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How can we speak French when we can't even speak English?
The German and French ambassadors to the Court of St James's have just delivered, in the pages of The Spectator, an eloquent rebuke to the British, for our failure to speak foreign languages. At the same time, they have issued a most tactful, diplomatic invitation to us to tell them what we think. How unwise. For one of the things I think, and will now say, since they ask, is that it is all their fault. All the fault of foreigners, I mean.
Foreigners tend to be very stuck up about their ability to speak English. I admit that they tend to speak it extremely well, and that they must have worked very hard to do so; all the same it is extremely irritating for anyone who has made a similar effort to learn to speak German or French, or whatever, to find that they almost always insist on speaking English. This seems to me very unsporting. How can they expect us to learn to speak their languages better, when they always insist on speaking ours?
Of course we understand, in our self-deprecating way, that it is much more important for them to speak our language than it is for us to speak theirs. For us, it is merely an interest, a fascination with their cultures: for them, it is bread and butter, no matter what they may feel about Anglo-Saxon attitudes. We don't like to insist on this obvious fact, and we tactfully say that it is all to do with the American imperium, not the British. But the sad truth is that an English-speaker can get by almost anywhere in the world without speaking a word of any other language.
Meanwhile foreigners, if not simply showing off, seem very anxious to improve their English by practising it on us; it seems mean to stop them. So I suggest to the ambassadors that, if they want us to speak their beautiful languages, they should actually let us have a go, and stop trying to dazzle us with their exquisite English.
The other thing they might consider is that the British get very tired of being told that they are afraid of making fools of themselves in speaking a foreign language, in other words, are too arrogant and vain. I think the British, though indeed vain, quite like making fools of themselves; at any rate, they are far less deeply conventional than most Europeans, and far more prepared to be thought odd. What they dislike is rudely forcing their hesitant French, say, on someone who would prefer to speak English.
A major problem, from the British point of view, is that most European foreign languages are unnecessarily difficult; sometimes the grammatical refinements are positively silly. Why, for example, is a young girl neuter in German? And why isn't a wife feminine? Why have masculine, feminine and neuter at all? It seems merely to cause confusion, and clearly not only to foreigners. All these cases and agreements and subjunctives are a long series of traps for the unwary. One cannot help suspecting that these complications have developed for the specific purpose of silencing foreigners.
Contrariwise, there is so little English grammar that anyone can say almost anything with a reasonable chance of getting it roughly right. I don't suppose Europeans will consider simplifying their grammar in a spirit of harmonisation; I did notice that the French seem to have decided to drop the cedilla, but I am afraid that may not make much difference. Still, it is a step in the right direction.
Of course, foreigners are not entirely to blame for our failure to speak their languages. The finger of blame should really be pointed at the British education establishment. For years, education ideologues have been working away to destroy all the disciplines on which learning, and learning a language, depend - constant discipline, learning by rote, repetition, rules, grammar, an insistence on spelling, regular homework and tests.
All that has been cast out. As a result, many British state school children can now barely write English, let alone any other language; there's nothing xenophobic about our inarticulacy. In the interests of equality, the educationists long ago abandoned the fascination of what's difficult. They now aim, in Tony Blair's ludicrously silly phrase of this week's grand announcements for education, at Excellence For All.
If our Prime Minister is so illiterate that he cannot immediately see the absurdity of that phrase, and its ignorant egalitarian contradiction in terms, if he has such a tin ear for language that he cannot hear it, how can the wretched victims of state schooling expect to deal with foreign refinements of meaning?
In fact, Mr Blair appears to speak passable French. That is because, when he was a schoolboy, the basics were well taught at all good schools. All Oxbridge candidates had to do Latin to O-level, which was much harder then and is a perfect basis for learning languages. For that reason, a great many British people of our generation do in fact speak more than one European language quite well, when we can get a word in.
Now, even in private schools it seems, languages are appallingly badly taught; current language acquisition theory seems completely misguided - it aims very low and misses. My son spoke better French at seven than he did at 13; after five years of French lessons he had been reduced, by modern methods, to boredom and inarticulacy.
The British are being reduced to inarticulacy in all languages, including their own; I am afraid that the Europeans, and their education systems, are following all too closely behind. These seem to me to be precisely the kind of questions ambassadors ought to be raising; vielen Dank, et merci beaucoup.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, February 17, 2001
Comments:
I think i stumbled upon this page looking up "speaking french" or something of the like but I just wanted to say how interesting i found your article. Ill admit that i hardly know anything about foreign ambassadors and whatnot but the points youve made about "English" are most definitely valid.
It seems abit to me that English speakers are rather spoiled what with it being the most international language. To others if not their 1st all try to endeavour to be able to speak it. The ones that already know how dont really bother to learn another one unless they were brought up to do so or have a really strong taste for other countries cultures.
Im Australian but from an Asian background but ive always been bilingual. If you're 1st gen asian in a western country you pretty much always are. So i always thought it was totally normal. It was the asians that couldnt speak another language that were wierd. And i never really thought anything of it. Kinda cool, kinda a bother ah well.
Having since tried learning a language (am currently living in Japan) i can say it is a much more daunting task. Especially since everyone wants to speak more English to you then Japanese. (Replace japanese with another language and you get my drift).
What with our world being so intercultural nowadays it honestly really is a pity that schools dont place a stronger emphasis on learning another language.
We had Chinese at our school and i can honestly to say well.. that the lessons left much to be desired. To this day i still shudder when i think of my horrible teacher. Which is a shame because im sure if i were introduced to it in another way i wouldve definitely had more interest in it.
Im currently hoping to learn french (which i decided out of the blue mind you) but the experience of living in another country has given me the wider scope of not being so ensconced in just english (which i do love and am thankful for knowing).
I think ive blabbered on long enough and probably began to make no sense 1 paragraph in or so but i really did enjoy reading your article.
Cheers Mariel
Posted by: Marielle | 3 Dec 2006 13:05:19
