92-96, we had, IIRC
French
Spanish
German
Latin
Russian
Russian was only offered at 4 of the 10 high schools in the district, and was discontinued a few years after I graduated. I believe my old high school offers Turkish, now.
ETA: I forgot that ASL was added my senior year. And the local high school to where I live today (same district, different school) offers only Spanish, Latin, and ASL.
Upstate NY '82-86 public high school : German, French, Spanish. That was it. Curriculum changed starting around '84 that new students had to take a minimum of 1 year in order to graduate. I didn’t take any language courses until college in the mid '90’s where I took Russian.
Early-to-mid 90s, Ohio: Spanish and French. They were phasing out German when I became a freshman.
1991-95: Spanish and French (and you had to take two years of language, either for 2 years or 1 year each, to graduate)
I should probably add that there were 400 kids in the entire school, so I doubt there would have been enough interest to warrant teaching a more “exotic” language.
1980-1984 in Connecticut. They offered French, Spanish, Latin and German. I just checked the website and now they offer French, Spanish, Latin and Mandarin Chinese.
Late 80s, Spanish and French only. At least one of the other schools in our district offered German, but that was unusual.
88-91
French IV
German IV
Spanish IV
Japanese I
Mandarin I
Russian I
I actually took French IV, German IV, Spanish IV and Japanese I in my senior year.
Catholic all-boys high school in Los Angeles from 1989 - 1993. We were offered Spanish, German, French or Latin.
I took three years of Latin, I did. Semper ubi sub ubi.
English-speaking Ontario, 1976-1981.
Everyone got French. For a third language we had German. We had nothing like Latin, Chinese, or Japanese (I would have signed up for Japanese in a heartbeat); my sister had to go to university to study Russian and Old English. Interestingly, the third language today is Spanish.
About 87-91. New Jersey. Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, French.
Joe
West Virginia, late 70s early 80s, we had French, Spanish, and German.
Je parle très mal français.
Eastern WA large-ish high school (3500+ students) in the early 90s. Languages offered were Spanish, French, and German.
1968-1972, LaGrange High School in large and in charge LaGrange, GA. The choices were Latin, Spanish and French.
Late 60’s, Latin, German, French or Spanish.
Here’s the thing, though. My high school only offered two years of classes in each language. Even in those days, the state university system required frshmen to have at least 3 years of foreign language, so anyone with the remotest idea of going to college had to start a new language their junior year, and on top of that, be in class with a bunch of 9th graders. By the time you were a senior, you had two years of one language, which you’d forgotten, and one year of a language you didn’t know. So you pretty much had to sign up for the second year of the second language, in the hope that at least some of your Latin-Spanish or French-German polyglot would stick.
Mid-90s
French, German, Latin, and Spanish were offered, and all could be taken from 8th grade on. In 7th grade, we had a semester of FLEX (Foreign Language Exploration), which was required for all students. I think we were required to take 2 years of a foreign language, but I don’t remember for sure. I took Latin for 3 years, and French for 1.
I wanted to take more years of French, but the teacher wasn’t able to teach well enough in the given situation. The regular teach taught the fall semester and started the spring semester, but ended up quitting for reasons unknown to me. The teacher who took over was a building substitute who never got any respect in any class he filled. He was fairly creepy in appearance, and spoke with a lisp; needless to say, a bunch of teenagers made fun of him and didn’t care what he thought/said. He tried, but I didn’t get anything out of that spring semester, so I wasn’t comfortable taking French 2, and I didn’t want to repeat French 1. C’est la vie.
I think Latin was eliminated a few years after I graduated. The teacher, who was the Latin teacher for the district (3 middle schools and 3 high schools), had always said Chinese was the language we should be learning the most.
Same here, in Illinois. They did offer four years of all four, although few did four years of any language and two was considered “minimum”.
1996-2000 in Tucson. French, German, and Spanish.
I went to high school in the late 70s. I actually moved in the middle of high school from Montreal to Los Angeles.
In Montreal: French was required, obviously.
In Los Angeles: Spanish, German, and French were offered, but none were required for graduation. The University of California has a foreign language requirement for entrance, so college-bound students generally did take a language. I continued with French, myself.
Early 2000s, Western Canada: French. Not required. Actually, you couldn’t get into it in high school unless you had taken it in elementary school, it was more a continuation of all-French schooling.
They added Spanish as an elective the year after I graduated.
1957 to 1961
Latin, Spanish and Russian. We also had English classes.