turkish!

Child brought home flyer from school regarding The Much Discussed Turkish Language class. Right now he's in Spanish class and being hideously adorable massacreing the Spanish language. I'm helping him to totally learn nothing at all.

Also, endless fun of yelling commands at each other. LEVANTASE! SIENTESE! Seriously. You cannot have more fun than that. Child fell over giggling after the last of 'venga aqui, poco brat' bit. Also, quiero un pony. Cause I do not know what pony is in Spanish, which is one of three phrases that sends him into giggles and I don't know why. Of course, this is the kid who wnated to name the class goldfish tutankamon. Sadly, it was named Morris.

Grr. Seriously. Morris.

Anyway, Turkish language class. It replaces Spanish in the curriculum, but seriously, the *perks*. Field trips to the Turkish cultural center. Food. God, food. Tickets to some thing this spring. Food. Enrichment activities and after school club. Did I mention the promises of food?

I feel like enrolling there. Okay, when I was in elementary school, they did not bribe us with food, okay? Just saying.

Anyway, being me, I left it up to him, though I figured what answer he'd choose--I mean, seriously, Spanish class is not offering field trips and feasts, okay? Nor the exotic of a non-North American country. OTOH, I can't of anything more impractical unless it was like, Swahili. We live in Texas for God's sake.

OTOH, so cool. I gotta side with him on this; he has the rest of his life to be practical. Awesome.

**correction of spelling of sit down, sientese, by on_the_ground. How *does* one do special characters anyway?

Comments

[ratcreature]

Well, here you have to take at least two foreign languages to graduate high school at all, and if you want to drop one because you're bad at it, you have to take a replacement, but it's common to just take up a third anyway, because two kind of counts as lazy, and they offer you up to four or in some schools even five if you are inclined that way, but five is uncommon.

I started English in fifth grade, then took Latin in seventh grade because for some inexplicable reason the recommended it for people good with maths (the alternative would have been French), then I could have taken Italian in ninth grade, but didn't because I didn't like languages much, and then in eleventh grade I could drop Latin if I took French, so I did that and had French as my third (mostly because I loved French comics), when some others took it as fourth, and that year they also offered optional Arabic. The little bit of Spanish I know I learned over two years of classes after high school. Anyway, I'm only fluent in English, and just have some knowledge of Spanish and French, while my Latin is mostly forgotten. But my language skills are kind of sucky,

I mean, many of my friends speak at least two or three foreign languages fluently, not just one, and I mean English doesn't really count for anything as a foreign language since everybody expects you to be fluent in it anyway, and you are supposed to know foreign languages besides English. I mean obviously in the EU you get to have many more languages in a smaller area than in North America, like if I were to drive for just a few hours or even less I inevitably would end up somewhere with a different language, so the incentive may be greater.