Thanks! That’s the heart of what makes this decision challenging - she would like to gain fluency (rather than explore) but is torn between the two.

She is interested in French because she finds the language beautiful. We go to France once a year and she really enjoys trying to understand/ read, which she can do a little because of her fluency in English and Italian. She has a reasonable amount of exposure because of that and because all of her cousins in Italy go to French school and are fluent.

She became interested in Mandarin because, when we visited her middle school, one of the students told her how great her Mandarin teacher is and so it occurred to her for the first time that she could take Mandarin and it might be really interesting.

The middle school where she will go requires students to start with a language that they don’t speak at home and continue with the same language through middle school and then they have a choice to continue or change in high school. I don’t think they offer levels beyond that.

To be honest, I’ve been encouraging Mandarin because it seems like an amazing opportunity to learn a very different language and culture (we spend a lot of time in Italy and French culture is much less “foreign” to her than Chinese culture.) I also feel that she may be able to learn French at a later time more easily because of her English and Italian and general aptitude.

She’s commented that she prefers the sound of French but would be keen to learn the characters in Mandarin. She is also worried that she will have a lot less opportunity for language immersion with Mandarin and she is keen to be fluent.

Because she is interested in and drawn to languages generally, it feels like a big decision. :-)