There was an interesting question from Baroness Coussins last week. She asked for the Government response to the Paris declaration of June 23 on the global shortage of qualified linguists, noting that the European Commission had called on countries to invest more in language education in schools. But in this country the study of modern languages beyond the age of 14 was made optional in 2004 and the number of children taking a foreign language at GCSE has dropped dramatically.
It is not good enough to believe that English is the world’s language and that the advent of the internet has made it even more supreme for global communication. Apparently British applicants for jobs at the European Commission are not doing well in the examination (concours), perhaps because of their lack of language skills.
I couldn’t get a word in during that question time, but if I had been able to intervene, I would have drawn attention to the excellent impression made by Nick Clegg speaking fluent German on a recent trip to Berlin to meet the Foreign Minister. And I would have added that the UK should not nominate representatives, or send delegates abroad to European Community institutions, unless they are fluent in the required language before they arrive.
The problem with choices in education is that all the emphasis is on targets and getting “good” exam results. Students choose subjects that are seen as easy, so they can do less work and still receive high grades. As a result, fewer and fewer opt to take languages or sciences.
I feel this ties in with the question of university funding and tuition fees. We should decide what sort of graduates we need and make sure there is an incentive for students to take those subjects, which would include modern languages. All the less-rigorous subjects students choose because they think they need to have a degree, any degree, but also want to spend their time at university drinking and messing around with a couple of essays to hand in per year should attract much higher fees – which should be used to subsidise more useful graduates, plain and simple.
I should add that it’s not just European languages that are useful nowadays. Most of the new EU members use languages with only a small number of speakers, unlike the old Franco-German EU, so don’t expect their EU partners to be fluent in their own language. Perhaps it would be more useful to teach Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic in schools.
C’est dommage.
Equally important, possibly even more so my noble lady, is the inability of most British citizens today to speak clean, clear, unbiased and non-sub-culture-bound English:
Ethnic-persecution is not and should never have been called ‘ethnic-cleansing’;
Accidental-fire should never have been called ‘friendly-fire;
Being sacked (having one’s employment terminated by the employer) should never have been called ‘letting you go’ as if the employee is the one desperate to quit that workplace.
Rat-catchers should never have been called ‘government hygiene officers’;
Democratic-discussion should never have been called ‘political-debating’ nor ‘ongoing-debate’;
Current Coalition temporary political tactics should not be called British Values (by the present Foreign Secretary in his current Foreign Affairs Briefing to the World Public; nor should he and others have been allowed to tell the whole world that British Prime Ministers need to be elected-by-the People; for no British prime minister can be directly elected by the People, the PM is always chosen and appointed within his/her Political-Party, and is confirmed such by the British Monarch; not by the People);
and so ad nauseam not on, and so not forth.
Thus we British have two standards to catch up with all around the World, and especially as ‘citizens’ of the European Union: clean up our own English; and learn at least one other European language.
Nobody in our country, certainly not the Parliaments, the Schools and Universities, the Churches or the Media, seems to be succeeding in cleaning up today’s English language and making it both more intelligible and more intelligent.
There would appear to be only one reasonable way of getting clean translations to the many grubby misnomers in our English language, a few of which are instantiated above, and that is to learn a foreign-language, get its speakers to correct the misnomer, then translate that back into clean-English.
Gott in Himmel.
Aweuy! sary indingpinding, “ankha” ma melauney khalo “gudgel” (Gurkhali).
Bolshaya chornyaya oblaka” (Russian).
“Niemcy” (Polish).
“Forked-tongue” (Red-Indian);
“Watch your language”“Foul-mouthed””Double-dutch” (English ‘vernacular’).
“Gobbledegook” (Yankee ?)
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(JSDM0837M0507).
And Dutch for Nick Clegg. He can do no wrong!
The blue eyed boy of the United Kingdom, and the graciously magnanimous Vincent Cable too.
The English do not even speak Welsh, so is it surprising that they do not speak a language across a narrow English channel?
Offa’s Dyke is clearly such a huge barrier that considering the evolving vernacular of
the Normans in to French has been quite impossible.
A great many people who have no knowledge of French or Spanish, but who live there for some years as many do from the UK now, learn the languages very effectively.
