As an American who grew up at a religious school in the 90s, we absolutely did not (or at least I never had access to one). Obviously places like Kora or Tibet have been effected in their history (I still want to read your answers 😁), but what about, for example, New Zealand? Or Sierra Leonne? Or Portugal? I’m just curious to see how pervasive the new Global Language already is by this point.
BonusQuestion: Is it mostly following their Belt-and-Road Initiative? Wouldn’t that be something?
Umm, gonna answer as an American, for clarity: many schools across the US have language classes of all sorts. Every niece/nephew I know across multiple states could study French, Spanish, Latin, Chinese, Italian, etc, etc. Chinese is one of many (typically Mandarin).
It’s very common in US public schools, and has increased significantly over the last 50 years.
Chinese wasn’t available in my school decades ago, but was in nearby schools.
We only had Spanish for 8th grade and up. When I was in 7th they had high school French but cut it for budget before I got there.
What about Russian? Serious question; around here it was a relatively popular choice (we share a border with Russia) one or two decades ago, but I suspect this might have changed recently.
My school offered (from most popular to least popular):
I think my child’s high school offers the same, although I don’t know the relative popularities. I’m confident Spanish is still most popular, and judging by the number of posters around the school from German classes trying to convince kids to take German, I’m thinking German is still not very popular.