Why do children get taught to speak French/ German in school? Why not Spanish etc?

Question

Spain, Turkey etc are visited regularly by holiday makers from England. Rather than Germany/France, therefore why are children not taught a langauage that they can use and put into practice when leaving school?

Answer 1

At my daughters old secondary school, she learnt Spanish. I now work in a different secondary school, and they teach French and Spanish. I think it varies on the school and what languages they have been requested to teach.

Answer 2

At my High School you can learn French, Spanish, and Spanish for Spanish speakers, but my high school is located right across the street from a community college where you can take other languages over the summer or after school. They offer anything from Japanese to Sign Language.

I don't think they do it on purpose I just think that there might be less German and French speakers at your school therefore everyone will learn a new language and those who already speak Spanish won't just settle for taking a class they can easily pass.

Answer 3

France and Germany have, for the past 100 years, had plans to rule europe between them.
This is just one more step in that direction.
Brussels don't make up the rules, France and Germany do, they then tell Brussels..and Brussels then passes them on.
They use Brussels as the mouth piece so they don't get found out.
Thats why they want the children of Britain to learn French and German.

Answer 4

This is a historic problem. The UK has been teaching its children French and churning out French teachers for years. I guess, it goes back to French being the language of the court way back when.

Of course, legally school can teach any modern foreign language there is not legal reason not to teach Spanish and many schools do provide Spanish classes.

Answer 5

There are several reasons:

-tradition

-one problem with learning Spanish is that the Spanish they speak in Spain is very different to the Spanish spoken in Latin America

-most schools teach two languages. French/Spanish/Italian have several similarities which could be confusing when you are only going to learn the subject for a few years.

Answer 6

to assert that French is a Romance language is questionable. If we would decide to be thoroughly appropriate, the 1st language of the French grew to become into the Celtic as Celts populated maximum of what's France in recent times. Then France (Gaul at the instant) grew to become into occupied by technique of the Roman Empire who partly latinized the language of French Celts. The ensuing dialect in France grew to become right into a mix of Celt-Latin (Gallo-Roman) and not already a organic Latin language like in Italy. Then, to dilute much extra the Latin root of French, got here the Germanic invasions of France after the autumn of the Roman Empire. Germanic tribes conquered all of France (Franks in the North, Wisigoths on the South West, Burgunds in the East) and that they ignored their Germanic language with Celt-Latin French. it particularly is the reason French pronunciation has replaced lots from Latin and sounds so diverse from extra Romance languages like Italian and Spanish. In precis, French may be seen because of the fact the least Roman of Romance languages. Latin is significant in French vocabulary particularly yet numerous words have a Celtic or Germanic origins too. additionally very just about all of French verbs who've a Latin prefix have geen germanized with addition of suffix like -ir, -er. So French is relatively blend.

Answer 7

there are more frenchmen and germans than you think. spain and germany and france are also continental europe, and england is not. it might go back to old schooling traditions, from back to the old times when spain and england did not get along, and not learning each others languages was a form of protest.

Answer 8

Don't know about anywhere else, but the primary school I work in teaches spanish from Nursery (aged 3) to year 6 and they love it. It's part of a drive to teach modern foreign languages to primary aged children. (This happens in Liverpool)

Answer 9

Usually when a child is in elementry school, all they learn is french is because those are the languages that are more around them. Spanish and German ect. are more taught in highschool than in the younger aged schools.

Answer 10

Most schools teach french, german and spanish but you can only pick 2 to learn.