Many of the new EU country citizens go from one country to the next as bar maids,waitresses and so on,deliberately to learn the language of the country in question, quite apart from gaining experience of the modern world. whether Brits from the UK do such a thing I do not know. I certainly would have done in my day, and not got dragooned for the FFL either.(French Foreign Legion)
The linguists at Strasbourg have very special skills indeed. they have to be bi or tri lingual with the ability to do instant translations, from the one to the other language.
That usually means having a Mother tongue which is different from that of the country in which you have been brought up.
There are several hundred different language possibilities in the EU, not just the official ones which are most in demand.
Was Baroness Coussins merely referring to demand languages, being Latin character set
based languages or was she referring to those that are not, but that are now, official languages of the EU?
THAT may be the real problem; insufficient translators (NO! Linguists) with the ability to speak instant and accurate translations between say the Language of Bulgaria, and that of Ireland, or Lithuania.
Now that there is an EU Foreign policy the question of Linguists for all the world’s key languages, Russian, Chinese and others, is critical.
Most of these linguists are women, as I understand it, put simply being the Mother’s tongue at which they excel.
Perhaps that is a little to go on to discuss the question here further.
If EU migrants flit from country to country, primarily to learn the language, that would mean their language education systems are as bad as ours. That is demonstrably untrue.
By 2007, over 80% of EU students chose to learn English as a foreign language at secondary level, compared with c. 22% for French or German.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/education/data/main_tables
It is hardly surprising that Brits on holiday in EU countries find their hosts keen to practice their skills. The same is true for German tourists, though the French are too insular to bother going outside France.
Given the figures above, and that large parts of the globe speak English as a first language, what is the argument to force English children to learn a second EU language over, say, history? As you allude to, we’ll learn it as and when necessary. Meanwhile, I would rather they learn the basics.
The amount of money spent by local and central gvt on translators within our shores is reckoned to be over £100m. Some of this goes to Welsh translators. Remind me, how many people speak Welsh as a first language, how much has this generated for the Welsh economy, and how many people watch S4C?
And, why do you understand that women excel at languages?
Lady Tizzy, sorry to leave a reply to yours so long.
“If EU citizens flit from one country to another”
it is probably that they want to acquire idiomatic use of language and not the formal stuff learnt at school.
We are probably all aware of the unusual university degrees offered at Brighton which include say Maths and French or Maths and German, and the student teaching maths in his
year in the state in question, whilst getting plenty of idiom practice, IN THE MATHS(or Science) CLASS.
A certain number of enlightened highschools/colleges also surely go to great pains to do exchanges with French/Spanish/German schools, en bloc, and at least some of the idiom must rub off, on the exchangers.
That is a vast improvement even on the days of the early language labs. (My own language lab at the moment is Uni Wales Lampeter.)although Bedd Gelert may deny it!
Lady Tizzy is cynical to suggest that Brits find it difficult to practice their language skills when they are are abroad in EU, due to local enthusiasm. The French (Canadian)resistance model is a good one, with which I invariably comply if I meet a French canadian!
Her last para was an important one; a reminder that B.Coussins is not just refering to EU translations but to Bengali/Gujarati/Hindi/Mandarin/Cantonese for people who come up against form filling in English IN the UK, who have absolutely no other connection with the EU at all. That is what the £100m she mentions, goes on. It seems to me like a pretty good translation service but may not seem so when a man is up before magistrates for an alleged crime.
To my knowledge there is a certain number of Welsh Welsh people on the outer Fringes, coastal regions of Wales, who do not speak good English. Again I defer to Bedd Gelert, but it seems to me that their needs are more to do with beating non-deficiency than language. I have a cousin who is a case in point, but my spoken Welsh is sketchy to say the least. Lady Tizzy’s remark is a reminder to examine/review spending on this service.
I would like to view S4C (in England) on demand TV but I do not believe they provide this service. People throughout the world have that power on Sky channels and some use it. That is a suggestion for more spending not less.
The Bwrdd yr Iaith Cymraeg (Welsh language board) provides considerable services to other worse threatened minority languages in the EU, and if I am not mistaken, is very highly thought of for doing so. They may even make a little capital from it.
