<p>If your daughter has any interest in history, esp art history, or other things that potentially involves studying Renaissance related topics, she might do well with Italian. During college, I ended up trying to read some articles in Italian with a dictionary and HS french background for some seminars I was taking. Time consuming to say the least. </p>
<p>My french has been of very little use outside of couple of trips to France where they weren’t all that helpful either.</p>
<p>Practically, with the exception of a handful of professions, there is no strong reason to choose one language over another based on the likelihood of using it “day to day”.</p>
<p>In business, medicine and science English is the lingua franca, so arguments regarding the usefulness of one language over another are rarely convincing.</p>
<p>The more compelling reason for learning a second language is that it opens a window to another culture, and often to another way of life. It serves to broaden one’s education. Then in particular studies/avocations – especially critical writing and debate, knowledge of certain languages serves to strengthen one’s ability in their native english. What this means is that study of a new language is most effective when it is complemented by study of the culture where the language is used, and especially of the literature, music and art of that culture.</p>
<p>Any of the romance languages is a good choice. I personally recommend french or italian because they are mostly tied to “one” culture. Spanish is tied to many cultures, to the extent that it doesn’t easily “open the window to a specific culture”. You have to pick.</p>
<p>Success in learning a new language is strongly influenced by personal passion. So definitely let your daughter decide without biasing her decision. Language study becomes more and more enjoyable as you get proficient, and you can read classical and modern works in that language, and when you can appreciate the folk music of the culture, and so on. One language taken for 4 or more years is of much higher personal value than several languages taken for 2 years each.</p>
<p>If your D takes to the language consider a year abroad so she can be immersed in the language AND the culture.</p>
<p>Apologies for going off topic, but I’m hoping to talk to an audience ‘in the know’. Oldest has taken french for what will be 11 years (we are in Canada)…however since she has no desire to take it senior year, and her transcript shows just the four years of highschool…will it matter than it appears she took only 3 years of a language?</p>
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<p>Also, see if scheduling is an issue - at my school, there was only one German teacher and two (and then one once I graduated) French teachers, but like 5 Spanish teachers, so getting four years was also more difficult with French and German than Spanish.</p>
<p>Spanish. I told my kids to study Spanish. It is useful just about anywhere in the US and is an advantage in many jobs. I think the number of Spanish speakers in the US will keep increasing for awhile.</p>
<p>I studied French in college, Spanish more recently. Spanish was easy after all the French–but it may work the other way, too. Most students/teachers always say that Spanish is the easiest to learn. </p>
<p>My kids ignored my advice and picked what they liked-- Latin and French.<br>
The boys like Latin because there is little speaking in class–mostly reading/writing/grammar. And I think they had a sense that “kids like them”–geeks,nerds-- were in the Latin class. Like me, my D picked French because she just loves the sound of it.
(I always wondered how awful and English/American accent sounds to French speakers.)</p>
<p>BTW, several times I have traveled in Italy with Spanish speakers–they just spoke Spanish with an Italian accent and put an “i” “o” or “a” on the ends of words. Seemed to work pretty well ;)</p>
<p>Spanish. (My kids didn’t take my advice, and your kid probably won’t either. Not a big deal to just let her pick what she wants.)</p>
<p>Spanish and or Chinese! Both are and will continue to be very useful!</p>
<p>I think as we look at world markets and business trends, those that speak Chinese will have huge job opportunities.</p>
<p>I think Spanish is much more obvious. Especially here in the US.</p>
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<p>Just awful. Which is why I gave up trying to teach French to my son when he was 3 or 4: I could not stand his pronunciation, especially the “tu.” His cousins speak English more fluently than my generation did (I was the exception). In middle school, he studied Spanish and continued in high school, just because he had the space for it on his schedule. But he really liked Latin more. Still no French. 
