Jay Doubleyou: immigrants with no second language? it’s true britishness
Here's one view from London:
Why do the English need to speak a foreign language when foreigners all speak English?
My roots read like a World Cup draw. My half-Welsh father was born and spent his boyhood in Argentina and thus speaks Spanish almost as naturally as English. My mother’s family are Norwegian.
Because Dad was a diplomat, I spent the first five years of my life in Moscow and Lisbon, so my baby-talk was Russian (in which I later got an O-Level) and I then spoke kindergarten Portuguese.
I was sent to boarding school in the days when they still provided a classical education, so I learned Latin and Ancient Greek to what was then O-Level standard, but would now be A-Level, at least. I also got an A in A-Level French, which is the one foreign language I can claim to speak with reasonable fluency.
Global reach: English is the second language of 85 per cent of Europeans, and the default tongue of the European Union
While I was growing up, my family also lived in Peru and Cuba, but I only went out there on holidays, so my Spanish is rudimentary at best. Having spent the past couple of years writing novels set in Germany, however, I now have a tiny smattering of German, too.
Given this absurdly multi-lingual background, you might think I’d be distraught at hearing that 380,000 teenagers in England did not take a single language at GCSE last year. Department for Education figures show that fewer and fewer of us are learning a foreign language, while more and more foreigners are becoming multi-lingual. This, say distraught commentators, will condemn us pathetic Little Englanders to a live of dismal isolation while our educated, sophisticated, Euro-competitors chat away to foreign customers and steal all our business as a result.
In fact, I think those pupils who don’t learn other languages are making an entirely sensible decision. Learning foreign languages is a pleasant form of intellectual self-improvement: a genteel indulgence like learning to embroider or play the violin. A bit of French or Spanish comes in handy on holiday if you’re the sort of person who likes to reassure the natives that you’re more sophisticated than the rest of the tourist herd. But there’s absolutely no need to learn any one particular language unless you’ve got a specific professional use for it.
Consider the maths. There are roughly 6,900 living languages in the world. Europe alone has 234 languages spoken on a daily basis. So even if I was fluent in all the languages I’ve ever even begun to tackle, I’d only be able to speak to a minority of my fellow-Europeans in their mother tongues. And that’s before I’d so much as set foot in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The planet’s most common first language is Mandarin Chinese, which has around 850 million speakers. Clearly, anyone seeking to do business in the massive Chinese market would do well to brush up on their Mandarin, although they might need a bit of help with those hundreds of millions of Chinese whose preferred dialect is Cantonese.
The only problem is that Mandarin is not spoken by anyone who is not Chinese, so it’s not much use in that equally significant 21st century powerhouse, India. Nor does learning one of the many languages used on the sub-Continent help one communicate with Arab or Turkish or Swahili-speakers.
There is, however, one language that does perform the magic trick of uniting the entire globe. If you ever go, as I have done, to one of the horrendous international junkets which film studios hold to promote their latest blockbusters, you’ll encounter a single extraordinary language that, say, the Brazilian, Swedish, Japanese and Italian reporters use both to chat with one another and question the American stars.
This is the language of science, commerce, global politics, aviation, popular music and, above all, the internet. It’s the language that 85 per cent of all Europeans learn as their second language; the language that has become the default tongue of the EU; the language that President Sarkozy of France uses with Chancellor Merkel of Germany when plotting how to stitch up the British.
This magical language is English. It unites the whole world in the way no other language can. It’s arguably the major reason why our little island has such a disproportionately massive influence on global culture: from Shakespeare to Harry Potter, from James Bond to the Beatles.
All those foreigners who are so admirably learning another language are learning the one we already know. So our school pupils don’t need to learn any foreign tongues. They might, of course, do well to become much, much better at speaking, writing, spelling and generally using English correctly. But that’s another argument altogether.
Why do the English need to speak a foreign language when foreigners all speak English? | Daily Mail Online
Here's a rather different perspective from Berlin:
RANT! “Sorry, no German!”
