The trouble is, to this day they are pretty much the only German words I know, apart from the ones that are similar to ours, like ja for yes, and nein for no, and bier for, well, you get the idea.
French I stuck at for longer (you had to), but sitting in school, listening to the teacher drone on, it didn’t seem like something with any practical value. I didn’t know anyone who’d been to France, and I’d certainly never met anyone who was French, so what was the point? Even when we took part in what they called practicals (speaking exercises), it seemed very impractical.
I remember one where we had to pretend our football had gone over the fence into the next-door neighbour’s garden and we had to ask for it back – in French. Even to a child, this seemed very implausible. Why not just go and get it? It’s what we normally did. And anyway, who were these French neighbours who’d moved to the UK without a word of English?
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Frequent Traveller ©BenSouthan[/caption]
Illustration by Ben Southan
Meeting English people who did speak French didn’t help either. I could never understand why it was the height of culture to consider your own inferior.
I’m not alone in my ignorance, of course. It’s a defining characteristic of the British. A few “have” another language, but how useful is it when you travel? Proud of your Italian? See how far it gets you in Fez. A dab hand at Spanish? Pretty useless in Guangzhou. Spent four years perfecting Russian? Half of the world’s hotels will love you, the other half will refuse you a room.
I admire those who can speak other languages in the same way I admire people who can ride a bike without holding on to the handlebars. A neat trick, but pretty useless unless the road is flat and clear of cars, and someone you’re trying to impress is watching. For it to be worth the effort to learn, you’d have to be able to do a load of other things – juggling, fire breathing – and then you can make a living out of it. It’s the same with speaking in tongues – unless you happen to be a polyglot, the more places you visit, statistically the less places you’ll be able to make yourself understood with your one “extra” language.
As for me, I don’t discriminate – I am equally helpless wherever I happen to be, and know it before I even set off. What’s more, the people I meet when I get there know it too. The airport staff, the taxi drivers, the hotel employees and even the people I do business with are all aware that not only will I be unable to speak the first language of the countries I find myself in, but I will also fail to converse in whatever the lingua franca of that region is, unless it is English.
That’s how they know I am British, because I make myself understood by slowing down, speaking clearly, increasing the volume slightly and gesturing a lot. What’s interesting is that, finally, the rest of the world is catching on.
It used to be called Pidgin English. Now it’s Globish, and though it has new words, I’m picking it up almost as quickly as I’m forgetting some of the longer words of polysyllabic Latinate origin I’ve carried around since school but never been able to use.
Instead of using difficult words, you have a pool of around 1,500 that you can employ (I think I’ve got about 1,000 of them). You’ll be nervous at first – that’s understandable – but there are websites where you can type in the text of your business proposal, and it will scan them and tell you which words aren’t Globish so you can eliminate them, simplifying your message. And as you might imagine, you can also pay people in other countries to have your words turned into Globish. Like call centres in reverse. Instead of trying to make yourself understood, they tell you how to make yourself understood.
Sweet revenge, don’t you think? Sweet for me, at any rate – I only have one language to simplify; I lose only words I never used. For the rest – well, you don’t have to play.
“S’il vous plaît, pourriez-vous me rendre mon ballon?”
