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Spanish language in the United States
Spanish is the most popular and widely taught foreign language in the United States.
1. Do American(US) schools teach Peninsular Spanish(European Spanish) or Mexican Spanish? 2. When do American(US) students generally begin to learn Spanish? (In what grade?)
1. Mexicant Spanish
2. 6th Grade for some, a lot don't take it till 9th grade though. You need two consecutive years in a language to graduate. It doesn't have to be Spanish. I never took Spanish in school and I knew many who didn't.
What Peninsular Spanish is? Do you refer to Spanish spoken in Yucatan Peninsula?
Peninsular Spanish is the form of the language spoken in Spain, which is situated on the Iberian PENINSULA. The Yucatán is in Mexico, so that would fall under the "Mexican Spanish" category. ;)
In my school, languages weren't offered until you got to high school, so 8th grade for some and 9th for others. You had to take a language for 2 years minimum, but you could have studied for a total of 5 years. We had a choice between Spanish or French; Spanish was more popular. I don't really think that they taught a certain version of the language in my school. We learned standard pronunciation and grammar (no leísmo or anything like that) and we learned vocabulary from both Spain and Latin America.
<We learned standard pronunciation and grammar.>
Is there such a thing as a standard pronunciation of Spanish language? If there is, is it closer to European Spanish or Mexican Spanish?
In U.S. schools, they almost never teach European Spanish. Texts may include the vosotros form, and indicate the differences in pronunciation, but they always expect Latin American usage. Pronunciation is sort of a "standard" Latin American (like the telenovelas), i.e., pronouncing every consonant--like Mexico or highland Colombia (but without regionalisms)--and unlike Caribbean or Argentinian. They also almost always expect the "tu" forms, not "vos." (Note: I'm sure that there are individual schools and districts that follow a particular pronunciation, especially if they use native-speaker teachers.)
Unlike many parts of the world, U.S. school policy goes by individual local districts. Sometimes even local schools in the same district have different policies. Some places start Spanish in high school, others in Middle or Junior High, and more and more in elementary school. There are even places where one can do immersion in Spanish (all or many of the regular courses taught in Spanish), as they do with French in parts of Anglophone Canada. If a school district offers language(s) (and not all do!), Spanish will almost certainly be on the list--sometimes the only one offered. French is a strong but distant second--many schools offer just those two. German is a distant third. In some areas, other languages are offered--Chinese seems to growing in many places.
1. In high schools in Texas the tendency had been to learn Peninsular Spanish with brief mentions of differences between Spanish Spanish and Mexican Spanish (coche/carro, etc.), but I have a feeling they've made the switch the Mexican since I graduated in 2003. At San Diego State they taught us Mexican Spanish.
2. Students may generally be introduced to some Spanish terms throughout elementary school. But in my school district we didn't actually take Spanish until 8th grade (that was the earliest the district would allow). When I was in elementary school we didn't learn much Spanish at all, when I was in the G/T program we had the option of doing Spanish or French.
I guess I would have to say Mexican SPanish, even though that is not an accurate description of what is taught in American high schools. Slang and refranes (sayings, proberbs, etc) are rarely touched upon. As far as accent, most teachers of high school Spanish are not native speakers, and the Spanish they know is mostly from Mexican dialects. Let's just say RAE documents is not found in high school Spanish classrooms, and vosotros is glazed over like it may as well not even be Spanish (and VOS is almost never touched upon at all, even in some university level Spanish courses)
Most schools in the USA start foreign language rather late compared to other countries. Most start in 6th or 7th grade (start of middle school or Junior high school) or 9th grade (start of high school). Rarely is any foreign language studied in elementary school years, or below the age of about 12 years. Which is rather ironic considering, as most psychologists and linguists know, around age 12 is the 'critical age' for immersion style language learning, i.e. a speaker can achieve native or near native status even as second language if taught under about this age. A few larger urban districs here in the USA have schools devoted to language immersion, usually Spanish or French. And the speach of kids in those schools shows how important language learning YOUNG rather than older, is. My stepson went to a Spanish language immersion school for kindergarten through 3rd grade and while his grammar and vocabulary were not great and were just developing, his pronunciation was better than many of the university Spanish majors I knew.
To add a little, Spanish is not formally studied in elementary schools much at all like I said, BUT, many children are learning Spanish words and phrases through various forms of the media, especially television. Shows like Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, Diego, Maya and Miguel..all have Spanish speaking sentences and phrases to the point my daughter knows many Spanish words. She is 3 and I am teaching her Spanish myself, but she definitely has picked up a lot from these educational TV programs.
The only people who study Spanish in the US are the 2nd generation monolingual English speaking hispanics. They couldn't even understand a simple Spanish sentence and by the time they are through with Spanish studies, they tend to forget it.
So there are more second generation Hispanics than French students in US.
The only people who study french in the US are retarded subnormal that don't know the multiplication table
People of French ancestry in Louisiana study Spanish. Spanish is the most studied foreign language in Louisiana.
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