Moroccan immigrant communities, and even within those communities the younger generation often barely speaks the language. On the other hand, millions of native Dutch people have studied French in high school and travel to France on a regular basis. According to the latest Eurobarometer survey, 29% of Dutch people speak French on a conversational level. Do you really think one in three people in the Netherlands are able to have a conversation in Turkish or Arabic? Maybe in a place like Amsterdam or Rotterdam (even there it would be a stretch) but certainly not in the rest of the country. I would estimate the number of conversational Turkish speakers at around 5% and Arabic even less.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > World Forums > World

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:14 PM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top