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High School Foreign Languages

What foreign languages are most commonly taught in American classrooms?
Quiz by SuperStokes
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Last updated: August 19, 2021
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First submittedApril 7, 2021
Times taken2,611
Average score87.5%
Rating4.53
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Language Learners
Answer
6,418,331
Spanish
1,254,243
French
395,019
German
205,158
Latin
72,845
Japanese
65,058
Italian
59,860
Chinese
12,389
Russian
berowdy
+15
Level 51
Apr 12, 2021
ASL should be a type-in for sign language
KatyM
+1
Level 67
Feb 24, 2024
ASL isn't a foreign language. Assuming your in America as the A stands for American.
Conradd23
+15
Level 57
Apr 12, 2021
Sign language is not a foreign language....
Relox84
+2
Level 70
Feb 23, 2024
Neither is Spanish in large swaths of the United States.
woshiwaiguoren
+9
Level 70
Apr 12, 2021
Nice quiz, please make the title a little more precise though. Sign Language is not really a "foreign language."
Fianchetto
+1
Level 73
Feb 23, 2024
It's classified as a foreign language in my school. I do admit it doesn't make sense though.
kalbahamut
+3
Level 82
Apr 12, 2021
Good quiz. It's really dumb that Latin is still so high on the list - American schools need to get with the times. Mandarin should be above French. Japanese and Russian should be over German. And Arabic, Portuguese, Korean, and Hindi should all be taught more than Latin or Italian. Farsi, Urdu, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Tagalog are all more practical than Latin or Italian, for that matter... and personally I'd like to know Thai.

In 1994 I signed up for Japanese in high school, but there wasn't enough interest so the class was canceled and I ended up taking Spanish instead. Spanish has sometimes been useful to know but I've still never (not for a lack of interest just never happened) been to Spain or anywhere in Latin America outside of Miami and San Diego. The last time I had an opportunity to use Spanish was when I was in Moscow and took my car to a garage ran by Uzbeks. None of them spoke English but one of them knew Spanish. :D

WolfCam
+6
Level 66
Apr 12, 2021
I think the reason that most schools teach Spanish, French, German (and to some extent Latin and Italian) is because they use the Latin Alphabet. I started learning a new language at 11 years old, and I feel that it would have been a lot harder to learn a whole new writing system for Arabic or Mandarin. I absolutely agree that when I reached high school there should have been more options for languages. I also have no idea why Portuguese and sign language aren't taught more often.
SpencerGT
+1
Level 67
Apr 12, 2021
Portuguese would be great, especially given that Brazil is such a big country.
Hirundo
+5
Level 67
Apr 12, 2021
I am not American, so when you say what they should and shouldn't do, I don't really have the right to disagree, but I still do. America's cultural roots, and most of the population's cultural roots are in Europe, so no wonder European languages are preferred over Asian ones.It's tradition: the US belogs to the Western civilization, the largest languages of which are the mentioned European ones.

Furthermore, these European languages are closely related to English both in terms of grammar and vocab, and are written in the Latin script, and that makes it easier for students to get results in them. That may well be one of the reasons that teachers are more readily available in these languages, as well as higher education, i.e. the training of teachers, is easier.

SpencerGT
+1
Level 67
Apr 12, 2021
French is kind of useful if you ever plan on visiting Quebec.

Other than that, I agree.

JonOfKent
+2
Level 56
Feb 23, 2024
Or Africa... I do find the idea that people should be learning Mandarin in preference to French bizarre. French is spoken across 30-odd countries, whereas Mandarin is widely spoken in - what, three? One of which is Singapore. I daresay perhaps 5-10 years ago when engagement with the PRC was the mission, it might have made sense, but nowadays - ? Ditto Hindi, which is spoken in a single country where English is (in some senses) even more widely spoken. Arabic makes more sense, but - which Arabic?

As far as Latin goes, one of the main benefits of learning it is that, like no other widely-taught subject, it shows us that today is a point in history like any other. History as a subject sometimes ends up teaching us to think the opposite - that today is the culmination of the whole of history - which promotes a kind of self-importance rather than the humility that the West (in my view) desperately needs in our politics and in civil society.

