I noticed that when I talk to people about languages, most speak their native language plus English, and then potentially French, Spanish, or something more “global” like Mandarin, Japanese, Russian or Arabic. However, even though I’m pretty sure German is the language with the most native speakers in Europe (I am one of them for that matter), it doesn’t seem very common for other Europeans to learn it. How prevalent is it to learn German in your country? Do you think it should be taught more in European schools?
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For most school levels it is a mandatory language at Dutch schools. (Together with English and French).
In my schools, we started with French and then did either Spanish or German. These were the only 3 languages. I don’t know what it’s like in other schools in the country but I imagine it’s similar
German is very common in weatern Poland, sometimes even tought before English.
It is common in Bosnia. It is taught in every elemntary school and in most high schools. It has the status of the second foreign language and one can choose to study German or French (the least popular option) or Turkish (the most recent addition). While some schools do not offer French and Turkish, every school offers German. Some gymnasiums (high schools of the highest level) also have a program called DSD which is basically more intensive learning of the language which can grant you an additional diploma.
And as to way it is popular, the fact is that many Bosnians seek better future in German speaking countries so they find learning the language very useful. We can also add the ties with the language through the Austria-Hungary reign here. One interesting fact is that Bosnian language has adopted and adjusted a lot of German words and they are now used on the daily basis
(e.g. Flaša = die Flasche, Deka = die Decke).
A lot of people do learn german later on becouse of the lack of job opportunities in Portugal in 10th grade of you go humanities (i didnt), but personaly i dont know anyone that picked german (it seems way harder in comparison with the other 2).
I would say its not normal to learn german, more people are learning it nowdays due to the job oportunities,
I think it should stays as an optional for those that want to learn it, most people claim to no remember shit of the french they learned and german seems harder…
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Yes and no. Usually English is the second, German is generally third or fourth.
In Italy most people start studying English in primary school, then add a second language (I believe that it’s generally french, but it varies) and then if you go to specific schools* in high school you can choose one or two more languages and generally German is one of the options. This of course varies also based on the regions. Near the border with Austria most people are bilingual.
*In Italy there are many types of high school and you have to pick one. There’s something for everyone, whether it’s sciences, economics, languages, professional schools, agriculture, etc.
My school was part of the economics branch, but more focused on international relations, so we had three languages: everyone had English and Spanish, and you had to choose either French or German as third foreign language
(flanders) Fourth
First Dutch,
Then French,
Then English,
Then German (some schools allow Spanish instead don’t know didn’t go to such a school)
Kinda common since we share a border, obviosly more common in the north/east whereas spanish and italian is more commonly taught in the south
Not as second language, but it’s somewhat common as a fourth language. Finnish school kids generally learn English as their first foreign language, and it’s also mandatory for native Finnish speakers to learn Swedish (and for native Swedish speakers to learn Finnish).
It’s also fairly common to pick a fourth language. Back in my day (1990s), this started in 8th year of school, and while it wasn’t mandatory, in my school about half the kids took the fourth language, and among them, it was roughly a 50-50 split between German and French.
It’s one of the most common second languages in Denmark, along with ofc. English, but also Spanish and French. German or French is mandatory grades 5 through 9(age 11-16, roughly), _but_ most schools don’t offer French, as there is a general lack of French teachers in _folkeskolen_. So it is super common. 9/10 Danish pupils will likely have been taught German at some point during their education, though German profiency continues to fall, _was sehr bedauerlich ist._ There was a discussion some time back over on /r/Denmark about languages at university level, where German has practically disappeared; a regular disaster in my opinion. A lot of pupils, once done with _folkeskolen_ and proceeding onto secondary education, often abandon German for Spanish or French, or take educations where foreign languages aren’t part of the curriculum.
Why do we teach it? Well, historical and economical reasons. Germany is a close neighbour, they’re one of our most important trading partners, and historically, it was an important administrative language in Denmark, not to mention, a recognised minority language nowadays. But the economical argument is by far the one that is the strongest.
When I was in school it was always either English or German. If someone wanted another foreign language it was usually Spanish.
Knowing both English and German is very uncommon.
Yes considering I live in the French speaking part of Switzerland and “German” is the most commonly spoken language in the country.
Yes, German seems to have always been taught in school here alongside French and of course English. Today the students can choose between several languages to learn besides English in middle and high school, usually German, French or Spanish, but some schools even offer Russian and Chinese.
Popularity of German has been going down a lot in Finland. A hundred years ago I believe it was even the most popular foreign language instead of English. Even recently it has gone down in pooulary quite a lot, but so have honestly almost all foreign languages apart from English. It’s just that the change has been more dramatic for German because it was the most popular of the non-English foreign languages.