Julie Colthorpe on why she’ll never eat brunch in Neukölln again.
Last time I checked, German was the language spoken in the German capital. I moved to Berlin 12 years ago. Back then, if you didn’t speak German you were up shit creek. My friend Sarah made the mistake of asking, “Can I have a bag, please?” at her local Kaiser’s in Prenzlauer Berg. “WIE BITTE!?” screeched the cashier. “WAS WOLLEN SIE?” Sarah tried again, still in English. She couldn’t understand most of the rant that followed, but gathered it was something like, “Speak German or go back to England!” (she’s Scottish).
Fast forward to Silvester 2013. I’m with a group of Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and American expats, and two poor German girls struggling to get into the English conversation. My friend commented, half-joking, half-apologetic: “I guess we should all be speaking German.” Her innocent remark was met with a scandalised roar from across the table. “And why is that?!” inquired the offended party, an American musician. “Well, I mean, we’re in Berlin after all,” my friend replied. Said the American: “Last time I heard the sentence ‘you should’ it was from my mother. I don’t think I want to be subjected to such imperatives any longer.” Needless to say, he doesn’t speak a word of German and doesn’t intend to learn.
The problem is the blasé nonchalant attitude that some expats adopt when it comes to speaking the language of their adopted country: they don’t.
Don’t get me wrong: nobody’s expected to know the der-die-das of it all the moment they step off the plane. The problem is the blasé nonchalant attitude that some expats adopt when it comes to speaking the language of their adopted country: they don’t. It’s bad enough to hear these smug shirkers yapping away on the U8 every Friday night. What’s worse is when they start opening restaurants.
A year and a half ago, the Tagesspiegel published an article expressing the general outrage felt by Berliners at being forced to grapple with their rusty school English in American joints like The Bird and White Trash. Wally Potts, the American owner of White Trash, does in fact speak very good German – it’s just his staff that don’t, or won’t, or didn’t.
But that’s nothing compared to Neukölln – aka Little Melbourne.
Recently, my German boyfriend and I tried out a new Australian place in Reuterkiez. Not only was the food lousy and overpriced, not one of the staff could speak any German. Even the menus were English-only – I ended up translating practically the whole thing for my boyfriend. When the waitress came over, I asked for “zwei Kaffee, bitte”. She didn’t understand a word, and she wasn’t even embarrassed. So while waiting for our food (it took forever) we bitched about her in German. No one noticed.
Later, I quizzed the owner when she brought us the bill. “Do any of your staff speak German at all?” They didn’t. She herself, however, had started to learn it. Really? Have a medal! “We are an Australian restaurant; we want it to be authentic,” she explained. Well, if you’re going to be Australian, be bloody Australian. I want kangaroos and bush hats and shrimps on barbies, mate! And imagine if two Berliners opened up a German-language-only Berliner Küche restaurant in Australia – they’d close within a week.
Afterwards, I took a walk around the neighbourhood. It seemed like every café I passed had a chalkboard written solely in English, inviting me in from the cold for a cosy cuppa and a piece of homemade cake. Even the pet shop had “Pet Shop” slapped across the window in big white letters, lest clueless locals walk in looking for groceries and wind up with a puppy.
Ultimately if you don’t learn German, you’re the one missing out. It’s a giant city out there, and you’re shrinking your life to an expat minimum. You’re thrown a curveball every time someone says something you don’t understand. My American friend and I were in a bakery and she asked for one “Schrippe, bitte.” I was surprised, as she doesn’t usually like white bread. She explained that she doesn’t know how to order what she wants, so she just repeats the preceding order. That’s just pathetic.
My advice to all these Deutsch-denying dilettantes? Go back to your mum for some extra nursing or an extra kick in the Arsch. Or better yet, move to Brandenburg and see how far your English gets you there.
RANT! “Sorry, no German!” - EXBERLINER.com
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment