<p>JHS - no intent to shock. And even less to mock.</p>
<p>I would argue that you don't get the full impact of what is lost in translation until you are fluent in another language. Although I studied Latin, Italian, and French, I was only ever fluent in French. And that was absolutely the world in which I understood the meaning of lost in translation. So I agree learning a language fully is critical. I just think if it turns out to be Spanish for my son, that's fine. Especially since he is interested in tropical biology and marine science and has had his eyes on Costa Rica since we visited there when he was 9 and he cried when he found out he had taken the wrong hike and missed seeing a poison dart frog:).</p>
<p>As for the systematicity of Latin, and other European languages, again I would actually argue that you learn more about the system and the nature of symbolic systems from learning multiple languages, not from the way that Latin is taught per se. The cleanest systems can usually be inferred better than they can be explained, and the more datapoints the clearer the pattern to infer the system.</p>
<p>Anyway, this thread has actually convinced me, that for my son who loves to learn systems, i.e. all the bugs in California, all the poison dart frogs in Costa Rica, all the teams in the NCAA March Madness, all the characters in Magic (yes him too although he doesn't tell a soul in school....), that for him actually the study of two languages supports his native tendences. </p>
<p>And for poetry being pretentious crap? I tend to feel the same way about everything written since Yates. And I feel even better about literature written before the 1700's, you know, when men were men and literature had rules? So if my S wants to say it's pretentious crap, a) I half agree with him b) I know it's his attempt to be a cool guy, to perfect his sardonic persona, and I forgo the apoplexy.</p>
<p>Alum,
I think you actually were mocking my son, not JHS's, but that's okay. He got quite a laugh at JHS's comparison of the vocabulary of most foreign languages and the more testosterone-filled vocabulary in Latin. He finished the Latin offerings as a junior, so as a senior he's in a directed study reading Cicero. For fun. To each his own.</p>
<p>Not mocking anyone. Wasn't ever mocking anyone. I have to remind myself that some of you will be doing applications hell this fall and will be sensitive....</p>
<p>Was joking about my own life. Own son. Good luck to all this year in the hunt.</p>
<p>True enough about the stress this time of year, especially with son not considering any school west of Chicago. But, there were a few more ha ha's than I'd ever seen in a "kidding" post, so I wasn't sure what was going on. To the OP, and to you, my son's best friend dropped Latin after Latin III -- he hated it! He's still hoping to get into an Ivy even without four years of a language and he has enough other things on his app to make up for it. If a student drops a language they've taken for awhile for a new one, it could show lack of commitment, but it can also show a breadth of interests. Plus, if they show commitment and depth in another subject (like taking a lot of science or math classes), they'll probably be fine.</p>
<p>He wants to get away huh:). Really kidding, but my daughter made the same decision. I can understand the kids wanting an adventure. However, you and I are lucky. Most likely our children will realize California is the only place in the country to live. Kidding:). Seriously, my 3 siblings and I all left CA for college in the 70's and 80's, and are all back now. 3 of us live within an hour of my dad's house, the other lives down in LA near my mom. So I think CA parents are pretty lucky in as much as we have really high chances our little birdies will return to the roost.</p>
<p>The ha ha ha things? Well, you'd have to be in the Mom of Slackers group to truly feel the sardonic twist in your gut, and here the slight edge in the laughter.</p>
<p>Hey, I've got a son in AP Latin, and I can assure you this isn't something he's looked forward to at all. (I found The Aeneid barely tolerable in English so I'm in awe of anyone who tackles it in Latin. :)</p>
<p>You can add me to the foreign language haters club. Way back when I went to HS I was told 2 years was enough. Having taken 2 years of German because I still can't roll Spanish Rs correctly, I thought I was done. But NOOOO, I get to college and find if I had stuck out 1 more year of German, I would have had a free pass - no exam necessary. So now I found I need 2 more terms of another language, so at the advice of some friends took Italian. </p>
<p>Still struggled, but at least didn't have to spend half of my time trying to remember which nouns were masculine or feminine. Much higher percentage of regular verbs. Spelling was a breeze in comparison to even German. R rolling was still an effort in futility, but at least it was less frequent than Spanish. </p>
<p>Of course, none of this did me any good for my business degree.</p>
<p>Now my dyslexic DW was thinking about going back and finishing up a bachelors about a year ago. Now talk about a struggle - learning a foreign language when symbol interpretation in you native tongue is a struggle at times. When she went to the state flagship U in our town, she was told her fluency in ASL was worthless (to which she wanted to give them some sign language they would understand). Stupid thing was she wanted to get a teaching degree for special ed where knowledge of ASL is a wonderful benefit and other foreign languages are pretty much useless.</p>
<p>DD is now in 9th grade at a BS and already showing the familial distaste for Spanish.</p>
<p>I am struggling to understand the requirement for foreign languages at universities. Most fail to make it functional in understanding the world's people better (no linkage to a humanities requirement like history of a particular civilization). My wife's "second language" was very useful in her desired field, but was cast aside by the local school.</p>
<p>I'm starting to feel like schools forgot what it is about, so no wonder so many people hate studying it.</p>
<p>Can your DW appeal the decision not to accept her ASL fluency? As you say, ASL is very important for special ed.
Sorry to hear your S is not enjoying Spanish--I enjoyed it back in the day. I have never been able to roll my Rs either.
Not quite sure myself why Us require a foreign language. For engineering at the school my S attends, he doesn't need a language UNLESS he decides to specialize in computer science--go figure! He had 3 years of mandarin in HS, but didn't take it senior year, so would likely be pretty rusty if he were to take a placement exam at this point.</p>
<p>Living in SoCal, my son wanted to learn Spanish. At his school K-12 they have language starting in 3rd grade (French which he did not enjoy). In 5th grade he chose Spanish. He had a very hard teacher in Spanish I, weathered through a not so great teacher for Spanish II and III and has a fabulous one for Spanish IX and Spanish Honors. He spent time in Spain at a language course/Spain homestay where no English was spoken and traveled again there for fun this summer. He spent rising Junior year summer in Costa Rica doing community service and interacting with locals via homestay/sports. He also frequents professional soccer matches here and converses with native Spanish speakers from Mexico/Guademala/San Salvador. I would say that he is almost fluent but the best part of learning the language has been the new interests he has formed due to his interest in the Latin culture all over the globe. Not to mention the friends he has made who are native Spanish speakers. </p>
<p>Next year (Senior) he will be in AP Spanish. It has turned into a passion of his and may well be his "hook" in his college search.</p>
<p>Please try to make sure that the child's prospective school will accept and recognise the fact that the child started off a language in Middle School.</p>
<p>Please...</p>
<p>Some Universities do not like to recognise that one took Latin from grade 6-9 and then took Spanish for grade 10-12. Mainly public Universities think like this, alright? Some public Universities have rules called High School Deficiency rules. Some public Universities will be mean and say that since you only show on your high school transcript the two years of Spanish taken in High School or even the one year of Spanish in High School, that you are deficient in that subject and then you have a registration hold and a short amount of time to make things up. </p>
<p>At one time, I attended a Public University. It was a horrible University and I had to transfer from that University after already transferring to that University for the sake of my safety and scads other things.</p>
<p>I was told, as a transfer student, that I had a very short amount of time to make up my Spanish Deficiency. I was told this because I took one year of Spanish to prepare for a Junior Civitan trip. All my pals and I were doing it to prepare for this trip. To make a long story short, the fact that I took Latin from grade 5-10 and then took one year of Spanish just to be nice with my club, made me have a deficiency which messed up my registration process horribly. Words cannot describe the stress one feels with this sort of thing. I mean, you be told you barely have any time to tend to this sort of thing all because you took a little trip in high school.</p>
<p>So, all of you proactive parents...</p>
<p>Please heed my warning a little bit.</p>
<p>Now, I go to a Private University. And guess what? No one made any mention of any silly rules like that because it is not a part of their admissions criteria at all. But, double check, all the same proactive parents.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the University clearly spells out in its materials that ASL is not considered a foreign language.</p>
<p>Sad thing is that she has worked as an aide for 25+ years with LD children and currently spends half of her day teaching teachers about Autism and how to manage autistic children. (as they are generally mainstreamed these days - another pet peeve of mine because most generally don't tolerate the loud and overstimulating environment of the traditional classroom) These general ed teachers get almost no training in working with LD children and are often clueless on what to do.</p>
<p>And of course she is paid on the same pay scale as the cafeteria workers for teaching the teachers their job despite her associates degree in special ed and decades of continuing ed for several specialties within special ed. She could triple that if she could finish her credential, but for a dsylexic, so many obstacles put up in front of her, she has given up.</p>
<p>Your DW is dylsexic? Does she have current l.d. testing? She can get a foreign language waiver soo easily. My God, please look into that. That would be soo easy peasy.</p>
<p>A fair amount of Dyslexic students are told to take ASL instead of Spanish or New Testament Greek or what have you. </p>
<p>Please try to work on this. Your DW can do it.</p>
<p>Our middle school language course is listed on the high school transcript as a high school level course. If it's not that way in your district, it's something one might want to lobby for.</p>