I may say that I am very much in favour of cultural diversity of language, multiculturalism, and the encouragement of minority, or second, languages is surely an enjoyable part of a post-agricultural and even post-work, in-benefits or pensions society.
The 21st Century is AFRICA!
“but it seems to me that their needs are more to do with beating non-deficiency than language. I have a cousin who is a case in point, but my spoken Welsh is sketchy to say the least.” [Own quote]
I intended to say to beat “deficiency” ie mental deficiency.
The child who comes home from school in a
primary school in Wales to a non Welsh comprehending family has a much easier way of dealing with the competition between parents and school.
“They don’t do it like that at school” AND
“Mum can’t understand that at home” (in Welsh)is a recipe for a child to opt out of learning at a very early age literate neither in English, nor in Welsh, and not even able to speak it clearly either.
I can not agree with your belief that EU nationals visit and work in the UK primarily to pick up the lingua franca; a small number may do so but I would expect them to be among the elite.
I have no quarrel with those who wish to expand their expertise with the English language, quite the opposite. English is a live language, evolving daily, updating and immersing itself by way of those who most often use it to the point where other languages, such as French or Welsh, have felt threatened.
English is no more than a name for a common language. Use Welsh or German, truly I’m not bothered, but I would want to see the same level of upgrade as happens with English today.
Whilst the current problems of discipline and respect exist in our teenagers it will be difficult enough to teach them English let alone a foreign language. We are becoming extremely successful at churning out kids that are not fit enough to work in McDonalds and actually have no desire to work. I am tired of hearing parents bleat about kids problems nowadays, they do not come anywhere near the problems the older generation went through.
The division between good schools and children and the lower end is growing and it is no wonder when the pervasive attitude of authority is let them do as they want until they get bored. These teens can`t even speak or write English.
I did German to GCSE two years ago and it was my lowest grade.
On the one hand languages seem to be one of the few really rigorous subjects left at GCSE – it is much harder to get a grade in a language than in other subjects. But on the other hand this really discourages pupils from taking them, and schools from encouraging them. After all it is the points count these days.
It’s also fairly devastating for language teachers who see their results much worse than other subjects’ teachers.
Still, I believe in the independence of schools. The EU Commissar and even HM Government, whose position I actually respect, need not involve themselves in micromanaging school affairs. By far the best way to bring about improvements is for politicians and ‘experts’ at the EU Commission to let go.
“I would have drawn attention to the excellent impression made by Nick Clegg speaking fluent German”
I’m reminded of the Dorothy Parker quote: “That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them.”
Dear Baroness
http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|La%20plume%20de%20ma%20tante
Why was your aunt kept in a pen?
I’d like to see Esperanto being given more of a push. It’s easy to learn – not just for Europeans, but for almost anybody – perfectly logical, and still makes sense to any speaker regardless of what your accent is like.
It would probably take a Europe-wide push to get enough people speaking it for the benefits to become apparent, but when there’s a million of us I believe we’ll be a lot better off for it.
“I couldn’t get a word in” ; Nor here.
I believe this is because too many One-Way Directives have been yoked around too many Professional necks;
it would not be the case that there is already quite sufficient All-Roundness competency in The Human Language.
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Or, as an alternative not mentioned. Lets not send anyone at all. That saves lots of money.
We can spend it on health care.
When it comes to EU legislation, we just say Non, Nein, Neen, Ei, Ne, …
You don’t need a representative to do that.
Same with the Lords. We don’t need lords to say no or yes to the government.
We just need the right to say yes or no.
Democracy. It’s just for MPs or the Lords. The little people don’t get a say. You just have to pay for the troughing.
For example, what chance the Lords have bought cigars with the taxpayer’s money like the French ministers?
“…the excellent impression made by Nick Clegg speaking fluent German…”
He’s not the first Minister to speak in a non-English language outside of the UK. But is he really the first to impress Germany due only to his ability to speak German? Gosh, I didn’t know it had got that bad.
English is the only language that is essential for the vast majority of us and the main reason for learning a second language is to prove to ourselves we can do it as we tour Spain and Greece. The question is why we persisted with the expensive teaching of French for so long.
