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I am not yet bilingual, but if you asked any of my American friends, I am. I moved to Norway at 39, and 5 years later still struggle to understand spoken Norwegian. I speak and read it, in my opinion, okay. I really envy people who can at least understand a foreign language even if they can’t express themselves in it. You at least have some semblance of what’s going on even if you can’t fully participate.
In my experience, having English only as a mother tongue is awful in Europe/scandanavia. But growing up with any other language, having English as at least a 2nd language, wow look at all those open doors.
The US public school system does not set kids up for success, in their own country or abroad. The foreign language requirement in HS is a joke and effectively sets us up to be able to overconfidently order coffee and ask where the museum is if we ever get to travel abroad.
I have heard that they start out here in Norway with English pretty young (maybe 8-10yo?) as a requirement, and then add mandatory electives later in French, German, or Latin. I don’t have kids in school so this may not be 100% accurate.
Bruh, they taught spanish for like 2 years in middle school, but I could never retain much besides the Day of the Dead animated film they always play near the end of the schoolyear.
Like, my Spanish Lexicon is: Uno Dos Tres Quatro Cinco Seis Seite Ocho Nueve Diaz, me llamo pizza, Me No Habla Espanol...
and... that's about it
So for Highschool, I kinda cheated the system a bit, I chose Chinese because... Mandarin Chinese was one of my native languages (went to school in China until Grade 2) so I sort of just want to get easy grades (I ended up getting an A for the first year, B for the second year). Somehow, kids in the Chinese class behaved better than those kids in Spanish class, I guess people who willingly choose the hardest language tend to be less of troublemakers.
I seriously doubt anyone retained any of it. I only retained it because it was more of a 1st grade refresher class, rather than actually learning it for the first time.