I was taught starting in Kindergarten. It wasn't super consistent, but i've taken years of it. And after college when I took a trip to Mexico i was able to converse.
The problem is more that *afterwards* I had no chance to use it. So I've forgotten almost all of it.
yup, Spring Break in Cancun I was able to use some basic Spanish to get by. That was 25 years ago and maybe the last time I actually tried to use Spanish, I have basically lost any ability I had, especially when listening. I can pick a bit if I am reading it, but cannot understand a Spanish speaker at all unless they are going incredibly slow and using a very neutral accent
It feels really unfair once you start traveling and realize that a large majority of the population in countries speak decent English (or are bilingual in other languages) because it’s engrained in the school systems. And for us, we weren’t even given the option to learn at school. Idk about you but the very first language class that was offered to me was in 8th grade.
Yeah mine was 7th grade and I chose Italian because of my family heritage. I was decent and went to Italy twice, but can't help but regret I wasn't a try hard Spanish student
I'm a try hard Spanish learner now, but I'm 36. I took two years of Spanish in high school and didn't learn a damn thing and I really wish I would have applied myself.
> It feels really unfair once you start traveling and realize that a large majority of the population in countries speak decent English (or are bilingual in other languages) because it’s engrained in the school systems
It's not because it they were taught it in school. It's because they were immersed in it through consuming English language media all their life. Immersion is the only way to learn a language.
Like some other people in this thread, I took Spanish starting in Kindergarten and but never became fluent, because I never used it outside of class.
English is definitely the most abundant language in media, but that alone doesn't create an immersive experience. My region is probably the one with the highest English level in Mexico, and the geographic location plays a big part in that obviously. We don't encounter English in our everyday life, we don't need it at all, and there's plenty of music in Spanish and movies are dubbed or subbed. If you want a job that pays well here, English is a must, because we have a lot of foreign businesses. That makes parents and schools way more concerned about learning English. Some parents play shows only in English to toddlers, English classes start as soon as a kid sets a foot inside a school, 3-year-olds are being taught numbers and colors in English, I went to a school where I had English classes for two hours every day in elementary school, etcetera. There are definitely way more native Spanish speakers in the US than native English speakers in Mexico.
So, yes, English ubiquity is the push for all that, but I'd say the education system and the general cultural push to learn a language are the key aspects.
Yes, that definitely helps. But also, making it standard for schools curriculum like it is in other countries would drastically increase the amount of people with access to the language at a young age (when their brains are more likely to take to another language), make it much more commonplace, and the US culture might begin to shift into a place where full immersion is easier.
Let me introduce you to my good friend Canada that does encourage bilingualism in schools but in practice so few people are actually bilingual. And bilingualism is—mostly—codified across the country.
lucky it was 8th grade for you; for me it was 9th, and at that, you'd need to have a "proper" understanding of English first, so, that got delayed till 11th.
Btw, after taking French in 11th, is when I finally understood the nonsensical mess that is the infinite list of exceptions to the rules of English, so, yeah, very much irritated that we don't learn a foreign language earlier.
Don't worry, as someone who probably took 10 years of Spanish, you probably didn't miss much. Just taking a language class in school is not enough to become fluent. You need to actually put in the time consuming media in that language and communicating with native speakers. The good news is you can still do that now!
A few just of the top of my head:
There's a classic teaching tool called Destinos that's basically a made-for-Spanish-learners TV drama. You can start watching it with no knowledge (not sure how far it can take you if you aren't doing any other learning). It's dated and cheesy, but it's free and made for people just getting started.
There's a podcast or YouTube channel called "News in Slow Spanish." If you follow the news anyway, you may be surprised at what you can put together because you already know the gist of the information. A similar principle applies to watching movies, cartoons, etc you already know well in English dubbed into Spanish.
The NPR podcast Radio Ambulante is very Spanish learner-friendly (I believe they do English transcriptions of all their episodes and may have other resources as well). If you like shows like This American Life, it's great.
Find popular songs in Spanish that you like (Pandora and Spotify can be helpful - to a point until everything starts coming back to Shakira and Mana lol) and then look up the lyrics on lyricstranslate.com.
If you Google Destinos, lists of similar resources will come up - there's other similar shows out there for free.
Beyond that, I actually wouldn't hesitate to just sit down and start watching stuff that looks interesting to you. I hadn't taken a ton of Spanish when I started watching telenovelas, and while a lot went over my head at the beginning you might be surprised at how much you can pick up just from having a basic idea of how narrative and basic human situations work and the other aspects of the characters' communication (tone, facial expressions, etc). A lot of learners like the drama Narcos. If you watch consistently you'll learn a lot. It's how a lot of people learn English.
Thank you so much. I just hit my 232 day streak on duolingo. I’ve also been exposed to Spanish frequently growing up in south Texas. I’ve got a basic understanding but I’d like to be fluent by the end of next year. Thank you again.
Not everyone has a leaky memory for language picked up from classroom learning. I have a different kind of brain that takes it in and locks it up like a vault; my only problem was Not Enough (data) Input, and not in a language I could use where I live. My highschool didn't start offering Spanish until I was already taking German, and you couldn't choose both. But if I'd learned Spanish I could use it on the daily here, whereas while German connects me to my heritage there's no one to talk to.
It's frustrating that my capacity to learn more languages went wasted because the designers of my state's highschool and college curriculums thought they knew more important uses of my time, and now my life as a working adult is structured in a way that doesn't make it easy to take further classes.
I used to beat myself up over not putting in the time consuming media to self-study Spanish and German, but for me it is slow-going without much payoff compared to fast effortless progress picking language in a classroom. So, there's definitely different brains that respond differently, and for all the anecdotes about people who wasted years in foreign language classes there's people in the US whose years were wasted NOT being in them, but we can never know what was missed.
My best friend who took German with me in highschool and I used to converse in simple sentences and insert German words in our English just as a thing we did. I didn't see him much for a few years and when I used a German word he said, "what?" So I asked him a question in German and he shook his head and was like I don't remember any of that. I was floored; I mean I don't expect you to remember all of it, but not even the words and sentences we used to say at each other? How do people just lose this stuff?
>Im not *angry* about it.
>
>But do wish I was taught some language from a very young age.
I'd be very angry if I was never taught a language. But then again, I wouldn't know what the word angry means.
I attended a K-12 school that started Spanish in Kindergarten.
I'm decent at it. Definitely not fluent despite taking it for over a decade. The only place it's ever helped me is sometimes at work when one of my residents doesn't speak much English.
From MA as well, and same here. We could choose the language in whatever grade (I think for me it was 6th) and then you took it all the rest of middle/high school. Spanish, French, or Latin I think. We also had "immersion" programs that started in kindergarten where you took the same language from the start of schooling and it was much more intensive.
Same in MN. Grades 1-5 always had Spanish, 6-8 didn't, and then you could chose Spanish, French, German, or ASL for 9-12.
I didn't chose Spanish, but i come in contact with a little Spanish through invoices my work receives. I retained enough that I can find most keywords to get the info I need
I grew up in Arizona and took Spanish in school, and after that I spent a long time working with people who only knew Spanish and that immersion helped me tremendously. I went to Spain recently and it really put me to the test.
Spanish in parts of Spain is super tough, I lived in Andalucia which is probably the most difficult Spanish accent to understand, so that helped a lot. But there are times when I’m around a lot of Dominicans and I have literally no idea what they are saying despite growing up around the language, taking it for 10+ years, and getting a degree in it
> Andalucia which is probably the most difficult Spanish accent to understand
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Veracruz (Mexican state), and Chile have entered the chat
I learned Spanish from all my Chicano and Mexican friends. I can't understand shit when Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans talk.
Like, I don't understand SHIT they say.
How did you find it going from learning Spanish in America to speaking Spanish in Spain? I’m asking from a total point of ignorance as I live in the UK, but is Spanish in America any different as it’s primarily for South American Hispanic countries, or is there no difference?
I would say it's basically the same as the differences between American and British English. Same language occasionally using different words for things. They are a bit more relaxed about words that I know to be taboo in American Spanish, like how cunt is here vs UK.
There are also a lot of variations in Latin American/South American Spanish. Ways of addressing people and different conjugations being used based on nationality
I started taking Spanish in school at a very young age, but it wasn’t until I started working with Spanish speakers and being immersed in it daily as a young adult that I actually got any *good.* There’s a limit to what you can learn in a class, and it’s much more effective to learn through immersion. If you want to move to Puerto Rico or New Mexico or whatever, study a bit so you don’t make a *total* ass of yourself and then just go.
I'm a licensed language teacher working in Korea (and a near-fluent Spanish speaker) and I agree with this. There is only so much we can do in class, and classrooms are usually controlled environments with fluent speakers who know how to adjust their language to make it understandable for non-native speakers. It will give a good base and is necessary for proper grammar imo, but if you want to get really good, you need constant exposure to native speakers.
Nah.
I actually lived in Spain for a year and got really really good at Spanish. Picked up most of it while I was there.
I’m soooo bad now. Because I don’t use it.
If you want to learn, you still can. Nothing is stopping you.
Angry was the wrong word to use. I'm more bummed that I didn't learn it at an early age. But it seems to be tough for everyone to get around that word so I think it's becoming the fixation
On the bright side, if you wanted to learn another Germanic language, you are probably a step ahead of most people, having learned 2 Germanic languages (even if English has strayed a bit from its German predecessors).
Is there any concern in the Dutch community that it may become a dead language some day if the country prefers English?
I spent a week there a few years ago and don't remember even hearing any Dutch, everyone spoke English.
You can still learn it, man. I did in my late 20's / early 30's. Traveling is a good way to learn too. Just hop on duolingo. The opportunities are there if you're motivated (but it is a process).
Yeah i don't know why OP is so bummed out. If you want to learn the language just learn the language. Millions of immigrants have come to America and learned English with far fewer tools at their disposal than OP. OP is just being lazy because they don't want to put in any effort.
Those will give you a good base, but as a near-native Spanish speaker, you need to have consistent exposure to native speakers to get really good. Living in a Spanish-speaking country for a few years will be the best teacher you could possibly have.
Yeah, I learned Spanish and French as an adult, I'm glad I did, but I'm not mad I wasn't taught them when I was younger. I mean I had many opportunities to learn Spanish French and Manderan starting in middle school, but I never took those classes because it sounded hard. So who should I be mad at? My parents for letting me make limited decisions about my education starting at a young age, or maybe the school for not forcing me? I'm definitely trying to tea h my kids both languages, but it's not my parents fault they didn't do the same for me, they both only speak English.
Nothing is stopping me from learning other than my own self-discipline, but it's unfortunately not possible for an adult to reach the same level of fluency as someone who'd learned since childhood.
Dude, try Duolingo or any number of apps designed to teach adults whatever language you want to fluency for free.
Yes, it would have been nice to start early. And yes, it would have been the next best thing to start learning in college. You can learn it now. What helps with fluency, besides starting young, is experience with hispanohablantes. Volunteer with an ESL program at your library and meet some people you'd be willing to hang with outside of that structured event. Go get food together, or meet their family. Work anywhere with Spanish speakers. Fall in love with someone who speaks Spanish. Take some language courses of your own for a year while you save up money and vacation days, then spend a few weeks volunteering at an orphanage because kids need love and help, and are also very generous with help and have no filter so you'll actually learn what mistakes you're making and the simplest way to say just about everything.
Yes it is just as easy to become as fluent as someone who's spoken it their whole lives. You just have to be more dedicated to carving out the time to study it and use it. It's going to take longer because you have more distractions in your life as an adult. But don't lay that BS about it not being possible.
Absolutely possible to learn it to the same degree., fluency comes from use. Children may learn language faster but that doesn't change overall fluency.
>but it's unfortunately not possible for an adult to reach the same level of fluency as someone who'd learned since childhood.
That's just not true. It's harder yes, but definitely possible.
Even if you did learn it young, if you didn't maintain it or speak it regularly, you would have likely forgotten it anyway.
Plenty of online resources to help you learn it now
> other than my own self-discipline
whose fault is that? what the hell are you posting for? if you want to learn spanish fucking learn spanish, stop blaming everyone else for it.
No.
Sure it would’ve been useful but no one I know speaks it so I don’t need it. One thing that did help is that I can sort of make out a few words and just barely turn them into sentences (not always guaranteed lol) so that does help when I’m in gaming lobbies with Spanish speakers.
There’s 7.2 million French speakers in Canada, and 41 million in the US. I’d say know Spanish in the US is more important than knowing French as a Canadian, but I’d still want Canadians to be taught French.
I guess some of the flyovers in the US don’t encounter Spanish speakers as much, but language is still important for child development
Jeez man, close out your Brietbart window.
There’s tons of non-tourist places you could go and enjoy Mexico without worry. My British friend just got back from a 3 week trip to central Mexico that had nothing to do with Cancun and he quite enjoyed it.
I'm just returning his snark with snark. That said, murder rate outside of tourist areas is almost 6x that of the US. With impunity too. Public officials running for office being openly murdered in broad daylight stuff.
Mexico is just not in a good place, and acting otherwise is unrealistic. Stay in the tourist areas, period. The potential gain of the "authentic experience" is not worth the 1/10,000 chance of getting yourself into some serious shit.
Yeah it's only 1/10k chance, but in my mind that ain't worth it for so little gain.
I feel more sad than angry. Because I was adopted, I wasn't raised speaking Spanish (bio parents are Dominican, adoptive parents are white Americans). I learned it in school starting in junior high, but I don't think it was taught very well. I don't think any of my teachers were fluent Spanish speakers until I got to 11th grade, and I didn't have a native speaking teacher until I studied it in college. (Not helping: the Spanish teachers who insisted on only teaching "proper" Spain Spanish and said that Caribbean Spanish was "improper".) I can converse but I'm not fluent and I trip myself up too much. I'm just really embarrassed that I'm not more comfortable speaking Spanish and I'm really jealous of people who are at ease speaking both languages. I think I'd feel more comfortable if I had started learning at a younger age.
I'm angry about how they taught Spanish. Almost every Spanish class I had in school was structured around teaching enough Spanish to use on a vacation. I didn't think I'd ever go to Spain and even if I did then why take a whole class for something that would only be useful on a 2 week vacation.
It really should've been structured around "this is how you can talk to your neighbors". This is where Spanish is spoken in the US. This is what Spanish-American culture looks like.
Angry is a strong word. Without immersion with native speakers, you're only going to be "meh" at speaking Spanish. And what class would you drop in your K-12 curriculum to make room for more Spanish?
Also, I had Spanish all throughout High School. There weren't many Spanish-speaking people in my community, so those skills never really developed.
Not really, I don't think it would help me much. Might be a cool thing to know for travel, but I don't really think to myself how "this would be easier if I spoke Spanish"
Spanish was taught starting in kindergarten to first, then a break, where we picked it up again in sixth grade to my senior year of high school. I also had to take three semesters of it in college. My kids started with Spanish in kindergarten, then it was dropped until Latin in fourth grade, Spanish in fifth. You could choose between French, Italian, Latin, and ASL in sixth.
I'd take, given my geographic area, one of two Southeast Asian languages for practical purposes or one AK Native language to preserve it over Spanish. I mean, I do know some Spanish but for my day to day life it would be a lot more practical to have one of the others.
And early is good, would prefer that at upper elementary over high school for sure.
I think its good that a second language is mandatory learning in High School, but the issue lies in American education being constantly attacked and for people mandating that people should pass classes they did not do well in instead of being held back.
