<p>Well, in all honesty, it's not really a situation.
It just happens that due to school budget cuts, French was taken from my middle school; as a result, I was forced to take Spanish. In high school, the options for languages are: Latin, French, Mandarin, Italian, and Spanish.</p>
<p>I've had one year of French, one year of Spanish, barely a year of Mandarin, and a dash of Latin.</p>
<p>So now, I don't know which language to take. D: Spanish is out of the question; no offense, but I hate it. So, should I take French, Latin, or Mandarin, and why?</p>
<p>(By the way, I speak Cantonese if that changes your decision, lol :P)</p>
<p>Take two of them. Mandarin because it’s not like latin based languages and latin because latin is cool and most languages are based on it. I would say Spanish because a ton of people speak it these days but you said it was out of the question.</p>
<p>I wish my school offered such cool choices; we only have German, Spanish, and French.</p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes French was cool, I just liked it, and the teacher was really awesome; Spanish is really boring, lol, and I hate the teacher ;D</p>
<p>@spiritualwitch Aww, I wish I had German xD If I take two, what would I lose? In terms of study, electives? Sorry, I’m really nooby. I’m going to high school in a few months D:</p>
<p>Actually- my last question was the most important. If you want to do business or something like that, take Mandarin. If you want to go into law/history/medicine/etc- take Latin. If you don’t want to do any of these but need a language, take French.</p>
<p>■■■■■, I’m so sorry! xD I forgot that you asked a third question! But now…I think I’ll take French and Mandarin, lol All my friends are telling me that Latin is impractical, which it is after high school. Thanks! :3</p>
<p>Latin is actually VERY useful if you go into medicine or law. Outside of that, yeah not so much. I know Latin and am a history buff but it’s not going to get you very far :(</p>
<p>No, no! Lol. Only take Latin if you are going into law or medicine or something that has a lot of latin terms in it. Take Mandarin because it is very useful. </p>
<p>Take French if you like it (I think it’s a worthless language though, but I’m biased).</p>
<p>Well, I actually think French is pretty useful. French and Spanish are both used pretty widely. Don’t hate on a language if you hate its people =] And I actually love french culture. It’s so classy and refined, and obviously not everyone is rude there. Maybe just the people you’ve met?</p>
<p>Also, to the OP, don’t automatically cast Spanish aside. It seems like you mainly don’t like it because you had a bad teacher (although I may be wrong), but it’s pretty fun, along with French, if you do have a good teacher. There’s no telling whether you’ll have a good latin or mandarin teacher either =]</p>
<p>Latin is useful though, since a lot of things such as plant/animal names and legal terms are in latin.</p>
<p>I actually take french, spanish, and latin, and I’d have to say that spanish is def the easiest. Latin has a LOT of forms and conjugations and declensions you have to remember, although after some time, it becomes natural. And it has a big payoff when you read the Aeneid by Virgil, which you might read if you go into AP Latin. French is also awesome- slightly harder than spanish, but in my opinion, it’s soooo gorgeous. Here’s a link of a french actor speaking in french: [YouTube</a> - I interviewed Gaspard Ulliel (french with english subtitles)](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZxCZRk_2KQ]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZxCZRk_2KQ).</p>
<p>Three more things:
How easy is it to learn mandarin if you already know Cantonese? I’m not really familiar with the different forms of Chinese, but I would say that if it’s easy enough to learn or pick up mandarin while already knowing a different form of Chinese, then you should pick another language to take- capitalize on the opportunity.
Why can’t you take Italian? You could just enter Italian 1, or self-study first year Italian over the summer if you want to be with your grade. Italian is also nice, and it has a nice culture =]
You should think about this a little more, rather than take the advice of random people on the internet (including me). Ultimately, the decision is up to you. What do you think you could stand taking for the next four years? What do you like the best? What will be the best combination of languages to take? What is most interesting to you? Are you sure you can’t take three languages? Think about it =]</p>
<p>Actually, I said I hate the language and the culture as well. And I never said everyone is rude. What you call classy and refined I call stuck-up and snobby.</p>
<p>@peachpuff The max languages I can take is two. No thanks, not interested in Spanish or Italian. Never liked it, and never did even before I met my teacher.</p>
<p>I think it’s decided that I’ll take Mandarin, but for my second language, I guess I’ll just switch between since they aren’t as mandatory.</p>
<p>And btw, I’VE SEEN THAT VIDEO BEFORE. I love Gaspard Ulliel, lol :P</p>
<p>By the way, if you speak Cantonese, you might find Mandarin kind of difficult- you’ll have some of the vocabulary (though a lot of it isn’t applicable), but the pronunciation will be kind of hard to get used to. Living in Hong Kong, I know that tons and tons of people have really crap Mandarin pronunciation, but think they speak it because they know the words.</p>
<p>Then again, if you’re willing to take two languages, you’re probably pretty good at learning them- and you seem pretty set on Mandarin already. Just wanted to warn you of the possibilities. [:</p>
<p>^^I was in love with Gaspard Ulliel when he was in that horrible Hannibal movie.</p>
<p>I would say Mandarin and Latin. Mandarin is cool, Latin is incredible. Of the languages you mentioned, I’ve studied Latin, French, and Spanish. I, too, thought Spanish sucked. If not Latin (since so many people here have disparaged it as useless. ho cares for utility? Translation is such fun), I’d say French.</p>
<p>I completely disagree with Romani’s characterization of the French people. There are about 60 million of them. Obviously, one simple adjective “rude” will always be wrong when one is describing such a large group. Yes, Parisians have gained a reputation, not entirely unfairly, for their attitudes toward tourists, but no one likes tourists, and in every city with large numbers of tourists, the locals are seen as being at best stand-offish and at worst inconsiderate. Of course, this reputation is going to be at its height for the primate city of the country that receives the most tourism. Nonetheless, especially when one gets outside of Paris, many French are quite kind. They’re glad to hear even faltering school French.
Even if one considers the French to be rude, the Francophone world extends far outside. More people speak Spanish, but they’re concentrated. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time traveling in Latin and South America, there’s not that much point in choosing to learn Spanish, especially as you’ve already said you don’t like it. The Francophonie is spread out over a much larger area, reaching four continents. Besides that, in countries outside the Francophonie, French and English are usually the Western languages offered, almost never Spanish. </p>
<p>But I would still recommend Latin. There’s no fun like translation fun. Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque!</p>
Rawr, I wish we could pick three languages, lol</p>