[jasonjei]

I took AP Latin: Vergil in high school. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex (I'm also not surprised Japanese has few perfect scores). I know I didn't get a passing score.

I'm surprised however that Chinese has no perfect scores. I remember some students that had moved from Taiwan or China would take AP Chinese to get free college credits. The grammar of Chinese is so simple compared to Latin or Japanese. And from what I recall, AP Chinese tested Mandarin at a 2nd grade level, and didn't test much or any of the chengyu (成語: Chinese proverbs) of which are difficult because of the shear number to remember.

Perhaps graders could tell they were native speakers, and thus raised the bar? (I took 3rd-year Chinese as a filler class "language requirement" in college and the professor expected high-school level of Chinese while she expected chicken scratch from others for the same grade.)

AP Computer Science seems likely to have a good number of perfect scores. I remember a test reviewer telling me that they often overlooked syntactical errors (unbalanced parentheses) and would allow API calls to incorrectly labeled API functions. (I don't disagree, because CS is more about understanding data structures than it is knowing how to put code on paper without an IDE or reference.)

[mahyarm]

I wouldn't be surprised that a native speaker would do something one way, and a test would insist the 'correct' way is actually pretty awkward and wouldn't be used.

[SoreGums]

This... In Vietnam seeing some (as a 30yr old native English speaker) of the "correct" answers to VN made English homework or tests is interesting to say the least. The questions are so awkward, pretty sure the only reason the students able to deduce the answer is because they have been taught vn-English so it makes sense to them ;)

[sliverstorm]

I've always noticed ESL students who have progressed to fluency have a significantly better understanding of English from a technical standpoint. I know most of the rules by "gut feel", but they can actually recite the rule, identify parts of speech, etc. As a result I expect they would do better than I (a native speaker) on an extremely pedantic English exam.

[HeavenFox]

I am a native Chinese speaker (lived in China till college), and I once tried the AP Chinese problems for fun with a friend of mine (also a native speaker). We both find it surprisingly difficult, because it really is geared towards second language learners. One speaking question was like, describe your favorite Chinese film and explain its cultural significance. Okay, I watch films with friends all the time, but it never occurred to me to ponder their "cultural significance", and I have only like 60 seconds to prepare.

[thaumasiotes]

Some films have a little more overt cultural significance than others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_%281994_film%29

> The film was banned in mainland China by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television due to its critical portrayal of various policies and campaigns of the Communist government. In addition, Zhang [Yimou] was banned from filmmaking for two years.

I agree that it's a ridiculous question, but don't attribute that to the test being "geared towards second language learners". It's geared towards the priorities of US language teachers, which are heavily slanted towards "cultural appreciation" rather than actually getting students to know the language they're appreciating so much.

Judging by your comment, you are also a native speaker of English. Is that true? It's pretty unusual for someone who only left China as an adult.

[schoen]

> That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex

Did you study Latin for several years before? I think that class is typically intended for people who have already studied Latin at the high school level for three years (most likely reading Caesar or other authors first). That would give a lot more opportunity to become familiar with Latin grammar rules.

[jasonjei]

Yeah, I took it from 8th grade to 12th grade. In my class of 10 or so students, only one of us got a passing score. Perhaps our teacher didn't adequately challenge us. We had read Cicero and other Latin literature yet Latin grammar always seemed so challenging for me to parse. I could make out enough meaning but never do a literal translation well enough. I took it because I couldn't speak any of the Romance languages ;) I would have taken Japanese or Chinese in a heartbeat if they were offered since I had lived in Taiwan in my middle school years.

I got all the rules (declensions, conjugations, etc) but I always had trouble piecing them collectively. A lot of the declension endings would be the same (such as 4th declension nouns) and it was hard for me to differentiate between a nominative and accusative in the context of a sentence. Hence I never studied Latin in college. I'm sure the world is a much better place for that. Wow, I can't believe I am reopening old wounds from 12 years ago ;)

I genuinely believe the single perfect test score is also empirical proof of the difficulty of Latin in an English-speaking world...

I would much rather parse MIPS assembly all day than read Latin.

[rincebrain]

It's a really excellent demonstration of how difficult it can be to internalize certain things for people - I was eventually acceptably good at extracting meaning from Latin after years of taking it, but it never became anywhere near an internalized process of digesting the sentences, and my instructors were quite skilled in teaching and Latin.

One of the more interesting hypotheses suggested was that Latin classes, unlike a lot of SL classes, are not nearly as "immersive" as more common ones, and a lot of the language processing hardware we've got is better at digesting from spoken immersion. (Part of that, of course, is that outside of specialized environments, we don't really have any "native" speakers; part of that is also that common "spoken" Latin was a lot simpler than the brick-by-brick construction of Vergil or Cicero.)

[schoen]

I've done spoken Latin stuff as well as taking Latin classes, and I tentatively agree with my friends who are Latin teachers and use immersion in the classroom that it should help and that it's a big gap not to have it.

I also agree that the Vergil and Cicero constructions are harder than what you would hear at a spoken Latin gathering (or probably in a Latin-immersion class). The word order people usually use when speaking is more like modern Romance languages (with some tendency to put the verb at the end, but not, say, chiasmus!). That did make me think that ancient Romans probably didn't talk like Cicero or Vergil either. :-)

I always remember this line from Cicero

Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo custodi huius urbis, gratia ...

in which "magna" 'great' modifies "gratia" 'thanks', which is the subject of "est habenda" 'should be given'. That's tricky, or at least a lot to keep in your head when trying to parse it.

[bricestacey]

I agree with everything up until the reading part. I took Latin 8-12th grade and reading it, but with the assistance of our professor, was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had. We topped off the last year studying Virgil, book 2 of the Aeneid, and Juvenal. Hard, but so great