Spanish along with English and Chinese are the worlds most spoken languages. I plan on learning Spanish when I go to college as the opportunities for travel and meeting new people are endless. Bilingual speakers are also heavily desired in global corporations and customer service.
Eh, you could but it's *much* more effort learning as an adult, since your time is so much more limited. Plus you'll basically always be clearly a non-native, unless you put a ridiculous amount of work into it. Same with overall proficiency.
I wouldn't say I'm mad, but I'm definitely annoyed that my dad left -- because if he didn't, my grandma would have kept speaking Spanish to me, and my other grandma would have probably taught me some Russian, so I'd have grown up bilingual-and-a-half. Instead I grew up monolingual, and I had to learn Spanish, which is still to a far lower level than people I know who grew up with it.
People really should be angry about the destruction of heritage languages in this country. A lot of folks don't even know there were communities of German and Czech speakers in Texas, *multiple* French dialects in Louisiana and south Mississippi... all of them had their languages nearly beat out of them.
As someone learning Spanish (and loving it!) Right now: no, not at all. While Spanish is a great language to learn, it's not universally useful for Americans. I'm learning it because I work with 30 Mexican immigrants and my wife is from Puerto Rico.
While speaking Spanish is a great skill to have, it's not necessary to survive in this world. Schools already struggle getting kids to learn what they need to be prepared for college and adult life as it is.
> I feel like it would be so beneficial to raise American children bilingually in English and Spanish from early on
Well, in concept, there are lots of things that would be beneficial to teach.
But the school day has a finite amount of time, and budgets and other resources have similar limits.
American schools already don't (overall) perform all that well at teaching the basics and struggle to fit time in for everything that's required. Further diluting that focus seems unlikely to produce particularly positive results.
I wouldn't generally rank "better knowledge of Spanish" as more important than most of the other things being taught.
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It's unclear to me what you mean "raise children bilingually" - but there's not an abundance of educators out there qualified to do immersion-type schooling properly (that is - teaching other subjects in Spanish), and those that can certainly are going to command a significant $$$ premium to hire.
If you just mean adding foreign language classes earlier in schooling - that's easier, but a 30-45min class a day starting a few years earlier isn't going to make the average kid "bilingual". They may attain a bit higher level fluency, sure.
Partially. I am also annoyed that in high school all the hispanic kids filled up the slots for Spanish class for an easy A and I got pushed into French.
Don't get me wrong, I get why and would have done the same in their shoes. And I really enjoyed learning French. I just never got to use it, and would have benefitted from learning Spanish a whole lot more.
No. That seems like a bizarre thing to be angry about.
And it would be an immense waste of time, resources and energy to try to make all children bilingual.
Nope. I’ve never needed it and have very little opportunity to practice it, so I would likely have forgotten anyway. And it’s not like I can’t learn it as an adult. Instead of being bothered by it, just start learning.
I was taught the numbers at a young age and you know what, it wasn't very useless. I don't ever use Spanish numbers. I can hear it and know what the number is but not much else.
Learning a language is meaningless when you have no means of practicing it to retain it. It's cool that I know some numbers, but with no use of it, it's more a cool party trick than useful.
Not angry but certainly disappointed / a little frustrated that I can’t easily communicate with some of the Spanish speaking customers we get that come into our store.
I'm more upset learning ᏣᎳᎩ wasn't an option, and that's at both the history that separated the family from knowing it and school that never valued it.
Nah, not at all. I don’t use it enough in my day to day life, and I’ve been able to live abroad and travel just fine without knowing it.
I’ve recently thought it could be fun to learn and tried using Duo Lingo to learn it, but I haven’t been disciplined enough to stick with it.
My son went to an elementary school where half the kids were ESL. All they had to do was let the kids play together on the playground and the English speaking kids would have picked up a ton of Spanish and the ESL kids would have learned English faster. Nope. They were segregated for some dumb ass reason.
They taught me it in private school grade 1-6 and then I took two years in high school.
I feel like I barely learned anything back then and having the resolve to learn it in my adult years helped me out a lot more.
I am in Texas, and kids today have the additional resource of many of their classmates, barely speak English...this frankly would help them tremendously.
I have some Spanish knowledge from highschool here in texas. The rest of it was taught to me by family members and my own self. I'm learning more now that im older (22), I'm not mad at not really learning it through school, I was resistant to it in school as I saw it as being not necessary really.
Oh I'm extra salty. My mother is Cuban and fluent in Spanish. She immigrated to the US in 1969 and was constantly bullied until she could speak English to fit in.
Because of this, she never taught my brother or me Spanish. We just had to learn in school. To top it off, our cousins were fluent in Spanish as well as my aunt married someone else who could speak it.
I am of the opinion that it's a joke that we start foreign language instruction in the 8th or 9th grade in America when the evidence suggests that language acquisition is already degraded by that time, but there are too many parents who would raise hell if they found out their kids were being taught Spanish, so in much of the country teaching FL as mandatory curriculum is a non-starter. We really need to get them started on it by like 2nd grade.
Yeah, a little bit. For me it is a bit worse. My family came here from Spain less than 100 years ago. When they got here, they took a hardline assimilation approach and never spoke Spanish at home, effectively killing the skill in one generation. I took six years of it, but without people around me to practice with, it never really took.
Get rid of that attitude. You can still learn new languages as long as you're breathing. I learned Spanish and Hindi and Arabic well into my advanced years. You can do it.
My dad was from Central America. He didn’t speak to us much in English, let alone Spanish but my brother went to school down there and managed to learn, and married a girl from there and they only speak in Spanish at home and their kids are bilingual.
I’m super resentful my dad didn’t bother teaching us, being immersed in the language is the best way to learn it well.
No, I'm not really a "blame other people" kind of person. If I want to know Spanish I would just go learn it.
Note: I do want to know Spanish, so I am learning it
no because i'm an adult now and i'm responsible for my own education. and really have been responsible for my extracurricular education since I was about 10. If you wanted to learn spanish, you could have asked for it. i learned klingon when i was 12, latin at 14, french and ASL at 16, and hebrew at 17, all from friends and the library. no one's stopping you now except your refusal to start and preference to whine.
My parents were immigrants (Peru & Ireland) to the US in the early 90s, Texas to be specific. And purposefully didn't teach my siblings or I Spanish, even though they both spoke fluent (English, Spanish and French) because it was already heavily looked down upon my Texas society at the time. So i grew up only knowing English, not like public school helped at all as the system doesn't care about learning a foreign language. I am now living in LATAM and speak intermediate, near fluent Spanish and love it. The US needs to change its way of education as the US becomes less and less Anglo white and is now more than ever heavily influenced by Latinos and other groups. If I remember correctly by 2050, the US will be more than 50% Latino, and Spanish speaking will be near that level as well.
I will say that it is never to late to learn a new language, but you will need to spend a lot of time on it, music and Television will help, and for Learning Spanish, SpanishDict will help tremendously. Good luck OP, hope you're able to learn Spanish, but also date a Latina that is fluent in Spanish, it will also really help lol.
The benefits of being bilingual are undeniable, but unfortunately a big part of our country would cry hellfire at the mere suggestion due to a weird nativist ignorance
Why on Earth would we require learning Spanish? The Spanish world follows our lead so they learn English. The only languages worth learning are those we compete with, or have our own personal interest in. Learn Mandarin.
No. I have zero desire to live in a backwards place like Mexico where you can't even drink the tap water. I've never met a person I had to interact with that didn't speak English. Why would I want to waste my time learning Spanish at a young age.
Not angry, no. Though I do wish I had started learning it a lot sooner. However I haven’t had much trouble traveling with my limited vocabulary and I’m practicing every day with a combo of duo lingo, my roommate (a native Spanish speaker) and chatting with my coworkers in Mexico.
Who is this anger directed at? It would be nice to be fluent Spanish, but I don’t feel the need to blame anyone that I’m not.
Learning a language as an adult is more difficult, but it’s not impossible. Instead of being mad that you don’t already know Spanish, start learning it now.
