Second language facts for kids

High school Spanish taught as a second language to a class of native English speakers at an American private school in Massachusetts

Second language is a word given to a language that a person learns in addition to their first language. A second language may be learned in a formal or informal way, e.g. at school or in a family. It is possible that a person speaks two or more second languages.

Adults do not learn languages the same way they did when they were young. So if they learn a second language, it is difficult, and they have little chance of speaking it as well as their native language because learning a second language will require a lot of effort.

Some children have more than one native language like when they live in a foreign country or when their father speaks a different language from their mother.

Images for kids

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  Blackboard used in class at Harvard shows students' efforts at placing the diaeresis and acute accent diacritics used in Spanish orthography.

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  A German student learning French. English (1.5 billion learners), French (82 million learners) and Chinese (30 million learners) are the three most commonly studied foreign languages.

See also

In Spanish: Segunda lengua para niños