i’m in the usa and my school has german, spanish and french. i’m taking spanish all 4 years of high school and german starting this autumn.
i’m in the usa and my school has german, spanish and french. i’m taking spanish all 4 years of high school and german starting this autumn.
India - local language, English and Hindi
(Language is a controversial issue in India, and the present situation is more a political compromise than what’s most useful, with many rules and exceptions, and some states / schools simply ignoring the whole compromise altogether.)
I lived in India(in what at the time, was called Hyderabad) for a while, as a foreign Arab. Most of the curriculum was in English, with both Telugu(the official language) and Hindu language subjects. I hated it.
Coming from an Arab country where the most English we were taught was the ABCs, and then being told I had to juggle 3 entirely new language. I wasn’t even exempt from it. I would alternative from getting 61 out 75 in a hindui exam to falling the class, depending on if the teacher let’s me cheat.
I couldn’t even tell you what letters I was writing, I just drew them as a I saw them. My dad even forced me to watch Hindi cartoons in the hopes I will magically pick it up. For a while, I even had a Telugu teacher teaching me the alphabets. None of it stuck.
Honestly that period of my life was really damaging. I left India with full English and not a hint of Arabic. Coming back to the Arab world, to even get to the point of conversing with people again took years, and I still don’t know how to read or write beyond a first graders level. Reading still gives me a headache.
Yeah, it’s a political compromise. Not what’s best for the students. At most the school could have offered you Urdu instead of Hindi, since it uses a modified Arabic script and has a few Arabic words.
It’s still ‘Hyderabad’, by the way! Thankfully the religious nutcases haven’t won elections in that state.
You know, I never thought of it that way, probably would have made the transition back to Arabic easier too, when I moved back to my country.