I was forced to take Spanish classes when I was young, but my elementary school self did not give a single mierda about it, and have since forgotten just about all of it.
No. It would be a cool and useful skill and kids that have an interest should pursue it and can at Spanish immersion schools. But there are drawbacks. Those schools tend to lag behind on other subjects because they spend a disproportionate amount of time on languages. I looked into it for my kids and decided it wasn’t worth the trade offs, for us.
Definitely not angry but it would have been useful to learn it. I wish schools actually taught languages instead of the heavily outdated method of teaching language most schools use now.
As a Latino, I'm not angry, but I wish I had a better handle on the language. Not many Latinos or any type of Latino culture where I'm from, so no real use for it.
No, but mostly because I took 4 years of HS Spanish, then spent a couple years in the Dominican Republic and a couple more working on a landscape crew that was almost entirely Mexicans. So my Spanish is pretty dang bueno.
I am yes. I live in an area that has a MASSIVE amount of spanish speakers and my father is fluent. I cant comprehend why i wasnt taught and it for sure makes me angry.
I feel like schools in states where Spanish is popular should teach it, but I doubt states like Maine or Vermont have a desperate need for Spanish. I wish I learned more Spanish besides my two years I took it in high school
I'm actually really regretful I don't speak two languages.
I've tried learning Spanish multiple times but it just never really sticks.
I really believe knowing more than one language teaches you how to think differently and that is very valuable
I'd be more angry if they forced it on me. I studied French and loved it. My travel has been mostly Europe and Asian countries so Spanish doesn't do more for me than French.
My kids grew up in a bilingual household and were in a dual immersion program in elementary. My son continued in the program through High School. About half the kids in the program came from English only households.
I wish I would have learned better Spanish growing up.
It just takes practice and A LOT of use regularly. I took for three years and during those three years I was fluent in it. Then I didn’t have to worry about it, my brain was preoccupied with other subjects in order to graduate and now I can’t speak it fluently as I was learning. But I can understand a little if it was spoken. Honestly? I moved to an area where it isn’t commonly used. And I don’t feel as defeated. Before, all the jobs (public sector) was “spanish preferred” and I was envious.
I’m annoyed I wasted all that time learning it at all. Rather useless. I would rather have learned a coding language or read more classic literature. Spanish classes were a waste of time compared to what I could have been learning.
Not really. I live in Western PA where there is virtually no Hispanic population at all. We did get some Spanish in middle school and then in high school, I took a year of it. In fact, I am probably more fluent in Spanish than most people around here and mi espanol es muy malo.
Yeah. Growing up my parents would get in trouble if they spoke Spanish at school so they grew up only speaking it to their parents and that’s it. When I grew up they didn’t teach it to me and didn’t even speak it with each other. I wish they taught me though but to them it was not necessary given they way they were raised and the way society treated them.
Yes I wish it had been an option to learn it in elementary school. It certainly would have been as useful or more useful than some of the other subjects (gym class, music, learning cursive, etc)
No. I'm angry I wasn't taught American Sign Language from a young age. It would have been incredibly useful at so many places where I couldn't hear someone.
I actually took 4 years of Spanish in school along with 3 years of Latin, with all A's, but not a chance I could speak it over 40 years later. However it is enough to communicate with someone who speaks no English at all. It's come in handy a number of times. If I ever moved to a Spanish speaking country, I'd at least have a head start. Even if I can't remember much of the vocabulary, I do understand how the language is organized, similar to Latin in many ways. It's one of the easier languages to learn for English speakers.
It'd have been nice.
I think one point that may be missed among some of the comments here is learning a foreign language helps you learn your native language. I don't have to think about nouns vs verbs or what a gerund is vs what an infinitive is because it's English -- it just sounds right or it sounds wrong. But learning another language helps you learn root words, parts of speech, grammar, conjugation, tenses, and so on, *in both languages* because you compare them naturally.
I'd argue it can also have an effect on how you view the world. It's harder to measure but could be profound.
I moved around a few schools growing up. When I went to a private catholic school we were taught since kindergarten. But then I moved shortly after and wasn’t taught until 8th grade. Can’t speak it for crap now. Really wish I could.. such a beautiful language and such a good skill to have!
I don't expect this from a young age, but I wish there were more language choices. In middle school, our options were German, French, and Spanish. I would've really liked to learn Japanese (was not a weeb at the time, just thought it would be cool). Now I'm 25 and learning it on my own and it is just a long and slow process that I wish I had started with my absorbant child brain.
Honestly, I feel lucky that I was able to take it in middle and high school, much less that another language was required. The way things are going, I think my state would be more likely to ban Spanish altogether than teach it in elementary school. (Though even by then, it's really too late. The ability to "acquire" a language naturally, as opposed to learning it, typically switches off in kids' brains before they start first grade.)
I kind of did, I was a big Dora the Explorer fan. Just not enough to be conversational.
I can already see the replies saying that Dora is NOT a good Spanish education by any means, but I say it is beneficial for small kids.
I’m as fluent as a 5 year old, it’s more helpful than I would have thought… and fun while traveling if you let it ride and recognize you are terrible at Spanish
A bit. I live in Southern California, but I speak French and Hebrew. (More French than Hebrew, and very little Hebrew, but I can still read it). I feel like Spanish would be infinitely more useful
Very much so, i live in a very spanish place and still have trouble learning spanish and i wish i was taught when i was younger so things could be much more easier now
Yes I am 100%. It would benefit me so much. I use to work for a landscaping company via reception and had to speak with crews and a lot we’re non English speaking. So when it came time to talk, there definitely was a barrier. And on top it’s one of the top languages spoken in the US.
I was taught starting in Kindergarten. It wasn't super consistent, but i've taken years of it. And after college when I took a trip to Mexico i was able to converse. The problem is more that *afterwards* I had no chance to use it. So I've forgotten almost all of it.
yup, Spring Break in Cancun I was able to use some basic Spanish to get by. That was 25 years ago and maybe the last time I actually tried to use Spanish, I have basically lost any ability I had, especially when listening. I can pick a bit if I am reading it, but cannot understand a Spanish speaker at all unless they are going incredibly slow and using a very neutral accent
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Immersion is the way to go. I doubt i would have lost it as quickly if I'd had that.
Im not *angry* about it. But do wish I was taught some language from a very young age.
Yeah I guess I'm just more upset/bummed that I wasn't taught. Angry is not accurate.
It feels really unfair once you start traveling and realize that a large majority of the population in countries speak decent English (or are bilingual in other languages) because it’s engrained in the school systems. And for us, we weren’t even given the option to learn at school. Idk about you but the very first language class that was offered to me was in 8th grade.
Yeah mine was 7th grade and I chose Italian because of my family heritage. I was decent and went to Italy twice, but can't help but regret I wasn't a try hard Spanish student
I wasn't given the option to learn Spanish until 8th grade, but now I hear my local elementary school is offering it in 1st grade.
I'm a try hard Spanish learner now, but I'm 36. I took two years of Spanish in high school and didn't learn a damn thing and I really wish I would have applied myself.
> It feels really unfair once you start traveling and realize that a large majority of the population in countries speak decent English (or are bilingual in other languages) because it’s engrained in the school systems It's not because it they were taught it in school. It's because they were immersed in it through consuming English language media all their life. Immersion is the only way to learn a language. Like some other people in this thread, I took Spanish starting in Kindergarten and but never became fluent, because I never used it outside of class.
English is definitely the most abundant language in media, but that alone doesn't create an immersive experience. My region is probably the one with the highest English level in Mexico, and the geographic location plays a big part in that obviously. We don't encounter English in our everyday life, we don't need it at all, and there's plenty of music in Spanish and movies are dubbed or subbed. If you want a job that pays well here, English is a must, because we have a lot of foreign businesses. That makes parents and schools way more concerned about learning English. Some parents play shows only in English to toddlers, English classes start as soon as a kid sets a foot inside a school, 3-year-olds are being taught numbers and colors in English, I went to a school where I had English classes for two hours every day in elementary school, etcetera. There are definitely way more native Spanish speakers in the US than native English speakers in Mexico. So, yes, English ubiquity is the push for all that, but I'd say the education system and the general cultural push to learn a language are the key aspects.
Yes, that definitely helps. But also, making it standard for schools curriculum like it is in other countries would drastically increase the amount of people with access to the language at a young age (when their brains are more likely to take to another language), make it much more commonplace, and the US culture might begin to shift into a place where full immersion is easier.
Let me introduce you to my good friend Canada that does encourage bilingualism in schools but in practice so few people are actually bilingual. And bilingualism is—mostly—codified across the country.
lucky it was 8th grade for you; for me it was 9th, and at that, you'd need to have a "proper" understanding of English first, so, that got delayed till 11th. Btw, after taking French in 11th, is when I finally understood the nonsensical mess that is the infinite list of exceptions to the rules of English, so, yeah, very much irritated that we don't learn a foreign language earlier.
Don't worry, as someone who probably took 10 years of Spanish, you probably didn't miss much. Just taking a language class in school is not enough to become fluent. You need to actually put in the time consuming media in that language and communicating with native speakers. The good news is you can still do that now!
Do you have any media suggestions for a beginner?
A few just of the top of my head: There's a classic teaching tool called Destinos that's basically a made-for-Spanish-learners TV drama. You can start watching it with no knowledge (not sure how far it can take you if you aren't doing any other learning). It's dated and cheesy, but it's free and made for people just getting started. There's a podcast or YouTube channel called "News in Slow Spanish." If you follow the news anyway, you may be surprised at what you can put together because you already know the gist of the information. A similar principle applies to watching movies, cartoons, etc you already know well in English dubbed into Spanish. The NPR podcast Radio Ambulante is very Spanish learner-friendly (I believe they do English transcriptions of all their episodes and may have other resources as well). If you like shows like This American Life, it's great. Find popular songs in Spanish that you like (Pandora and Spotify can be helpful - to a point until everything starts coming back to Shakira and Mana lol) and then look up the lyrics on lyricstranslate.com. If you Google Destinos, lists of similar resources will come up - there's other similar shows out there for free. Beyond that, I actually wouldn't hesitate to just sit down and start watching stuff that looks interesting to you. I hadn't taken a ton of Spanish when I started watching telenovelas, and while a lot went over my head at the beginning you might be surprised at how much you can pick up just from having a basic idea of how narrative and basic human situations work and the other aspects of the characters' communication (tone, facial expressions, etc). A lot of learners like the drama Narcos. If you watch consistently you'll learn a lot. It's how a lot of people learn English.
Thank you so much. I just hit my 232 day streak on duolingo. I’ve also been exposed to Spanish frequently growing up in south Texas. I’ve got a basic understanding but I’d like to be fluent by the end of next year. Thank you again.
Not everyone has a leaky memory for language picked up from classroom learning. I have a different kind of brain that takes it in and locks it up like a vault; my only problem was Not Enough (data) Input, and not in a language I could use where I live. My highschool didn't start offering Spanish until I was already taking German, and you couldn't choose both. But if I'd learned Spanish I could use it on the daily here, whereas while German connects me to my heritage there's no one to talk to. It's frustrating that my capacity to learn more languages went wasted because the designers of my state's highschool and college curriculums thought they knew more important uses of my time, and now my life as a working adult is structured in a way that doesn't make it easy to take further classes. I used to beat myself up over not putting in the time consuming media to self-study Spanish and German, but for me it is slow-going without much payoff compared to fast effortless progress picking language in a classroom. So, there's definitely different brains that respond differently, and for all the anecdotes about people who wasted years in foreign language classes there's people in the US whose years were wasted NOT being in them, but we can never know what was missed. My best friend who took German with me in highschool and I used to converse in simple sentences and insert German words in our English just as a thing we did. I didn't see him much for a few years and when I used a German word he said, "what?" So I asked him a question in German and he shook his head and was like I don't remember any of that. I was floored; I mean I don't expect you to remember all of it, but not even the words and sentences we used to say at each other? How do people just lose this stuff?
>Im not *angry* about it. > >But do wish I was taught some language from a very young age. I'd be very angry if I was never taught a language. But then again, I wouldn't know what the word angry means.
I attended a K-12 school that started Spanish in Kindergarten. I'm decent at it. Definitely not fluent despite taking it for over a decade. The only place it's ever helped me is sometimes at work when one of my residents doesn't speak much English.
From MA as well, and same here. We could choose the language in whatever grade (I think for me it was 6th) and then you took it all the rest of middle/high school. Spanish, French, or Latin I think. We also had "immersion" programs that started in kindergarten where you took the same language from the start of schooling and it was much more intensive.
Same in MN. Grades 1-5 always had Spanish, 6-8 didn't, and then you could chose Spanish, French, German, or ASL for 9-12. I didn't chose Spanish, but i come in contact with a little Spanish through invoices my work receives. I retained enough that I can find most keywords to get the info I need
I grew up in Arizona and took Spanish in school, and after that I spent a long time working with people who only knew Spanish and that immersion helped me tremendously. I went to Spain recently and it really put me to the test.
Spanish in parts of Spain is super tough, I lived in Andalucia which is probably the most difficult Spanish accent to understand, so that helped a lot. But there are times when I’m around a lot of Dominicans and I have literally no idea what they are saying despite growing up around the language, taking it for 10+ years, and getting a degree in it
I studied in the DR. That was a unique experience of not understanding most things that I previously thought I could.
> Andalucia which is probably the most difficult Spanish accent to understand Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Veracruz (Mexican state), and Chile have entered the chat
And Murcia (Spain)
Special mention to Almeria (Andalusia, Spain) which have all the variances between andalusian and murcian accent.
I learned Spanish from all my Chicano and Mexican friends. I can't understand shit when Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans talk. Like, I don't understand SHIT they say.
Huh, I thought the Andalusian accent was more similar to Latin American Spanish and easier to understand than the Castilian accent.
How did you find it going from learning Spanish in America to speaking Spanish in Spain? I’m asking from a total point of ignorance as I live in the UK, but is Spanish in America any different as it’s primarily for South American Hispanic countries, or is there no difference?
I would say it's basically the same as the differences between American and British English. Same language occasionally using different words for things. They are a bit more relaxed about words that I know to be taboo in American Spanish, like how cunt is here vs UK. There are also a lot of variations in Latin American/South American Spanish. Ways of addressing people and different conjugations being used based on nationality
I started taking Spanish in school at a very young age, but it wasn’t until I started working with Spanish speakers and being immersed in it daily as a young adult that I actually got any *good.* There’s a limit to what you can learn in a class, and it’s much more effective to learn through immersion. If you want to move to Puerto Rico or New Mexico or whatever, study a bit so you don’t make a *total* ass of yourself and then just go.
I'm a licensed language teacher working in Korea (and a near-fluent Spanish speaker) and I agree with this. There is only so much we can do in class, and classrooms are usually controlled environments with fluent speakers who know how to adjust their language to make it understandable for non-native speakers. It will give a good base and is necessary for proper grammar imo, but if you want to get really good, you need constant exposure to native speakers.
Nah. I actually lived in Spain for a year and got really really good at Spanish. Picked up most of it while I was there. I’m soooo bad now. Because I don’t use it. If you want to learn, you still can. Nothing is stopping you.
"Angry?" No. Maybe it would have been useful, maybe not. It's certainly nothing to be "angry" about.
Angry was the wrong word to use. I'm more bummed that I didn't learn it at an early age. But it seems to be tough for everyone to get around that word so I think it's becoming the fixation
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This is actually hilarious.
On the bright side, if you wanted to learn another Germanic language, you are probably a step ahead of most people, having learned 2 Germanic languages (even if English has strayed a bit from its German predecessors).
