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In California, New York and a lot of other places, the children of Chinese-speaking immigrants do study Chinese, mostly starting before the age of 10 during weekends and after-class programs. There are really a lot who study Chinese and get to be more fluent in it using these methods, as Chinese is almost impossible to grasp later in life and if given only the same number of hours as Spanish or French in high school. It just doesn't show in the high school or college curriculum or statistics because that's not when these people studied Chinese. Chinese has to be studied before one can be literate in it, even those who speak Chinese at home. If we are only talking about those who studied a foreign language in high school or college, then there are more French students. But if we include those people who went to community centers and other places to study a foreign language after class or on weekends, then Chinese most likely has more students than French.
I dont buy the argument that there are tens of millions of children of Chinese immigrants studying Chinese in after school programs in the United States. At least this number would be required for Chinese to rival French as the second most studied language in America.
Considering that there are less than 4 million Chinese Americans and many of their children do not know Chinese, this would be statistically impossible.
My school offered German only up until the 80s when I started, so I studied French in Middle and High School, then German, Latin, Attic Greek, Spanish, Old English, and Old Norse at university.
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.
I agree with this. Spanish is by far the most studied in the US and in many places is the "second" language, alternative so to speak. I would also say that French is second. Of course this is at the national level, overall. In California for example, the most common language studied after Spanish is probably French but the most common that's actually spoken in CA after Spanish is Tagalog though it is not studied in schools.
We are talking the second most studied language in the US. In the US French is the second most studied language by a wide margin. Chinese is nowhere near being the second most studied language. Even if you look at the curriculum of high schools and colleges in Pacific states experiencing mass immigration like California, the second most studied language is French. This isnt my opinion, these are statistics. On a wider scale, French is the second most studied language in the world. To say Chinese is the second most studied language in the US is statistically flat out wrong, and the idea that Turkish is more studied than French in the Netherlands sounds highly suspect. In addition, the claims that certain posters know of high schools that stopped teaching French to teach Chinese sounds completely made up for a variety of reasons.
Perhaps some arent reading the OP which asks for the most studied languages in your country rather than the language most spoken by immigrants.
I agree, Chinese is way down the list. Almost every school district in CA offers French after Spanish and then German.
the problem in the US is that when Chinese is offered, it's often Mandarin but the majority of Chinese in the US is Cantonese
Mandarin, Cantonese and all other Chinese dialects have the same official writing form (which is based on Mandarin), so it does not really matter what you study in school for that matter. All Cantonese speakers under 40 years old can speak Mandarin too.
In Italy generally are Spanish and French and German (where I live German is mandatory for all kids from 6 to 10 and it's very common to have them studying it up to 13).
At University the choice is enlarged with Portuguese,Russian,Chinese,Japanese and Arabic.
Overall, the most spoken foreign languages in Italy besides native speakers (within minorities) and English are French,Spanish and German with a slight edge for French over Spanish and a large edge for the former twos over German.
French still the most studied language after English. I think German still a solid number 3. Mandarin and Portuguese are on the rise.
Some schools offer Italian, Japanese and Hebrew. But I don't think they're popular choices.
Mandarin, Cantonese and all other Chinese dialects have the same official writing form (which is based on Mandarin), so it does not really matter what you study in school for that matter.
When you study a foreign language do you only learn to read and write it? Or would you also like to be able to speak it? I'd say it really matters.
And only the "literary" form is standardized (although there are regional differences and two different scripts). The colloquial written form is quite different.
Quote:
All Cantonese speakers under 40 years old can speak Mandarin too.
I have a brother, and a cousin, and ton of friends, and a couple million others that would prove that assertion wrong. I'm under 40 and my Mandarin is terrible. I studied Latin in high school :-)
In China, this is probably true. But for Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, USA, Canada, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, etc. there are still many that do not speak Mandarin.
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