[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

In which our correspondent finds a solution to his very limited foreign language skills.

I did very badly in languages at school. I took three years of German, and the only lesson I remember was the first one. Along with 30 other 11-year-olds, I filed in with my new notebook and the German teacher, in the spirit of “Let’s just get this out of the way now, shall we?” told us the German for father and grandfather. It worked. We got all the laughs out of our system – though it took a while – and then got on with the rest of the lesson.

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?

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?”

[LeTigre]

This article highlights the pitfalls of the modern UK schooling system with no respect for languages.

All I remember of French lessons was a teacher that resembled Miss Piggy, kept flicking her hair in a ridiculous fashion whist being pelted with rubber chips from erasers by most of the boys in the classroom. No control there…nothing learnt!

[PaulRWoods]

Yes, as a native English speaker you can get away without any additional language. But being able to chat up a charming young Indonesian occupying the hotel room next to you, getting invited to staff parties of German and Dutch embassies, and know how to order cold beer in Russian and Swahili makes the whole live of an expatriate much more fun. And in December 2010 when BA was diverted and grounded in Brussels speaking either French or Flemish/Dutch certainly got you more assistance.

[RichHI1]

Agreed, it is about having the option. As someone who speaks many languages badly, I can choose to struggle on when it suits my ends or just shout louder in English when it suits. Being able to refuse to speak French to officials because I choose rather than I have to, is a delight.
To the original post, I find the fractionalization of english a tad worrying. We have British English and we have US English which are similar with some local words and constructions.
The form of English developing in Asia is harder to deal with. The non English countries seem to do away with conjunctions or any form of punctuation ; running together large sentences with assumed subjects and objects. The Australians seem to end every word with i or o as in tini or avo and limit sentences to about 5 words.
The Europeans seem to be creating a whole new language, apart from strange grammatical constructs and unintelligible accents, there is a tendency to create alternate words. At a recent conference call what we would call scale or scalability was being discussed as massification by our French colleagues.
For me the truth is that if left unaltered we will end up as English as the world language but it will be a different language depending on which continent you are situated upon.
UK and US English will tend to have global appeal as the cultural media, music, tv, movies are made in these languages but the rest … who shall he know the possibilification …. Bof!

[stevescoots]

pretty much the story of my language skills as well. Coming through the comprehensive system in the early 80’s it was a new language every year!
My interested in french was sparked by the teacher, a cute blond thing that would wear a headscarf over her long hair and sit on the edge of a desk, she also drove a convertable TR7 but when she rolled it over and didnt come back my interest was gone for good. I also couldnt wrap my mind around the whole masculine and femine word thingy.
Rest of it has been picked up ad hoc over the years, italian, german czech and mandarin, only mandarin have I actually taken a concious effort to learn. I will be back into HK for some R&R this weekend but there will be no Canto attempted!

On the flip side My son at 21 is fluent in french, good german, basic spanish and basic Mandarin. for some reason he loves languages and picks it up instantly

[RichHI1]

Steve I think modern kids have an advantage over us; with the internet and increased travel languages are seen as a cool skill whereas for us with a pink map, the commonwealth institute and more interest in Batman or Magpie, it seemed as useful as Ancient Greek. Susan Stranks in atee shirt …. Nurse my medication.
By the way you have my admiration with Chinese ( see mr PRC I am being politically correct) I can pass in Japanese and Chinese reading I can make a poor show but the voices defeated me. As an aside I was told by a colleague in Pu Dong how to tell Cantonese from Chinese. She said if it sounds like two dragons embracing it is Chinese, if it sounds like a fight is breaking out, it is Cantonese. And people in Manchester think we pick on them!

[stevescoots]

thats true, internet and multiculturasm has certanly helped those kids with just picking the language up, In my home town most signs in places are in Polish, latvian, lithuanian, russian and czech…I think english as at the bottom!

dead right on the cantonese vs mandarin and sounds like a fight breaking out. I keep my understanding of it quiet tho, especially in goverment meetings!

[RichHI1]

Sorry Vilnius?

[stevescoots]

lincolnshire!

[RichHI1]

Wow lincolnshire is cosmopolitan, I must look out for the Russian signs. I thought it was just peas. I have many many good friends from Latvia and it was such a relief after the wall came down not to be followed by Special Branch from landing at LHR to leaving again. Even though some were working for a small building south of the Thames near Vauxhall station. Enough said.

[HongKongLady]

A couple of words of dutch, a smattering of French which is really only useful to order wine, ask for directions, the time and the price of something. This may seem enough to get by, however understanding the replies is when it all comes crashing down. Talking loudly and gesturing works far better, I used it to great effect in Tokyo last weekend.
Stevecoots, have a good weekend, in this fair city.

[basslines66]

dear stevescoots. That is indeed sad about the TR7 driving French teacher, and its effect on your education. I have no problem with foreign languages. However….does anyone know what is the right protocol when you dont understand a word of what someone is saying to you in ostensibly your own language? I live in Scotland, and it is an occasional dilemma

[Cedric_Statherby]

Surely time for the old language joke:

If you speak three languages you are trilingual
If you speak two languages you are bilingual
If you speak only only language you are English.

Of course if you speak more than three you are probably Dutch, or perhaps a Brussels Eurocrat.

On a less trivial note, one reason English is successful as a lingua franca in Europe, well western Europe anyway, is that both Germanic speakers and Latinate speakers can find words they recognise. Thus when you cannot eat any more you can say “The food was enough” (similar to German) or “The food was sufficient” (similar to French etc). And there are many other similar pairs.

Actually the dominance of English is very little to do with the Brits, and more to do with the coincidence that two successive superpowers (Britain and the US) spoke the same language. Well, nearly the same, which allows me to close with a joke even worse than the one I opened with:

Not all Brits are monolingual – I’m British, and I speak two languages, English and American!

[RichHI1]

In truth, though many non English native speakers seem to invent half of what they speak, I believe the reason for the dominance of English in the world as a Lingua Franca is down to 2 main reasons: 1) modern cultural
Media – music – tv – movies are primarily produced in English speaking countries( there are large industries in India, China and Russia but these are primarily marketed to the domestic audience only) and secondly, in my view more importantly, English ( whether British, American, Australasian, Canadian or South African ) is an easy language to speak badly though very difficult to speak correctly. This latter means that with little effort it is possible to communicate effectively.
As previously mentioned this does result in a dumbing down of language.

[Author]

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