Once you get into secondary school here typically you can chose between French, Spanish or German. However Italian is also taught in some schools. Then in the leaving cert you can open that up to Japanese, Arabic and Mandrin too if the school teaches it.
So along with English and Irish as mandatory you can learn two other languages, One international and one European if you wanted too.
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Very common. In some regions, it is even the first foreign language.
>How prevalent is it to learn German in your country?
It is the fourth language, after English, French and Spanish. French and Spanish seem around equally popular, but I think that Spanish will be more popular in few years because kids like it more. French indeed is more appreciated by those who like literature. German is less popular.
>Do you think it should be taught more in European schools?
It would be great to learn every European language, but it is not feasible to spend all the hours on languages. English is enough as mandatory language, who wants to learn German can do it in dedicated schools or on their own. I would prefer Latin as mandatory language in Italy, because it would revitalize Italian language which suffers greatly from English influence.
The 2nd foreign language Greeks learn at schools is either French or German. It’s up to the children to choose. I think it’s a 60/40 split in favour of French.
During High School, we could choose learning another language, but the only option was French (at least in my High School). By the way, French was the foreign language taught, English was something strange.
No 😜
I actually think a lot of people do speak German. Whenever I am on vacation there is someone speaking German.
Speaking from Bavaria it is very common to learn German as another language, atleast in the old rural regions behind the seven mountains with the twelve gnomes.
You may now ask: is the Bavarian dialect its own language? The answer is obviously yes, since Bavaria also is its own country. Just look around: many countryside, therefore country, noice.
It should be taught in more schools here for sure, atleast in a better quality. I can’t even understand our Economy Minister all the time.
/s
Outside of Germany I don’t think it should be taught that often, unless your goal is to move to Germany. I wouldn’t learn it myself if I had the choice to be honest.
In my school of ~500 schoolchildren we had 3 mandatory languages (not counting Estonian): English, German and Russian. Everyone were able to choose between 2 groups in third grade, either German in 3rd grade -> English in 6th grade -> Russian in 9th grade or English -> Russian -> German. I chose the first group and I’m glad that I did since the only way I was able to pass Russian was through cheating lol. Surprisingly the German language stuck with me and I was even able to speak it without switching to English on my trip to Germany many years later. Sadly I’ve forgotten most of it since I don’t exactly have a reason to use it in Estonia.
In addition to English (which is mandatory for 11 years), it’s mandatory to have at least 3 years of foreign language education in Norway (but it’s very common to have it for 5 years, and sometimes 6), except for some vocational studies in high school.
Most schools offer German, Spanish and French, with German and Spanish being the most common, and French quite a bit less so. Some schools also offer other languages, like Japanese, Chinese or Russian, but that’s not nearly as widespread throughout the country.
Not common at all during school years, but somewhat common for young adults.
English is taught as a 2nd language, and for 3rd language you can usually choose either Arabic or French. German is offered in very few schools in the country, if at all (I don’t know of any).
But, some study it during University – either if they wanna move to Berlin for a few years, or just to be able to communicate with their grandparents (a lot of people have had grandparents who speak either German or Yiddish as a 1st language. It’s currently dying down as that generation slowly dies out).
Nope.
English IS the most common followed by french. German IS third by a longshot.
Historically french was more common than English but around 40 years ago this changed and the gap has been getting bigger ever since.
German IS getting more popular nowadays mainly because of economic reasons.
Reading this thread I feel like Germany is the only country where it is common to learn Latin in school.
Edit: I learned Latin in school and it is bloody useless. However, it did save me from having to learn french spelling so there’s that.
It’s common as a second foreign language taught at school, after English of course. I had German at school, but the lessons weren’t that great. It felt more like a waste of time than something useful tbh.
Also turns out the most spoken native language in Europe is actually Russian, not German (which isn’t that surprising given how many people live in Russia). But English is the most spoken language in Europe overall.
German is quite common as a foreign language in Bulgaria but not many people choose it because it’s known as a difficult language. To some it sounds rough and they don’t like it. One of the top 3 high schools in Bulgaria is the German Language High School and just getting accepted there is pretty difficult nowadays. Germany is a nice place to go to university – low uni fees, in Europe (=close to Bulgaria), quality education.
In Poland we have to learn 2 foreign languages in school. English is generally the main one and very often we can choose between German and French as the second one with German being much more popular. Another common option, especially in smaller towns, is just German with the possibility to choose. In Eastern Poland Russian is more widely taught – either as the first or second foreign language.
In Poland it’s the most popular second foreign language taught in schools, mostly because we have way more people with German studies degree ready to teach in schools, than any other language excluding english, but usually your skills are pretty basic(mostly because of less hours in classes), especially if you don’t sit in german social media or watch movies/play games and especially talk like with english
It is taught as a third language after English.
