There was an interesting exchange yesterday on the question of language tuition in schools. I can remember when people argued that Latin was a ‘dead’ language. Now the balance of the argument seems to be going into reverse! The thrust of the questions was in favour of more Latin tuition.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/81125-0001.htm#08112566000009
I am notoriously bad at languages and I was dubious about the usefulness of Latin in the past but having tried learning languages I can see that Latin is useful not only as a root language but also for grammatical knowledge.
I remember asking a question in the Commons in the early 1980’s suggesting schools should be allowed to teach languages like Mandarin, Hindu and Arabic because we had an in built advantage with significant numbers of such speakers in the UK. My suggestion fell on stony ground! Now we seem to be encouraging those languages too.
So Latin might be coming back to schools as well!
It has to be said that Latin is less useful as a root language if the modern languages being taught are “Mandarin, Hindu (sic) and Arabic”!
I also suspect you meant Hindi!
Having toured quite a few stately homes as a National Trust member their extensive libraries would in part be written in French or Latin, the language of the well informed. Hence the traditional and pragmatic need to be taught Latin or French formally.
I am glad this regime came to an end and its to our credit that the English language has supplanted what went before at an international level; this not to say that French, German, Spanish or any other modern language is lacking in any way. Its just that literature published in English seems to have a wider acceptance and readership.
Boris Johnson, Lord Mayor of Londinium has a liking for Latin, which is entirely in keeping with his wide knowledge of Roman history. Could he have something to do with the uptake of this not so dead language?
Ref:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-places_collections/w-collections-main/w-collections-feature_2.htm
Perhaps the first language that should be taught in schools should be English through elecution. Although I fully agree with you that Latin is good from a grammatical point of view, no one speaks it, it is indeed a dead lanuage. However, the same can be found in learning a foreign language and is much more important in the world we live in today. Spanish is a lovely language to learn, perhaps followed by French. Try this below but this was before the EU was extended, I haven’t tried to extend to 27!
EUROPANTO GOBBL-DE-GOOP.
Esté nueva idioma, no es crazy,
Pero it can make unas personas trés lazy,
No necesitar to learn eleven idiomas,
For al final cette course, no hay diplomas.
C’est trés facile than “Old English Pigion”,
Per favore-grazie, you learn just a smidgen,
Straight up mate, vous ne regrettez pas,
Just cheek, sommi Old Greek, you understand JA?
Was darf es sein more than anything now?
For c’est un morçeau de gateau, mein Frau,
C’est wild, to learn impotante Europese,
Just mix up todo este idiomas avec mucho ease.
Beware though, personas in Brussels just might,
Qué commencer as a joke, may be taken as right,
Si Europanto catches on, c’est vraiment to relate,
Mucho interpreters will meet a very sad fate.
Goodbye, Arrivederci, Gia sas, Hasta Luego, Adjö, Näkemiin,
Farvel, Dag, Au revior, Até logo, and Auf Wiedersehen,
N’est pas vraiment, C’est un horreur,
Arrividerci———————until tomorreur!!!!
But none of this will mean a jot if the decision to remove compulsion to study a ‘foreign’ language [i.e. other than English] is overturned.
To back up what Jonathan said above, Latin seems less useful in our internationalist world than it used to be. While English and Spanish are the two languages Atlanticists benefit from the most, Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic would indeed benefit people in the new smaller world, and Latin would not help them with those (I would also add Japanese to the list).
English does have a wide reach, but at a simple conversational level (something like “Globish”)rather than in being a carrier of substantial cultural understanding. Even if we can safely assume that the commercial travellers of 20 years hence will be able to book a hotel room in Dubai, Shanghai or Mumbai in English, we have no guarantees at all that they will be able to make themselves understood about more complex or nuanced concerns than who is buying what from whom. One thing that learning the native language of other countries brings is that little bit of cultural understanding which can be vital in bridging the gaps. There is a certain cultural arrogance in saying that because people from China to Brazil generally know English anyway that we don’t have to let our own children know about the importance of learning foreign languages themselves.
We can’t hope to make everyone fluent in six different languages (although a lot of other countries seem to do pretty well with a majority of the population being passably bilingual), but even if all we manage to do with language learning is instil in the next generation a notion that one should pick up a passable smattering of the language wherever you’re going (in addition to the standard “yes, no, please, thank you, that one” I try and get someone to teach me “it’s OK, my friend will pay the bill”), that will be better for everyone than the current Anglo-Saxon linguistic imperialism.
Thanks to Anne Palmer!
Sometimes an unhealthy obsession with the bugaboo of the EU can produce interesting multicultural art just as much as embracing modern Euro-Cosmopolitanism can be. We border-fuzziers and culture-mixers will get you coming and going, Ms Palmer. Bwahahaha etc.
Oh Dear McDuff, I do with you would grow up.
It does not make sense for kids to learn a language just because they might or might not use it one day. It is better for kids to learn proper English with all its genres.
Kids are good at acquiring languages only in a natural setting. Language learning in the classroom is good for adults, not kids.
So, let kids grow up and then decide what language they need to learn and for what purpose. In the meantime we should teach kids a subject we can call language awareness, whereby they learn, in their native language, about other languages and what they have to offer. In this way they can make an informed decision on whether to learn a foreign language and why.
“In the meantime we should teach kids a subject we can call language awareness, whereby they learn, in their native language, about other languages and what they have to offer. In this way they can make an informed decision on whether to learn a foreign language and why.”
Oh, please, not more of this airy-fairy nonsense. The best way to learn ‘language awareness’ is by, er, learning a language. This ‘let the kids decide’ nonsense is the reason our education is in such a mess. Can you imagine giving our children ‘vegetable awareness’ classes to enable them to decide whether to ‘eat their greens’.
Ridiculous. Latin is the basis of the romance languages, and if they don’t want to learn it, then by all means get them to learn French and German or Spanish. I understand the point about ‘getting the children to speak one language properly’, but despite English being my second language, I still think, despite my imperfections, that I speak it to a better standard than many of the monoglot English graduates being churned out by our universities these days – a damning indictment of our lack of love for language in this country.
There are some interesting points here. Many thanks for the feedback