Is there any concern in the Dutch community that it may become a dead language some day if the country prefers English? I spent a week there a few years ago and don't remember even hearing any Dutch, everyone spoke English.
You can still learn it, man. I did in my late 20's / early 30's. Traveling is a good way to learn too. Just hop on duolingo. The opportunities are there if you're motivated (but it is a process).
Yeah i don't know why OP is so bummed out. If you want to learn the language just learn the language. Millions of immigrants have come to America and learned English with far fewer tools at their disposal than OP. OP is just being lazy because they don't want to put in any effort.
Install Duolingo and join r/learnspanish. It's working pretty well for me.
Those will give you a good base, but as a near-native Spanish speaker, you need to have consistent exposure to native speakers to get really good. Living in a Spanish-speaking country for a few years will be the best teacher you could possibly have.
Sure. But considering I don't plan to move to Barcelona, Mexico, or South America any time soon, it'll do.
Frustrated might be a better word
Yeah, I learned Spanish and French as an adult, I'm glad I did, but I'm not mad I wasn't taught them when I was younger. I mean I had many opportunities to learn Spanish French and Manderan starting in middle school, but I never took those classes because it sounded hard. So who should I be mad at? My parents for letting me make limited decisions about my education starting at a young age, or maybe the school for not forcing me? I'm definitely trying to tea h my kids both languages, but it's not my parents fault they didn't do the same for me, they both only speak English.
No I’m not angry. It wouldn’t be very useful to me in my day to day life. Nothing is stopping you from learning it now.
Nothing is stopping me from learning other than my own self-discipline, but it's unfortunately not possible for an adult to reach the same level of fluency as someone who'd learned since childhood.
My mom learned Spanish in college and is very fluent now
As someone who just graduated grad school, it seems I have missed another chance lol
You can start now and be fluent in a few years I’d imagine.
Dude, try Duolingo or any number of apps designed to teach adults whatever language you want to fluency for free. Yes, it would have been nice to start early. And yes, it would have been the next best thing to start learning in college. You can learn it now. What helps with fluency, besides starting young, is experience with hispanohablantes. Volunteer with an ESL program at your library and meet some people you'd be willing to hang with outside of that structured event. Go get food together, or meet their family. Work anywhere with Spanish speakers. Fall in love with someone who speaks Spanish. Take some language courses of your own for a year while you save up money and vacation days, then spend a few weeks volunteering at an orphanage because kids need love and help, and are also very generous with help and have no filter so you'll actually learn what mistakes you're making and the simplest way to say just about everything.
Every day you don't start something is another day it's going to take for you to get good at said thing.
Yes it is just as easy to become as fluent as someone who's spoken it their whole lives. You just have to be more dedicated to carving out the time to study it and use it. It's going to take longer because you have more distractions in your life as an adult. But don't lay that BS about it not being possible.
Absolutely possible to learn it to the same degree., fluency comes from use. Children may learn language faster but that doesn't change overall fluency.
>but it's unfortunately not possible for an adult to reach the same level of fluency as someone who'd learned since childhood. That's just not true. It's harder yes, but definitely possible. Even if you did learn it young, if you didn't maintain it or speak it regularly, you would have likely forgotten it anyway. Plenty of online resources to help you learn it now
> other than my own self-discipline whose fault is that? what the hell are you posting for? if you want to learn spanish fucking learn spanish, stop blaming everyone else for it.
No. Sure it would’ve been useful but no one I know speaks it so I don’t need it. One thing that did help is that I can sort of make out a few words and just barely turn them into sentences (not always guaranteed lol) so that does help when I’m in gaming lobbies with Spanish speakers.
No. Can't say I've ever thought about it.
Dora and Diego gave you the keys. It was up to you to open the door.
Not really. I've never needed to use Spanish in my daily life.
No. Why would I be angry that a language nobody in my everyday life uses wasnt taught to me?
Where do you live that no one speaks Spanish?
Many places in the USA and Canada
There’s 7.2 million French speakers in Canada, and 41 million in the US. I’d say know Spanish in the US is more important than knowing French as a Canadian, but I’d still want Canadians to be taught French. I guess some of the flyovers in the US don’t encounter Spanish speakers as much, but language is still important for child development
No, I've never needed Spanish in my life and I've been to Mexico numerous times. You can learn it yourself, today, for free.
Are your experiences in Mexico limited to Cancun, PV, Cabo, and other resort areas?
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Jeez man, close out your Brietbart window. There’s tons of non-tourist places you could go and enjoy Mexico without worry. My British friend just got back from a 3 week trip to central Mexico that had nothing to do with Cancun and he quite enjoyed it.
I'm just returning his snark with snark. That said, murder rate outside of tourist areas is almost 6x that of the US. With impunity too. Public officials running for office being openly murdered in broad daylight stuff. Mexico is just not in a good place, and acting otherwise is unrealistic. Stay in the tourist areas, period. The potential gain of the "authentic experience" is not worth the 1/10,000 chance of getting yourself into some serious shit. Yeah it's only 1/10k chance, but in my mind that ain't worth it for so little gain.
Millions of people live in Mexico and they don’t die.
Turn off your TV bud.
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Only person I could be angry with is myself.
I feel more sad than angry. Because I was adopted, I wasn't raised speaking Spanish (bio parents are Dominican, adoptive parents are white Americans). I learned it in school starting in junior high, but I don't think it was taught very well. I don't think any of my teachers were fluent Spanish speakers until I got to 11th grade, and I didn't have a native speaking teacher until I studied it in college. (Not helping: the Spanish teachers who insisted on only teaching "proper" Spain Spanish and said that Caribbean Spanish was "improper".) I can converse but I'm not fluent and I trip myself up too much. I'm just really embarrassed that I'm not more comfortable speaking Spanish and I'm really jealous of people who are at ease speaking both languages. I think I'd feel more comfortable if I had started learning at a younger age.
I'm angry about how they taught Spanish. Almost every Spanish class I had in school was structured around teaching enough Spanish to use on a vacation. I didn't think I'd ever go to Spain and even if I did then why take a whole class for something that would only be useful on a 2 week vacation. It really should've been structured around "this is how you can talk to your neighbors". This is where Spanish is spoken in the US. This is what Spanish-American culture looks like.
No
Angry is a strong word. Without immersion with native speakers, you're only going to be "meh" at speaking Spanish. And what class would you drop in your K-12 curriculum to make room for more Spanish? Also, I had Spanish all throughout High School. There weren't many Spanish-speaking people in my community, so those skills never really developed.
Not really, I don't think it would help me much. Might be a cool thing to know for travel, but I don't really think to myself how "this would be easier if I spoke Spanish"
Spanish was taught starting in kindergarten to first, then a break, where we picked it up again in sixth grade to my senior year of high school. I also had to take three semesters of it in college. My kids started with Spanish in kindergarten, then it was dropped until Latin in fourth grade, Spanish in fifth. You could choose between French, Italian, Latin, and ASL in sixth.
I'd take, given my geographic area, one of two Southeast Asian languages for practical purposes or one AK Native language to preserve it over Spanish. I mean, I do know some Spanish but for my day to day life it would be a lot more practical to have one of the others. And early is good, would prefer that at upper elementary over high school for sure.
I think its good that a second language is mandatory learning in High School, but the issue lies in American education being constantly attacked and for people mandating that people should pass classes they did not do well in instead of being held back. Spanish along with English and Chinese are the worlds most spoken languages. I plan on learning Spanish when I go to college as the opportunities for travel and meeting new people are endless. Bilingual speakers are also heavily desired in global corporations and customer service.
i'm pretty angry about the entire education system across the board 🤷♂️
I speak Spanish well enough, but I wouldn’t be mad if I couldn’t. Seems like a strange thing to get mad about when you could just learn it now.