<p>Like Mathmom our middle school language course is listed on HS transcript as HS level course. The school makes it very clear when you sign up for the class in 8th grade. They make sure you and your student are very much aware of the repressions of not doing well, and ask that we as parents question if our student is mature enough to handle the class.</p>
<p>Being practical- do make sure students get HS credit for languages (and HS math and other HS courses) taken in middle school). 4 years of one foreign language in HS can exempt you from it in college, a reason to stick it out- worth missing an AP course as son did- easier to take one lit course in college than have to take > 1 semester of a language, especially for those not good in languages (son is good, scheduling conflicts forced the choice).</p>
<p>Check the colleges your son may be interested in and consider that he may change majors; since languages are hard for him it may be better to get them over with at the HS level, saving agony and GPA woes in college. I don't think a school that is a good fit for him will take/deny him based on getting one more AP science A vs a lesser grade in a foreign language. Try to give your child the best HS education you can, never sacrifice this in the game of college admissions.</p>
<p>BTW loading up on AP science courses in HS for the science bound student may give them a better GPA and make HS more palatable, but they may not be as well prepared to take required non-science courses in college. Also, they may want to take the same subject in college and get a better course at the college level (also losing the credits from the AP course if this is important to you).</p>
<p>Our school district has a very lame foreign language policy. Until two years ago, all students took spanish two or three times a week from first through fifth grade. According to my son, it was the same information for all four years. My guys both got A's and I never saw them do any homework at home. In middle school (grades 6,7 and 8) the kids get to choose between French, Spanish and German and they have it 3 days a week. There is no opting out. I convinced my youngest to take Spanish, but even after 7 years of Spanish he will be expected to take Spanish I in High School next year. It used to be that you went into the second year of the language in HS - my older son had German II in 9th grade - but the HS teachers said the 9th graders weren't prepared and they spent the first half of the year getting them up to speed.</p>
<p>To me, this is a wake up call to beef up the middle school program. If one takes a language for three years in middle school it seems like they should be able to test out of one year of that language. Instead, they decided to acknowledge that the kids are having minimal learning and stay the course.</p>
<p>GoalieDad - Italian has masuculine and femine - do you mean the endings made it obvious? Or were you just glad not to have to deal with a neuter gender as well? Strangely I actually found German easier than the Romance languages. It had more rules, but fewer exceptions I thought.</p>
<p>Yes, the endings made it obvious. Pluralization was simple and rulebound. It made the gender a non-issue, much like English. </p>
<p>Also accenting the second to last syllable on 98% of words made things simple and almost sing-song. </p>
<p>I would agree that German is probably easier in some ways, but like you mentioned the neuter gender and just having to memorize which nouns were which gender made it tedious.</p>
<p>We were lucky that our high school offers several languages through second year of AP, but unlucky that our D picked a language with a mostly awful department. She had one great teacher in five years of the language, and then the school put someone both nasty and incompetent in charge of all honors classes, so there was no way even to switch to someone tolerable (e.g. someone who didn't make nice kids cry in class and held office hours to help kids confused by her less than coherent lessons) without dropping out of honors. Finally, after grade 11, D had had enough. The school was quite firm that D wouldn't have taken the most challenging curriculum if she didn't stick it out through her second year of AP language, even if she took an AP in a different subject instead. Given the pep talks at every college night we ever attended about how students have to take the most challenging curriculum -- step right up for AP physics BC all you future art historians bla bla -- we were worried. D, on the other hand, insisted she would never speak another work of her language ever again under any circumstances and signed up for an AP that interested her more. Apparently colleges couldn't care less that she didn't stuck it out for six instead of a mere five horrific years, and now she is a college freshman starting a new language from scratch in lieu of having to have anything to do with the language she learned to loathe in high school. This is only slight exaggeration. I could probably get her to speak the language again, to the extent that she is capable, if I won the lottery and footed a really good trip to the country in question. With shopping. And a pony. And an extremely cute tutor.</p>