# Which Foreign Languages Did Your High School Offer?-Post Here **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 28, 2013, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158 "2013-03-28T05:40:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/61 "2013-03-28T22:15:52Z")
Atlanta, Georgia. 1970s. We were offered Spanish, French and Latin. I ended up taking 5 years of Latin (we didn’t have middle schools at the time and went from 8th through 12th grade in HS). That actually has come in handy at times. I wish they had taught Klingon so I could read Hamlet in the original language. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/TheKlingonHamlet.jpg/250px-TheKlingonHamlet.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/TheKlingonHamlet.jpg/250px-TheKlingonHamlet.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/62 "2013-03-28T22:17:12Z")
All we had were Spanish and French, which annoyed me because I didn’t want Spanish out of sheer stubbornness (I live in California, and everybody just kind of _assumed_ that everybody would take Spanish), so I ended up taking French by necessity. I enjoyed it well enough, but I would have preferred something more interesting like German, Latin, Russian, or Japanese. I remember my friend had her parents try to get Latin established (she wanted to go to vet school) but it didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/63 "2013-03-28T22:46:24Z")
French & Spanish; I took both, 4yrs of French & 3 of Spanish. I couldn’t do 4yrs of Spanish because my guidence counselor wouldn’t let me sign up for both freshman year. Most of the neigboring districts also offered German, and I think the parochial schools had Latin (I know for sure the Jesuit prep school did). Sometime after I graduated my school district started teaching Spanish in middle school too. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/64 "2013-03-28T23:00:37Z")
My high school offered Spanish only…but you could take German or French from correspondence courses and that would qualify. My high school had the lowest level of funding per student in the entire county. (San Diego County, California.) Whee. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/65 "2013-03-28T23:02:41Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Qin, it’s just a nitpick, but “lingua franca” does not mean quite what you seem to think it does. A lingua franca is a language that serves as a medium between different nations or populations whose own languages are not the same. In other words, English is not the lingua franca of England; it is the native language, or perhaps the milk tongue. Thank you for pointing that out. :smack: Suburban Southern California (Orange County), now, offers Spanish, French, and Japanese. Used to have German and Latin there. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/66 "2013-03-28T23:18:44Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > In 1979, no one really knew how much the Hispanic influence in the U.S. would grow in the next 30 years. By '81, we were talking about it in my Political Science classes, along with how the mushrooming Muslim population in Central Asia and the Caucasus was going to affect the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/67 "2013-03-28T23:36:40Z")
We had a choice of French or German but also studied Irish as a compulsory subject. Nowadays students in my old high school have a choice of French, German, and Spanish. These would be by far the most common languages studied. Next would be Italian I reckon. You can also sit exams in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Classical Studies, and Hebrew Studies. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/68 "2013-03-29T00:14:04Z")
Early sixties, Cleveland Heights High School: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The smart kids took Russian, Latin and Greek. The smart Jewish kids took Hebrew. The dumb kids took Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/69 "2013-03-29T00:17:44Z")
HS in the 90s, you took French OR Spanish, but you could take Latin too. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/70 "2013-03-29T00:32:58Z")
> [@Queen\_Tonya](#): > > Midwestern US in the 80s, we had our choice of French, German or Spanish. We had the same choices in California… ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/71 "2013-03-29T00:50:17Z")
My high school (Waukegan IL, 1968-72) offered four years of French, German and Spanish, and one year of Latin and Russian. I believe there were more students taking German than there were taking the other four languages combined. (I took three years of German.) Had a Cherokee friend who took one year of German, IIRC, then dropped it on the grounds that he was already taking a foreign language: English. ---
**Author:** ![Mdcastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@Mdcastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdcastle)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/72 "2013-03-31T18:38:16Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > In Minneapolis in the early '70s, my school offered German, French, Spanish, and Swedish. I took all four (German the most) and then went to language camp in the summer to learn Russian. > > The last time I visited in the mid-'90s, they had dropped Swedish and added Russian and an Amerindian language (Ojibwa, I think). I went to a private school in Minneapolis in the 80s-90s and they offered German, French, and Spanish. the school was founded by a Swedish based church and with the culture of the region for many year, they offered Swedish for many years, but dropped it right before my time. Took 4 years of French, but I consider it a waste of my time because I never went to college and never got fluent in it, and if I want to go to France or Quebec they speak English there… ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/73 "2013-03-31T19:02:34Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Besides English - a mandatory requirement and the most important subject after math - my school also offered Literary Arabic. I took it for a few years, and was lousy at it. Since I went to _Alliance_, which was originally founded by French philanthropists, I was saddled with taking **two** foreign languages at the 5-point matriculation level (OK, I could have taken English at 4, but as an English-speaker that seemed kind of dumb ;)) – 5 points French was mandatory school policy. Arabic was offered as well for the truly masochistic… I didn’t list Hebrew because it wasn’t a **foreign** language! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/74 "2013-03-31T20:38:47Z")
The Big Four, plus Italian, NJ, Class of 1991. ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/75 "2013-03-31T21:12:35Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > Suburban Baltimore, late 60s/early 70s - French, Spanish, Russian, Latin. I took French and Spanish, and I wanted to take Russian, but my schedule was too crowded. I’ve always loved languages, but I ended up studying engineering - go figure… Suburban Baltimore, 20 years later, so late 80s/early 90s - Spanish, French, and German. I took Spanish, but never learned more than the stock “where is the library” type phrases until I started traveling in Latin America. Go engineering! ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/76 "2013-03-31T21:17:52Z")
And for fun, I just went to look at the website for my old high school. No more German, but they still have Spanish and French. They’ve added Chinese and ASL, which I think is cool! ---
**Author:** ![grama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@grama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grama)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/77 "2013-03-31T21:18:07Z")
English 1st to 12 grade. And french in 7th and 8th grade, that was the norm at the time (late 90’s) but french was taken out of the official curriculum. I must add that classes here aren’t “offered”, you just have the required classes by the government and school, anything else is usually offered as an optional extracurricular activity. The only exceptions are some schools that offer the choice between music and plastic arts, and sometimes in highschool you can take an elective class in either chemistry, physics or biology. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/78 "2013-03-31T21:50:08Z")
Typical public New England high school in the 60s/70s. French Spanish German Latin. That is listed in order of popularity. I took Spanish. I wonder how many public high schools teach Latin these days! ---
**Author:** ![vix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a88e4f/32.png) [@vix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vix)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/79 "2013-03-31T21:56:16Z")
Public high school in RI, in a town with a very high percentage of Italian immigrants: French, Spanish and Italian were offered. I would have taken Italian, but only French was offered at my junior high school. Since I’d already done two years of French, I continued in that language. Class of '91. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/80 "2013-03-31T22:06:21Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Early sixties, Cleveland Heights High School: > > English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. > > The smart kids took Russian, Latin and Greek. The smart Jewish kids took Hebrew. The dumb kids took Spanish. That made me laugh, and also made me think of my freshman roommate in College. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158.md?page=5)