Parker, a school where diversity is engrained in the core values, offers many different language classes for students to broaden their cultural horizons and focus on a language of their choosing. For many, language classes are a space to immerse themselves in a new culture and learn, but for others, they are simply a graduation requirement.

Parker offers courses in Spanish, French, Latin, and Mandarin. Eighth grade students choose which language they would like to take in high school, and their decisions involve many factors. Students must take at least two consecutive years of one language and get three years’ worth of total language credits, but outside of those requirements, they are free to take whatever language they choose.

Students who have been at Parker since Junior Kindergarten have been taking Spanish classes for ten years. On the other hand, a student new-to-Parker may have different experience speaking Spanish or may have studied or grown up with another foreign language. 

Students seem to gravitate towards languages that will be easier for them based on their own experiences. Someone who has previously taken French or Mandarin may choose those languages to study.

High school, like any workplace, can be stressful, rigorous, and requires making tough decisions. Choosing a language that caters to a student’s strengths or that is easier could mean one less thing to worry about.

For many rising ninth graders at Parker, this means choosing Spanish or French. The high number of speakers of these languages also means that they have a practical advantage if a student plans to work abroad or do something with language as a career.

Spanish and French are modern romance languages, Indo-European languages that evolved from Latin. Romance languages are generally easier for native English speakers to learn as they don’t contain complex, unfamiliar grammatical structures such as cases or agglutination.

However, teachers believe there is value to languages with more usefulness, meaning more global popularity and practical applications.“More time on task will create greater linguistic proficiency,” Pritikin said. “We would love to see everybody stick it out for as long as they could so that they can be Americans with a working proficiency in a language other than English, and that takes more years of study.”

As Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Latin are connected to many other languages, making knowledge of these languages useful for a variety of other languages in a variety of countries.

Mandarin differentiates itself as being the only non-romance language available to the upper school. Min-I Lee, Parker’s only Mandarin teacher said, “Throughout the years, I do see a decline in Mandarin enrollment.” She believes it may have something to do with the way Mandarin used to be taught at Parker.

Mandarin used to be taught at Parker through transliteration, a technique where words are spelled phonetically in English instead of  written in the language’s actual script. Since Mandarin characters are different from English characters, they were not taught to students. Only the sounds and words were taught, but not the actual Mandarin script.

With the introduction of the Mandarin script, the curriculum changed. Letters that are different from English may have turned students away from the idea of taking Mandarin. This goes back to the idea that a more difficult language class could add stress that students see as extra on top of other high school stresses, making Mandarin seem less manageable. Mandarin has “tones,” which are pitches and inflections in a speaker’s intonation. This can change the meaning or connotation of a word depending on how the tone is used. This is very different from English and can be challenging for non-native Mandarin speakers.

Lee says, though, that some students are not deterred by this difficulty. “Of course, there are students who love it,” Lee said. “They get admiration from their peers, ‘oh, how cool that is.’” 

Latin is a third romance language offered to students, but it is not modern. Tracing back to the Roman Empire, Latin has been around for centuries and is the base of many modern languages. It is considered a “dead language” as very few people worldwide speak it.

 The many different tenses of the language make Latin very tough to speak. Theoretically, a “dead” language with few speakers and little real-world use should be harder, as there are not as many outside resources for practice. However, Latin being “dead” has only increased its popularity for Parker students.

According to Upper School French teacher Loren Pritikin, who has seen the evolution of the Parker language department, there exists a concept called “the four skill sets.” Made up of listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing, these four concepts are vital to any language learner, so they are carefully crafted into each language program.

Of course, different languages require different amounts of each skill. Since Latin is no longer widely spoken, there is less emphasis on speaking. Many students may see this as making Latin easier. In addition, students who feel stressed about pronunciation or don’t enjoy things such as public speaking may see a non-speaking-based language class as less rigorous and anxiety-inducing.

Language courses may start easy but end up challenging. Ethan Dennis, a junior who switched from Spanish II to French I, says, “I know how the course continues into high school, and it becomes a lot more written-based.” He says he prefers “a much more oral-based class” because he could “use conversational Spanish, like Spanish that would work in the real world.” So even if a language is easier in theory, the course may delve into more challenging aspects of the language, which students could see as discouraging.

From his perspective, a more conversational track would work better for some students.“I think an oral-based course would work well for Parker,” Dennis said. “I think kids would enjoy being able to speak it more instead of having to sit and read books all day. They would actually be able to go out into the real world and be able to speak Spanish.” The difficulty of a course based on a linguistic challenge or personal enjoyment, amongst other things, can factor into the decisions a student makes regarding their language courses.