Greatgull
+2
Level 46
Feb 23, 2024
I agree. Also it helps in learning French and Spanish. Spanish is an essential language to know today.
Greatgull
+1
Level 46
Feb 23, 2024
I disagree. I Don't understand why Portuguese would be useful. In a few African countries, Portugal and Brazil it is spoken but Spanish is much more widely spoken. I met a lot of people from Portuguese speaking Africa who also speak English and they told me in their countries; Mozambique, Guinea- Bissau and Angola, everyone knows English. So just for Brazil and Portugal I don't think Portuguese is an essential in high schools. I'm fluent in Spanish and I use it all the time. Also I have travelled extensively and have only needed Russian in the Central Asian outbackPeople know the USSR and Russian empire is over and has been for 35 years. So no need to teach Russian in schools either. Latin is an exceptional language which should be kept in schools since it is the root of all the major romance languages. There are a lot of Tagalog speakers and I guess it would be useful ifyou wanted to live in the Philippines exclusively but not useful for the purposes of the vast majority of students
JonOfKent
+1
Level 56
Feb 25, 2024
It is totally untrue that all or even most people in Mozambique speak English! Even a short distance over the border from South Africa (for example) there are few who do. The kinds of people who we meet visiting our own countries can often be, I think, very unrepresentative of their country as a whole. I would imagine Angola and Guinea-Bissau to be just the same. Perhaps most highly-educated people do, but they are not a very big proportion of the population in those countries.

Also it's easy to dismiss "just" Brazil but remember it's huge, dwarfing any of the Spanish-speaking countries. It's only one country because of an accident of history - how the Portuguese administered their empire. There are more Portuguese speakers in South America than there are Spanish speakers.

richiesyxx
+2
Level 72
Feb 23, 2024
It’s only dumb if you don’t recognise the purpose of teaching Latin. Nobody is expecting students to go away and read Ancient Roman manuscripts or to become conversational with a handful of secluded monks.

Latin is usually taught (alongside Classical Greek) because they are central to so many other, widely spoken languages. It becomes much easier to work out what is written in Spanish, Romanian or Portuguese, for example , if one understands the common roots of words in different languages. It’s different to learning a modern language because there’s no expectation that one will speak it, but for those interested in linguistics, it’s invaluable.

Hirundo
+3
Level 67
Apr 12, 2021
I really don't think that sign language belongs here. It's not a foreign language, it's a different communication form.
Bribrithelegendi
+1
Level 55
Apr 12, 2021
Good quiz! But why are we still learning Latin in school? At this point it's a dead language, and nobody even writes in it anymore. And Sign language isn't a "foreign language" in the context of a foreign language coming from a foreign land/country.
SpencerGT
+1
Level 67
Apr 12, 2021
Latin is useful for reading historical documents as well as understanding word history in English and romance languages.
Greatgull
+2
Level 46
Feb 23, 2024
Latin can help students to learn Spanish and French as it is the root language for both of these languages which are useful to learn which is why they are the most popular languages taught in American high schools, specifically Spanish is most useful.
plelliott
+3
Level 61
Apr 12, 2021
Sign language is not foreign to American schools

It's literally in the name "American Sign Language"

jmellor13
+1
Level 67
Apr 19, 2021
Agreed. It is definitely not foreign. I think the US is the only place it's used, in fact.
flzubuduuz
+5
Level 68
Apr 12, 2021
Mandarin should probably be a type-in for Chinese, considering Chinese is more of a language family than a language proper.
MichaelPeblo
+3
Level 46
Apr 14, 2021
Why does it accept Chinese but not Mandarin???
LAP3UNC
+1
Level 84
Feb 23, 2024
I took Latin. Nobody should ever take Latin.
Astana
+1
Level 50
Feb 23, 2024
English is technically a foreign language. It is spoken in many other parts of the world and is not even an official American language. I would bet there are a lot of schools that teach English to non-English speakers.
stylus
+1
Level 76
Feb 23, 2024
could you please please include the source for this quiz in the description somewhere?
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