I personally studied German for 4 years and can’t speak it for shit
It’s the second most-picked foreign language here after French, but it’s *far* behind French and just barely ahead of Spanish. In 2019 the figures were as follows:
French 23,361 students
German
8,544
Spanish
7,711
And pretty much every other language is only taken by students who already speak it fluently from outside of school (e.g Russian with just 458 students in 2019 had a whopping 60% of students get over 90% on the exam).
Its mandatory for certain levels to have German. It is optional to take nationwide exams in it.
It is the third language they teach at school after Dutch and English.
I did impress my German with my many 1’s for that course, but in our system it is not a good grade at all.
English is mandatory, and there are languages of choice – German, French, Spanish, Russian etc. I am not sure about the situation now, but when I was in school 20 years ago, German was the second most studied language behind English. But because German is relatively hard to learn, even people who have studied it at school do not really speak it that well. Personally, I can read Goethe in the original, but I went to an Austrian high school and lived 7 years in German speaking countries (Germany and Austria)
No, we have to learn our 2nd most used national language before all.
Not common. We usually learn english, then french, then spanish
German was fairy popular as a language elective in my school in Iceland. I suppose the grammatical similarities and similarity in vocabulary makes it an easy choice for Icelandic speakers.
I took German for years , did a school exchange program to Germany as a teenager, and went on to do a Bachelor’s degree in German Language and Literature at a large Canadian university. I was slightly more of a keener than the rest, I guess.
It is mandatory to take a second foreign language at high school. Most people choose german as it could be the most useful due to Turkish-german cultural situation. The school I attended took german very seriously and I managed to get to B1 level by just taking the lessons. Most public schools teach german but is is extremely basic.
Either French or German are probably the most common languages to learn in our country other than English. This is because its required to learn a 3rd language if you want to start at a Gymnasium (our version of High School?)
It is traditionally the second most commonly taught foreign language in schools after French, but since the 90s I think Spanish has become more popular
In Estonia people usually learn:
English as the fist foreign language,
usually German or Russian as the second foreign language,
German or Russian or French or Finnish or Swedish or Spanish or some “exotic” language that school happens to have a teacher for (Chinese, Korean, Arabic) as the third foreign language.
Some kids also have Latin lessons or just an elective fourth language. There are also 1-3 schools that are specialized in German/French/Russian each and teach that respective language as a first language. So it’s very rare, but not impossible. As for German, there is for example [Saksa gümnaasium](https://saksa.tln.edu.ee/de/).
French(everyone)>English(everyone)>German(anyone that does things like trade/economy)>Spanish/Italian(mainly reserved for people focussing on languages) is more or less the order here in the dutch speaking part of Belgium.
Other options do exist of course but you’ll have to search for it.
And obviously Latin/Greece are also available for the smarter kids from grade 7(latin) and I think grade 8 has Greece.
I’m a 40 years old Italian from a rural area, when I was in middle school the school randomly assigned me a foreign language from a list and the list was: (English, German, French) No Spanish, no Portuguese. Actually it wasn’t completely random, you couldn’t choose English, but you were allowed to pick up one of the remaining two. Most people lived it as a lottery where the losers got french and german, and I lost and had to study french for 7 years. I guess you could come here and meet the guys who had German assigned to them and talk to them in German
we all learn French becasue we can see France from our houses!
my grandpa learnt German when he was at school… but well you know, it helps when the Germans come to you
It was very common, maybe even the number 1 foreign language in Slovakia before 2000 or so. I’ve learned German before English in middle school in early 90s. These days though it’s my impression that English is FAR more popular…because Internet.
I would say it is still by far the most popular 3rd language though…
In the US, nearly 3/4 of students who take a foreign language in high school study Spanish. Then about 1/6 take French. German is the next most popular language, but with only 4%. Latin comes in 4th with 2%. Japanese, Italian, and Chinese come in at 1% each, and 1/2% taking American Sign Language.
At the university level, it’s a bit more balanced with half taking Spanish, French next, then ASL, and then German at 6%.
Absolutely uncommon, even niche, it is considered a language which you would only learn months before going there to emigrate.
It’s one of the foreign languages we learn besides English. I’d say in the order of commonality it would be English, French and then German.
I for example I learnt German as the first foreign language since the 1st grade and English as the second foreign language since the 3rd or 4th grade, and between the 5th and 8th grade I had German as an intensive curriculum – 7hours/week. This is however not common since the school I went to was not one with “German pedigree” per-say, it was just a normal one.
There are in each major city a couple of schools that are known as “German schools” which teach German as the first foreign language, and also some schools which teach the entire curriculum in German.
L.E. German it’s considered here an “exotic” and complicated language, and when someone finds out you speak German, they usually are a bit surprised.