Re: CHAT: Lg prefs (was: Re: Blandness)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Roger Mills wrote:
>
> > Same here, but there were certainly cliques based on many other factors.
> > There was a bit of  friendly rivalry between our (American) Spanish teacher
> > and the (native) French teacher, who propagandized his students with things
> > like, "ils parlent espagnole comme une vache française....".  French was far
> > and away the more popular; Spanish was considered too easy.  And for some
> > reason the very fine (native) German teacher had to beg for students.
>
> <laugh> (at the quote)
>
> When I took French in middle school, Spanish was far and away the most
> popular...perhaps because we were in Houston.  :-)  Then French, and then
> German the year I started French was canceled as a class because there
> weren't enough people, so one of my friends sort of took it privately
> from the teacher after school or something.  :-(
>
> Said friend was half-German (no relation to my current boyfriend AFAIK)
> and went absolutely ballistic whenever anyone called him a Nazi...can't
> blame him.  (He was brown-haired and brown-eyed so far as I remember.)
Hmm. At my high school, (in Toronto) most students that take languages
stick with French (which is mandatory in grade 9), while some take
Spanish and some (very few) take German. The Spanish teacher is a native
speaker of the language (even though her last name is Cockburn - I
figure it has something to do with marriage), the German teacher is
Canadian but spent a good deal of time studying in Germany and there are
a whackload of French teachers, but I don't think any of them are native
speakers. Urk.

Anyways, I'm one of the few students taking German, and there are 14
students in my Grade 11 German class. In Grade 10 there were 20-odd, and
there will probably only be like 10 next year. Apparently, though, there
are two Grade 10 classes this year, so probably some 30-odd students.
Spanish has two classes in Grade 11, and French has many.

But most people don't take languages after they've done their mandatory
grade 9 French - and I can't really blame them. From Grade 4 to Grade 9,
I barely learned any French, and not by any fault of myself or my
teachers. Seems the school board in afraid to actually have us learn
French, or something like that.

But as a German student, I occasionaly get called a "Nazi", which
*really* bothers me. Mostly because I'm Jewish, but also because the
whole German = Nazi stereotype really bothers me.

Well, that's enough of that.

--
Robert