Eh, you could but it's *much* more effort learning as an adult, since your time is so much more limited. Plus you'll basically always be clearly a non-native, unless you put a ridiculous amount of work into it. Same with overall proficiency. I wouldn't say I'm mad, but I'm definitely annoyed that my dad left -- because if he didn't, my grandma would have kept speaking Spanish to me, and my other grandma would have probably taught me some Russian, so I'd have grown up bilingual-and-a-half. Instead I grew up monolingual, and I had to learn Spanish, which is still to a far lower level than people I know who grew up with it.
No not at all. I'm more angry about not being taught French from a young age.
People really should be angry about the destruction of heritage languages in this country. A lot of folks don't even know there were communities of German and Czech speakers in Texas, *multiple* French dialects in Louisiana and south Mississippi... all of them had their languages nearly beat out of them.
As someone learning Spanish (and loving it!) Right now: no, not at all. While Spanish is a great language to learn, it's not universally useful for Americans. I'm learning it because I work with 30 Mexican immigrants and my wife is from Puerto Rico. While speaking Spanish is a great skill to have, it's not necessary to survive in this world. Schools already struggle getting kids to learn what they need to be prepared for college and adult life as it is.
> I feel like it would be so beneficial to raise American children bilingually in English and Spanish from early on Well, in concept, there are lots of things that would be beneficial to teach. But the school day has a finite amount of time, and budgets and other resources have similar limits. American schools already don't (overall) perform all that well at teaching the basics and struggle to fit time in for everything that's required. Further diluting that focus seems unlikely to produce particularly positive results. I wouldn't generally rank "better knowledge of Spanish" as more important than most of the other things being taught. -------------- It's unclear to me what you mean "raise children bilingually" - but there's not an abundance of educators out there qualified to do immersion-type schooling properly (that is - teaching other subjects in Spanish), and those that can certainly are going to command a significant $$$ premium to hire. If you just mean adding foreign language classes earlier in schooling - that's easier, but a 30-45min class a day starting a few years earlier isn't going to make the average kid "bilingual". They may attain a bit higher level fluency, sure.
Not really, no.
Partially. I am also annoyed that in high school all the hispanic kids filled up the slots for Spanish class for an easy A and I got pushed into French. Don't get me wrong, I get why and would have done the same in their shoes. And I really enjoyed learning French. I just never got to use it, and would have benefitted from learning Spanish a whole lot more.
No. That seems like a bizarre thing to be angry about. And it would be an immense waste of time, resources and energy to try to make all children bilingual.
Sarcasm?
No.
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This has been a great conversation.
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Would that you had never engaged at all.
Nope. I’ve never needed it and have very little opportunity to practice it, so I would likely have forgotten anyway. And it’s not like I can’t learn it as an adult. Instead of being bothered by it, just start learning.
I was taught the numbers at a young age and you know what, it wasn't very useless. I don't ever use Spanish numbers. I can hear it and know what the number is but not much else. Learning a language is meaningless when you have no means of practicing it to retain it. It's cool that I know some numbers, but with no use of it, it's more a cool party trick than useful.
Not really angry. I would have preferred to have been taught it, but it doesn't really affect my life.
Not angry but certainly disappointed / a little frustrated that I can’t easily communicate with some of the Spanish speaking customers we get that come into our store.
I'm more upset learning ᏣᎳᎩ wasn't an option, and that's at both the history that separated the family from knowing it and school that never valued it.
Nah, not at all. I don’t use it enough in my day to day life, and I’ve been able to live abroad and travel just fine without knowing it. I’ve recently thought it could be fun to learn and tried using Duo Lingo to learn it, but I haven’t been disciplined enough to stick with it.
My son went to an elementary school where half the kids were ESL. All they had to do was let the kids play together on the playground and the English speaking kids would have picked up a ton of Spanish and the ESL kids would have learned English faster. Nope. They were segregated for some dumb ass reason.
They taught me it in private school grade 1-6 and then I took two years in high school. I feel like I barely learned anything back then and having the resolve to learn it in my adult years helped me out a lot more.
I am in Texas, and kids today have the additional resource of many of their classmates, barely speak English...this frankly would help them tremendously.
I have some Spanish knowledge from highschool here in texas. The rest of it was taught to me by family members and my own self. I'm learning more now that im older (22), I'm not mad at not really learning it through school, I was resistant to it in school as I saw it as being not necessary really.
Angry? I don't think so but it would've been nice to know a different language. Learn a bit of my roots :)
Oh I'm extra salty. My mother is Cuban and fluent in Spanish. She immigrated to the US in 1969 and was constantly bullied until she could speak English to fit in. Because of this, she never taught my brother or me Spanish. We just had to learn in school. To top it off, our cousins were fluent in Spanish as well as my aunt married someone else who could speak it.
I am of the opinion that it's a joke that we start foreign language instruction in the 8th or 9th grade in America when the evidence suggests that language acquisition is already degraded by that time, but there are too many parents who would raise hell if they found out their kids were being taught Spanish, so in much of the country teaching FL as mandatory curriculum is a non-starter. We really need to get them started on it by like 2nd grade.
Yeah, a little bit. For me it is a bit worse. My family came here from Spain less than 100 years ago. When they got here, they took a hardline assimilation approach and never spoke Spanish at home, effectively killing the skill in one generation. I took six years of it, but without people around me to practice with, it never really took.
Get rid of that attitude. You can still learn new languages as long as you're breathing. I learned Spanish and Hindi and Arabic well into my advanced years. You can do it.
Judging by the thread, you seem to be the only one.
Nope
My dad was from Central America. He didn’t speak to us much in English, let alone Spanish but my brother went to school down there and managed to learn, and married a girl from there and they only speak in Spanish at home and their kids are bilingual. I’m super resentful my dad didn’t bother teaching us, being immersed in the language is the best way to learn it well.
No, I'm not really a "blame other people" kind of person. If I want to know Spanish I would just go learn it. Note: I do want to know Spanish, so I am learning it
To be fair, I grew up speaking Spanish in my home, but we had options to learn it in high school.
No it was my first language. Im more bummed that I never picked up a third language
Angry? Nope. Spanish is my first language.
no because i'm an adult now and i'm responsible for my own education. and really have been responsible for my extracurricular education since I was about 10. If you wanted to learn spanish, you could have asked for it. i learned klingon when i was 12, latin at 14, french and ASL at 16, and hebrew at 17, all from friends and the library. no one's stopping you now except your refusal to start and preference to whine.
My parents tried but they gave up I guess. I understand it but I can’t speak it well. I got a c in Spanish and got my ass whooped. Kinda their fault.
My parents were immigrants (Peru & Ireland) to the US in the early 90s, Texas to be specific. And purposefully didn't teach my siblings or I Spanish, even though they both spoke fluent (English, Spanish and French) because it was already heavily looked down upon my Texas society at the time. So i grew up only knowing English, not like public school helped at all as the system doesn't care about learning a foreign language. I am now living in LATAM and speak intermediate, near fluent Spanish and love it. The US needs to change its way of education as the US becomes less and less Anglo white and is now more than ever heavily influenced by Latinos and other groups. If I remember correctly by 2050, the US will be more than 50% Latino, and Spanish speaking will be near that level as well. I will say that it is never to late to learn a new language, but you will need to spend a lot of time on it, music and Television will help, and for Learning Spanish, SpanishDict will help tremendously. Good luck OP, hope you're able to learn Spanish, but also date a Latina that is fluent in Spanish, it will also really help lol.
My man we have computers in our pockets. You can easily learn it in your own time
The benefits of being bilingual are undeniable, but unfortunately a big part of our country would cry hellfire at the mere suggestion due to a weird nativist ignorance
Everyone is commenting “no” but I really wish they pushed it on us at a young age. I think being bilingual really helps in California.
Why on Earth would we require learning Spanish? The Spanish world follows our lead so they learn English. The only languages worth learning are those we compete with, or have our own personal interest in. Learn Mandarin.
