I took two years and two weeks of French in high school. I occasionally used a dab of it, I worked France and Eastern Canada where French is de rigueur. See what I did there?
Anyway, the place it came in surprisingly useful was in Siberia. The guy I was seated next to at dinner spoke no English, I spoke fluid Russian, by which I mean I could order fluids in Russian, as long as they were Russian Standard Vodka or Baltica 9 beer, but we had both taken two years of French in high school. It had been 40 years ago for me, and almost as long for him, but we made do.
2 years of Spanish, 1 year of French,
The Spanish (what little I remember after all this time) is frustratingly useless, and 1 year of any language is only long enough to get started, barely, if you’re not in an immersive environment to learn it.
I studied two years of German in high school and did very poorly. I can’t even count to ten any more.
Actually, there are tradeoffs. Young children do learn languages, but their study habits suck, and consequently it can be difficult to effectively teach second languages in anything but immersion classes.
I have no idea why, I agree it’s bizarre. I went to a Catholic school which at the time was considered coinstitutional, boys and girls but we were separated. It later went coed but I have no idea what they did with the language classes at that point.
I ended up majoring in the primary foreign language I studied in high school (Spanish). I use it at work on a daily basis and really couldn’t do my current job properly without it.
I also took 2 years of French in high school as an elective, and another semester intensive course in college because I enjoy learning languages. That has come in handy on various occasions, too - reading academic literature in grad school (which involved study of a 3rd foreign language - Russian, which I only started studying in college), traveling, and now and again even at work. It’s not often that we have clients who speak only French, but it does come in handy for reading documents in French.
I took three years of Spanish. I live in California. Highly useful. Especially when I worked for a county hospital and had to work with immigrants who didn’t speak English. I took one year of German, and I was stationed in Germany for 3.5 years. It was useful then, too.
I had four years of French from 5th to 8th grade and then a year in high school. I didn’t learn much at all in terms of being able to hold a conversation with a French speaker or reading French literature. This is partly because the method for teaching it was poor which is not to say my French teachers were necessarily poor. And partly it’s because I just goofed off in class.
I learned more Dutch when I stayed there for a year or so then all the years of French classes I had. And that’s considering that almost none of the Nederlanders would speak Dutch with me. They all insisted on English because they speak it so well and my Dutch sucks. I think if foreign language could be taught in more of that immersive kind of way in school it would help a lot.
When I’ve been to France I haven’t been able to use much if any of my minimal knowledge of French to any effect. But I can look at a French newspaper or web page and get a halfway decent idea of what I’m reading so something must have stuck.
When I was in the Netherlands I met an African man who spoke French as his second language. He spoke no Dutch or English. We were able to communicate a few key things using my rudimentary French. That made me realize I had benefited from my school French more than I had thought.