H and I once went to Italy. I could get by with my French and the remnants of my Latin together with a French-Italian dictionary.</p>
<p>Somehow I knew marite would have the answer to that. . .</p>
<p>I love Italian, but I’d be surprised if many of the Italian classes aren’t singletons, which might make scheduling more challenging as your daughter moves through high school, especially if there are a lot of singleton advanced classes in subjects she’s likely to take.</p>
<p>But overall, I’d go for the good teachers every time. D had a fabulous Latin teacher and wonderful French teacher, and that made a huge difference. Spanish had some not-so-pleasant or effective teachers at her school (though some were good) – and a much lower pass rate on the AP exams. I can’t remember the last time one of the Latin students didn’t pass the AP exam.</p>
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<p>This is a very good point. It’s hard for schools to plan schedules for students who have multiple courses that have only one section each. Advanced levels of less-popular foreign languages very often have only one section. If your daughter is planning to take other subjects that have only one section each (band and orchestra are examples; the others vary from school to school), she might want to choose the foreign language that has the most sections.</p>
<p>But don’t assume, without asking the school, that certain courses are likely to have only one section. You might be surprised. I was certainly surprised to discover that my son’s high school had five sections of AP Psychology and a teacher who did nothing but teach that course. I would have thought that AP Psychology would be a specialty elective taken by very few people, but in fact it was one of the most popular courses in the school. Who would have guessed? Similarly, in the high school I attended, Chorus had multiple sections. The entire group of about 200 only performed together at dress rehearsals and concerts; the rest of the time, they met in smaller classes. I don’t think many people would have guessed that, either.</p>
<p>^^^Agree with Chinese, aka as Mandarin and Cantonese, as China becomes an even bigger player on the international stage…</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody has mentioned the conventional wisdom that, all other things being equal, Spanish is easier to learn than the others. (I guess there are fewer irregular constructions.)</p>
<p>I would probably let quality of instruction in the high school be the deciding factor.</p>
<p>Now i don’t know about rankings but which is language out of the following four is easy to learn? And it applies everywhere you go? I mean every place in the world? French, Mandarin, Japanese, or Spanish.</p>
<p>I took spanish all of my years in high school and also Italian during my senior year as well. It’s very similar to spanish. If she takes one or the other, she could probably learn the other language rather easily later on in life.</p>
<p>I also decided to take spanish in college. I think it’s by far the most useful of languages. I wouldn’t consider myself fluent but I am pretty decent at it… I pronounce words the way they are supposed to be pronounced… I’m very good at reading and knowing what people are saying when people speak to me in spanish, but it sometimes takes me a bit of time to think of the words for what i want to say and to conjugate them… whereas when I see the word or hear the word I instantly translate it in my head. I think that’s normal?? I speak in spanish to our cleaning people at work all the time… I’ve also been able to give people directions and help some customers who speak it as well.</p>
<p>I say go with who ever the best teacher. The biggest obstacle to learning a new language is learning to NOT think in the structures of your first language. Once you know that, a second or third language is much easier to learn, because you have already broken down the barrier of structured thinking. Both of my kids started German in middle school precisely because the German teacher was amazing – she only ever spoke to the kids in German, both of my kids were convinced that she did not even know English until years later. They both then learned Italian while we were living in Italy – S1 has some French and some Spanish, and S2 has some Spanish and some Russian. The biggest advantage they have is that they are not afraid to start out in a language they don’t know – they just jump in and start. They owe that all to their middle school German teacher. I still remember one of S1’s first German class projects. The teacher drove her pick-up truck to school with a refrigerator and a bunch of watermelons on it. The kids had to unload the truck on to the front lawn of the school, find a way to plug in the refrigerator, cool down the watermelons and then sell them to other students all the time only speaking german. It sounds bizarre, but it really served to break down their fear of speaking a different language. Both kids have traveled extensively alone, and neither one of them is at all afraid to a least try a new language.</p>
<p>My spanish one teacher in junior high only spoke to us in spanish. she didn’t use the text book and did it her own way. We had to write two five page papers during that first year. the kids who took spanish one at the other junior high did it by the book. when we met up together in high school and had spanish two, the kids from my class were much much more prepared. the teaching methodology can make all the difference in the world.</p>
<p>I would LOVE to learn japanese as well!</p>