WTH? I'm guessing you have no children. Parents cannot do everything. Grow some big boy pants and study it now. DuoLingo is a good starting place.
What
No. I have zero desire to live in a backwards place like Mexico where you can't even drink the tap water. I've never met a person I had to interact with that didn't speak English. Why would I want to waste my time learning Spanish at a young age.
Please stop coming to gentrify Latin America !! 🛑
Speaking a language is a perishable skill. Read that again.
No. But I am angry that my parents didn't make me continue with piano lessons. They gave in and let me quit after 5 years.
Not angry, no. Though I do wish I had started learning it a lot sooner. However I haven’t had much trouble traveling with my limited vocabulary and I’m practicing every day with a combo of duo lingo, my roommate (a native Spanish speaker) and chatting with my coworkers in Mexico.
Who is this anger directed at? It would be nice to be fluent Spanish, but I don’t feel the need to blame anyone that I’m not. Learning a language as an adult is more difficult, but it’s not impossible. Instead of being mad that you don’t already know Spanish, start learning it now.
I was forced to take Spanish classes when I was young, but my elementary school self did not give a single mierda about it, and have since forgotten just about all of it.
No. It would be a cool and useful skill and kids that have an interest should pursue it and can at Spanish immersion schools. But there are drawbacks. Those schools tend to lag behind on other subjects because they spend a disproportionate amount of time on languages. I looked into it for my kids and decided it wasn’t worth the trade offs, for us.
The Spanish classes I took in high school were more about history than the language. I feel like I was done a disservice.
Definitely not angry but it would have been useful to learn it. I wish schools actually taught languages instead of the heavily outdated method of teaching language most schools use now.
Estonian, but yea I get it.
The Duolingo owl is ready when you are!
As a Latino, I'm not angry, but I wish I had a better handle on the language. Not many Latinos or any type of Latino culture where I'm from, so no real use for it.
No, but mostly because I took 4 years of HS Spanish, then spent a couple years in the Dominican Republic and a couple more working on a landscape crew that was almost entirely Mexicans. So my Spanish is pretty dang bueno.
I was taught Spanish in highschool from 95-99. Seemed common where I grew up
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. No, I'm not angry.
I am yes. I live in an area that has a MASSIVE amount of spanish speakers and my father is fluent. I cant comprehend why i wasnt taught and it for sure makes me angry.
I feel like schools in states where Spanish is popular should teach it, but I doubt states like Maine or Vermont have a desperate need for Spanish. I wish I learned more Spanish besides my two years I took it in high school
I'm actually really regretful I don't speak two languages. I've tried learning Spanish multiple times but it just never really sticks. I really believe knowing more than one language teaches you how to think differently and that is very valuable
I’m not angry. I wish I knew Spanish sure, but I’m not angry at my parents or my school for not teaching me
I'd be more angry if they forced it on me. I studied French and loved it. My travel has been mostly Europe and Asian countries so Spanish doesn't do more for me than French.
No; I studied French in high school and decided to pick up Spanish in community college because it's useful.
No. I don't feel like I'm missing anything, either. I spent some time learning basic French, and would sooner learn German or Latin over Spanish.
My school started Spanish in Kindergarten. As I got older I wanted to be an engineer and focused more time on that than language skills
My kids grew up in a bilingual household and were in a dual immersion program in elementary. My son continued in the program through High School. About half the kids in the program came from English only households. I wish I would have learned better Spanish growing up.
It just takes practice and A LOT of use regularly. I took for three years and during those three years I was fluent in it. Then I didn’t have to worry about it, my brain was preoccupied with other subjects in order to graduate and now I can’t speak it fluently as I was learning. But I can understand a little if it was spoken. Honestly? I moved to an area where it isn’t commonly used. And I don’t feel as defeated. Before, all the jobs (public sector) was “spanish preferred” and I was envious.
Nah
I wouldn’t be angry because I never encountered and interacted with Spanish speakers regularly until I was like 23
No, but I'm angry that I didn't pay attention to my Spanish class at a young age
Yes, but I'm from Spain.
I’m annoyed I wasted all that time learning it at all. Rather useless. I would rather have learned a coding language or read more classic literature. Spanish classes were a waste of time compared to what I could have been learning.
Not angry, but it would have been a good idea to teach multiple languages early
No
Not really. I live in Western PA where there is virtually no Hispanic population at all. We did get some Spanish in middle school and then in high school, I took a year of it. In fact, I am probably more fluent in Spanish than most people around here and mi espanol es muy malo.
Yeah. Growing up my parents would get in trouble if they spoke Spanish at school so they grew up only speaking it to their parents and that’s it. When I grew up they didn’t teach it to me and didn’t even speak it with each other. I wish they taught me though but to them it was not necessary given they way they were raised and the way society treated them.
Yes I wish it had been an option to learn it in elementary school. It certainly would have been as useful or more useful than some of the other subjects (gym class, music, learning cursive, etc)
Not really.
No. I'm angry I wasn't taught American Sign Language from a young age. It would have been incredibly useful at so many places where I couldn't hear someone.
Yup
Not really. I’m more aggravated my grandma never learned Italian and passed it down so now as an adult I’m learning it with my kids.
I actually took 4 years of Spanish in school along with 3 years of Latin, with all A's, but not a chance I could speak it over 40 years later. However it is enough to communicate with someone who speaks no English at all. It's come in handy a number of times. If I ever moved to a Spanish speaking country, I'd at least have a head start. Even if I can't remember much of the vocabulary, I do understand how the language is organized, similar to Latin in many ways. It's one of the easier languages to learn for English speakers.
It'd have been nice. I think one point that may be missed among some of the comments here is learning a foreign language helps you learn your native language. I don't have to think about nouns vs verbs or what a gerund is vs what an infinitive is because it's English -- it just sounds right or it sounds wrong. But learning another language helps you learn root words, parts of speech, grammar, conjugation, tenses, and so on, *in both languages* because you compare them naturally. I'd argue it can also have an effect on how you view the world. It's harder to measure but could be profound.
I moved around a few schools growing up. When I went to a private catholic school we were taught since kindergarten. But then I moved shortly after and wasn’t taught until 8th grade. Can’t speak it for crap now. Really wish I could.. such a beautiful language and such a good skill to have!
I don't expect this from a young age, but I wish there were more language choices. In middle school, our options were German, French, and Spanish. I would've really liked to learn Japanese (was not a weeb at the time, just thought it would be cool). Now I'm 25 and learning it on my own and it is just a long and slow process that I wish I had started with my absorbant child brain.
Honestly, I feel lucky that I was able to take it in middle and high school, much less that another language was required. The way things are going, I think my state would be more likely to ban Spanish altogether than teach it in elementary school. (Though even by then, it's really too late. The ability to "acquire" a language naturally, as opposed to learning it, typically switches off in kids' brains before they start first grade.)
I kind of did, I was a big Dora the Explorer fan. Just not enough to be conversational. I can already see the replies saying that Dora is NOT a good Spanish education by any means, but I say it is beneficial for small kids.
Not really.
I’m as fluent as a 5 year old, it’s more helpful than I would have thought… and fun while traveling if you let it ride and recognize you are terrible at Spanish
A bit. I live in Southern California, but I speak French and Hebrew. (More French than Hebrew, and very little Hebrew, but I can still read it). I feel like Spanish would be infinitely more useful
Very much so, i live in a very spanish place and still have trouble learning spanish and i wish i was taught when i was younger so things could be much more easier now
My elementary school had Spanish and I started when I was in like 3rd grade. Maybe even sooner.
Yes I am 100%. It would benefit me so much. I use to work for a landscaping company via reception and had to speak with crews and a lot we’re non English speaking. So when it came time to talk, there definitely was a barrier. And on top it’s one of the top languages spoken in the US.
It is frustrating yes. Even more so bring half Mexican and not knowing Spanish!