Students can now choose from 26 languages in senior cycle, 15 of which are non-curricular EU languages that students can opt to be examined in if it is their mother tongue.

Romanian and Bulgarian are being examined for the first time this year and while only a handful have opted to be examined in the latter, 24 students will be sitting the Romanian exam. Exam papers for these 15 languages will be based on the European Baccalaureate.

Languages such as Russian and Japanese are increasingly being taught at senior cycle with several schools around the country offering them at Leaving Cert level. The number of students sitting Japanese has doubled since 2006, with over 100 students taking it this year.

Meanwhile, as more students choose to take honours French over honours Irish, Daithi Mac Carthaigh of Conradh na Gaeilge called for the syllabus to be changed. "It's not surprising that more people are taking honours French when you consider how overburdened the Irish honours paper is with literature, " he said, adding there should be more emphasis placed on understanding, speaking, reading and writing the language.

LANGUAGES TAKEN IN LEAVING CERT 2006-07

2 007 2006
English 49,328 48,406
Irish 44,937 43,928
French 28,487 27,809
German 7,694 7,371
Italian 236 242
Spanish 2728 2371
Russian 188 176
Latin 122 113
Japanese 101 55
Arabic 143 110
Ancient Greek 11 <10
Hebrew Studies <10 <10

Non-Curricular EU Language
2006 2007
Dutch 16 22
Portuguese 28 22
Polish 52 20
Latvian 36 16
Lithuanian 65 45
Romanian 24 n/a

Others* 44 25

* Include Modern Greek, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Estonian, Slovakian, Bulgarian (from 2007)