Whenever I go abroad I am conscious of the fact that apart
from a few words and phrases, I am completely ignorant of the local language,
and therefore totally reliant on the ability of local people to speak English,
which they almost universally do. Once, in Portugal, I came across a shop where
the staff spoke no English, but somehow completed my purchase of a corkscrew by pointing and indulging in some charades.
In Vigo, in northern Spain, I managed to order some drinks from a waiter who
spoke only Spanish; fortunately, Coca-Cola is fairly universal, although my
mangling of naranja (orange) caused
first confusion, and then hilarity when it dawned on him what I actually
meant. His subsequent enquiry would have been incomprehensible to me had I not
recognised the word 'gas' as in 'con gas' in his reply. Both transactions would
have been less painful if I had had a bit more knowledge of the local
languages.
I have always justified my lack of foreign language skills -
to myself, at least - on the basis that I have no aptitude for languages; that
learning French would be of little use in Spain or Cyprus, just as learning
German would be equally useless in Italy or Norway; and finally, when everyone
else speaks English, where is the need? My lack of aptitude for languages I
base on how useless I was at French at school, so useless that I abandoned any
pretence of revising for my 'O' Level in the subject in the belief that no
matter how hard I worked at it, the best I could hope for would be a poor pass,
and to the detriment of other subjects, to boot. As a result, I got the lowest
grade of fail in the subject, but later, in my work, I found that a better
knowledge of French would have been beneficial. As it was, the rudimentary
knowledge I had - little more than a store of common words and phrases - came
in more than a little handy when having to deal with overseas banks who
habitually sent SWIFT messages in French.[1]
These banks were typically from North African countries, like Nigeria and
Algeria. French banks tended to
correspond in English, and while English was the norm, there was no reason why
banks in French-speaking countries should not use French, as I pointed out one time
to someone who had sent a message to a bank saying that we didn't deal with
messages in other languages, and asking them to repeat their message in
English.
While there is a grain of truth that my lack of French is
down to down to having no aptitude, it is possibly equally valid to say that it
was to do with the culture at my old school, where learning French was quite
low on the list of priorities, and, bizarrely, was also seen as a subject for girls rather
than boys. Had I studied French harder, and passed an 'O' Level in the subject,
it would have helped me much more than Physics, which I passed but have had no
use for since; what I actually did learn in that subject was soon forgotten.
The little I have retained enables me to answer the odd question on University
Challenge, but has no other benefit. But, even if I were fluent in French, or
at least could get by, that would be no use other than in French-speaking
countries, surely. Except that plenty of people who don't speak English have
French as a second language, and who is to say that, having learned French
properly, I could not have taken up German or Spanish as well? The argument
that learning one language is only of limited help falls down when one
considers how many people are not just bilingual, but multilingual. Earlier
this year, Val and I went on a cruise along the Norwegian coast. The crew were
principally Norwegian, while there were passengers from the USA, Germany,
France, and of course Norway and England. And almost without exception,
everyone spoke English, while the Norwegians, in particular, were switching
seamlessly from English to German to French to Norwegian, and back again, all
in one conversation.
 |
| Beautiful Bergen. In Norway it seems that almost everyone speaks immaculate English. |
In Norway, and many other countries for that matter,
learning a foreign language - especially English - is something that children
do from an early age. Learning a foreign language is the norm, taken for
granted, whereas in England, it seems to be undervalued and in decline. In
February this year, the BBC reported that "foreign language learning is at
its lowest level in UK secondary schools since the turn of the millennium."
The number of pupils taking GCSE language courses has fallen by between 30% and
50% in some areas of the country, and according
to Mike Hill, principal at Carmel College in St Helens on Merseyside, schools and pupils see languages
as 'high risk' subjects, in which high grades are hard to achieve. A cynic
might say that high grades are no more difficult to attain in foreign languages
than they have ever been and that perhaps, other subjects have become
relatively easier to do well in. The BBC's data is borne out by the fact that,
in a table of countries where people aged between 15 and 32 can read and write
in another language, the UK scores 32%, while the next lowest - Hungary -
registers 71%, and seven countries score over 90%. Demark comes out top on 99%.
Perhaps a lack of interest in learning foreign languages
goes hand in hand with greater insularity, except that Britons have no problem
with the concept of 'abroad,' as apart from the 18 millions who visited Spain
in 2017, some 310,000 UK citizens live there. There are 4.9million UK citizens
living abroad, more than any other EU country. Given a reluctance to learn
another language and a tendency to not integrate into local communities, UK
citizens who have moved abroad seem to me to have done so purely because the
weather is better, and merely want to transport their bit of their home country
there with them. While I am sure that there are plenty who do integrate into
the local community, I'm equally certain that the majority do not.
EU Citizens Living
Abroad
Italy 2.9m
Romania 3.4m
Germany 4m
Poland 4.4m
UK 4.9m
Source:
Metrocosm/UN Population Division
UK Citizens in the EU:
Italy 70k
Germany 100k
France 190k
Ireland 250K
Spain 310k
Source:
Fullfacts.org/UN
The fact that as a nation we Brits are so reluctant to learn
the local language when moving abroad is made all the more shameful considering
how frequently we criticise immigrants to our own country who fail to integrate
or learn English. During his successful campaign for the leadership of the
Conservative Party, Boris Johnson said recently that immigrants into the UK should learn to speak
English, because there are “too many parts of the country where it is not the
first language”. And this week Johnson's
Home Secretary, Priti Patel pledged that in future, immigrants will only be
able to come here if they have "a job offer from an employer registered
with the Home Office and if they can speak English.” Chances are that many will
speak English as a matter of course; far more than would be the case if we were
talking about English workers taking on jobs abroad and speaking the language, for example. Apropos to that, I wonder how many of our newly elected MEPs speak anything but English?
 |
| In Auf Weidersehen Pet, a group of British builders travel to Germany to find work. Ok, it was fiction, but I don't recall any of the characters learning the local language. |
I am probably a bit too long in the tooth to start learning
a foreign language, and in any case who knows how often I will go abroad in
future, or indeed where? The fact remains, however, that I am now sorry that I
didn't give French a bit more attention at school, at the expense of another
subject. Physics could have gone for a start.
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