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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
NPCER: learning Spanish in school
I'm starting to shop for preschools for LO. Most schools offer Spanish intro. I'm wondering if this is still practical in today's world. I wish not to affend anyone who's Spanish, but we have more emerging countries in the fields of tech and science. Wouldn't it make more sense to start teaching our children Hindi and Mandarin? Just throwing it out there to see what anyone thinks because I've been wondering about it lately. Also, maybe I feel this way because of where I live. I've only worked in NJ and the people I've worked with whose second language was English were from India and China. Maybe this isn't the case in other parts of the US. TIA
Re: NPCER: learning Spanish in school
This. I am constantly having to translate Mexican invoices and am thinking about investing in the Spanish edition of Rosetta Stone to help me out in my job. I think both/either Spanish and/or Mandarin would be an asset, and the earlier they start learning the better. Especially with Mandarin... we are good friends with the owner of a Chinese restaurant (who was born in China) and he says it would be very hard for an adult American to learn Mandarin-it's a very difficult language to learn to begin with, and without being immersed in the language...
However, I don't know of any preschool around here that teaches Mandarin, or has the resources to do so. Very few even worry about spanish.
While Mandarin and Hindi would be awesomely amazing options, I doubt you'll find many preschools who offer it. It's probably hard enough to find qualified teachers of critical languages at the secondary and college levels, let alone for the little ones. Spanish is still quite useful though, IMO, if that's what you've got. I'm sure your area does make some difference, but you never know where LO will end up.
That's the thing - in NJ there are many Indians. One of the schools I visited even had an Indian teacher so I can't see why they haven't thought of this. I'm sure Mandarin is very difficult to learn as an adult and should be started young. It can't be that tough to find teachers for those languages. OTOH Spanish and the romance languages are easier to teach and learn, probably why they've been doing it for so long.
I'd also like to point out that due to British colonialization, Indians all speak English. Hindi isn't really used as a language of business in India, so it's really not that useful for Americans.
I'm also reminded of when we were kids and everyone thought we should be learning Japanese. How'd that work out again? One of my cousins did learn Mandarin in his high school though.
As for Spanish, your mileage may vary a lot due to geography. In the Southwest speaking Spanish can be very useful, and it's great if you want to visit South America. While there are plenty of spanish speakers on the East Coast, it's definitely not like it is in California, Arizona and Texas.
The earlier you start your LO on learning another the language, the bigger benefit for them....children are like little sponges when they are that young and will pick it up easily. It's a shame that in this country, we do not focus so much on teaching children other languages - or wait until they are older to do so. In EU, most people will speak 2-3-4 languages. And as someone who lived in Spain for 3 years, knowing Spanish is very very useful....there are many many Spanish speaking people in this world and since I've come back the Spanish that I learned there has come in handy. Business-wise, Spanish could be useful, but I could see Mandarin being useful too but really, the more languages your child is able to learn, the better....
For any of you who are wanting to pick up Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur or any of the other resources out there for foreign languages, I know of a website that has lots of resources for free. You name the language, they probably have it. I was able to get Pimsleur Armenian so I could start learning the language since my H's entire family speaks it. And also some Spanish resources to help me when I was living there....I won't put the website up here, but if anyone here wants it, just shoot me a PM and I will get the link for you....I have the site bookmarked on my computer at home....hopefully the site is still up because it is truly awesome!
(I'm at the office now)
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