# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/81 "2013-03-31T23:57:37Z")
France, 80s : English, Spanish, German, Italian , Russian, Hebrew, Latin, Greek (there were a couple others you could pick but you had to go to another nearby highschool for those lessons. Maybe people from other highschools were similarly coming to our for their Hebrew/Russian/whatever courses) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/82 "2013-04-01T00:09:10Z")
Looking, like a previous poster, the site of my former highschool, I see that now they only offer English, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin. You can also pick Hebrew, Russian or Chinese, but the courses are given in another high school. So, including all options, basically Italian and Portuguese dissapeared and Chinese was added. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/83 "2013-04-01T00:20:19Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > my school also offered Literary Arabic. I took it for a few years, and was lousy at it. Is Palestinian Arabic close to literary Arabic? If not, does the average Palestinian typically understand literary Arabic? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/84 "2013-04-01T01:54:43Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > As the first person on the poll to add Greek, I feel compelled to explain that it was Classical Greek offered by the Classics Department not modern Greek, not from the Modern Languages Department. I wouldn’t have included it except for the fact that the poll includes Latin- so, the OP is clearly allowing for Classics as well as Modern Languages. You had departments at your high school? I’ve always thought of that as a college thing. I’m not counting the basic subject divisions\* as departments, BTW. You had a separate Classics Department, and it wasn’t just all lumped into the English and/or History section? \*They don’t count as departments in my mind if there is no head. EDIT: I’m surprised so many of you guys had English as a foreign language class. It’s the next highest after Latin. ---
**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:** [April 1, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/85 "2013-04-01T03:12:44Z")
Pretty much every non-English speaking country is going to offer English as a foreign language in HS. No surprise about that. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/86 "2013-04-01T09:15:09Z")
None. Public high school in rural Alabama. Class of '86. ---
**Author:** ![DrumBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e79b87/32.png) [@DrumBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrumBum)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/87 "2013-04-01T13:03:08Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > 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. As long as we are picking at your “nits”, I will point out that: [ul] [li]you misspelled “Portuguese” [/li][li] “Afrikaner” is an ethic group that speak “Afrikaans”[/li][li] I would also suggest that Dutch be a separate entry in your poll since - according to my friends in SA - Afrikaans was the convergence of Dutch, German, and Flemish.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/88 "2013-04-01T14:47:25Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You had departments at your high school? I’ve always thought of that as a college thing. > > I’m not counting the basic subject divisions\* as departments, BTW. You had a separate Classics Department, and it wasn’t just all lumped into the English and/or History section? > > \*They don’t count as departments in my mind if there is no head. I don’t remember if there were department heads or not, though I think there were, but there were definitely administrative aspects to the different departments. The teachers would meet before the start of the school year according to the subjects they’d be teaching to set standards for the year, they’d meet during the year, they’d together prepare reports to the upper level administration. Latin and Greek were most definitely the Classics Department, not the Modern Languages Department and _definitely_ not the History Department or the English Department. There were some electives open to upperclassmen that were within a particular department without being so “on the nose” such as: an Archaeology Class offered by the Classics Department and a Biomedical Ethics Class offered by the Religion Department. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/89 "2013-04-01T14:55:02Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > And oh, you **had** to take two years of a foreign language to graduate. I did a poll on that and that’s pretty unusual, only about a quarter of other dopers also had to take a language to graduate high school. Some didn’t even in college! When I graduated high school that was the requirement as well: two years of the same language. The school I teach at now has it as a suggestion. Either language or fine arts gets the requirement out of the way, but they push college-bound students into the language courses. My major in college didn’t require any languages, so I skipped them. ---
**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:** [April 1, 2013, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/90 "2013-04-01T16:00:55Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > When I graduated high school that was the requirement as well: two years of the same language. The school I teach at now has it as a suggestion. Either language or fine arts gets the requirement out of the way, but they push college-bound students into the language courses. > > My major in college didn’t require any languages, so I skipped them. You know, I have absolutely no recollection as to whether or not we had a language requirement to graduate. Now I feel old. 🙂 But, it was “common knowledge” that you needed 2 years if you wanted to go to college, and most kids did exactly that-- 2 years and no more. I really liked foreign languages, so I took Spanish every year I was in HS, but most people just hated it. And most retained about ZERO ability to communicate in even the most marginal manner a year or two after finishing. For non-US posters here, are foreign language classes routinely hated in your country? I think this might be a peculiarly American thing. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158/91 "2013-04-01T16:15:29Z")
Googling and Wiki-ing trying to find a comprehensive list by State of U.S. public schools State requirements for foreign language study. I’m having trouble finding something comprehensive. Anyone with better Google-fu or Wiki-fu? I had hoped the page for [Language Education in the United States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_education_in_the_United_States) would either have a State by State detail, or would have a link to a State by State detail in the “See Also” section, but no luck. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-foreign-languages-did-your-high-school-offer-post-here/654158.md?page=4)