Language competence is surely a major task for The Academies Bill which in itself is a complex Issue, vitally overlapping, but possibly badly-overshadowing and eclipsing, many life-educational essentials as well as many workplace preparations.
The whole field of ‘Learning’, qua Workplace-skilling, Citizenship-proficiencies, Life-enablements, Individual human-development (including Primary Self-Care or self–healthing in their own right, and distinctly separate from Primary Medical, Primary Nursing and Primary Pharmacological Care) and of self-directed lone-learning, is chock-full of problems, ‘too-difficults’.
Judging from the quantity of conflicting needs, hows, and compromises being argued and peddled about in Parliament, the Media, the schools, academies, colleges, universities, religious-benches, and PhD-lands & islands, is not going to be helped by relatively short-term tactical legislation such as the Academies Bill and raft of associated Bills a propos Religion, Human-Rights, Immigrant-assimilation, Citizenship-proficiencies, Corrective-institutions (prisons) and Rehabilitations (such as of ex-battlefront service personnel).
Language is held to be our Human Race’s ‘crowning’ evolutionary achievement, uniquely enabling and powerful in comparison with other Lifeforms’ communication-abilities.
That is why not only at least two languages should be learned, and taught & spoken in schools, but every Subject’s essentials be learned and taught, and held viva-voce in civil conversation.
Rather than trying to make win-lose, or at best compromises, between at one end of human-life Science but at the other extreme end Religion, and at one end Mental-development but at the other Body-movement development, every school and educational-establishment should be putting in place just one common Body-Mind-Spirit Foundation Course.
Although this too would need to be tailored to the clearly different learning-abilities, and getting-it-up-to-speed capabilities, of the three or four major numbers-levels in Life and in Education, from the lowest to the topmost, as the infant develops upwards through the Lifestyle-abilities and Workplace pre-skills of the Education, Citizenship and Lifestyling Systems, it is only through that Foundation that anyone at all will be Human-Language-Competent.
Where there have to be Specialists, we need them to be literate in The Human Language, first, last and always, my Lords.
To get both an armchair grasp and some ‘I could get to my feet and try out that exercise’, the following will help (and I dare not say ‘might help’, they are too good for that uncertainty to be allowed in here):
The Centering Book by Prof Hendricks & Wills;
Self Theories by Prof Caroline S Dweck;
Perceptual Control by Prof WT Powers;
Wisdom of the Body Moving by Linda Hartley.
People Skills by Robert Bolton.
Neither Reinforcement Theory nor Individual Reward are to be recommended;
on the contrary, they are each and both to be shunned until the above newer advances have been established.
No matter what our age, we each and all need as much all-round knowledge and ability as we can accrue; even the lowest al-round Foundation level will take time to accrue its component parts,
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“Language is held to be our Human Race’s‘crowning’ evolutionary achievement…
.
.
.
That is why not only at least two languages should be learned”
That is a non sequitur, in England, at least. You are conflating language and linguistics.
Not a non-sequitur, my lady; nor am I fusing-together language and linguistics.
The Human Language is not only the sum of all the inter-indistinguishable ‘languages’ (or ‘Tongues’) and Body-languages of the Human Race, but of the civilisational-infrastructural, economic, and industrial ‘Languages’ too ( if I were to write that LANGUAGES it would be a quite correct use of ‘shouting’, do you not see ?)
Neither am I conflating the Human ‘Language’ of Industrial Destruction of Common Lifesupports for instance, with the sub-language of Esperanto or the default-world-language of English.
‘Language’ = use of words, a system of words, the faculty of speech, a style of expression;
‘Linguistics'(noun) = study of language and its structure.
I am indicating the vital importance of comprehending the whole ‘Tree of Languages’, the most vital of which should be by definition the all-round comprehension of and working-familiarity with what The Human Race is ‘saying’ by its Extincting of Species (irreversibly), destruction of Habitats and Macro-lifesupports such as rainforests, soils, fishing-grounds, and the polar ice-caps (some also irreversibly).
I am saying that the immediately-above conprehension needs to be made a pre-requisite for individual word-language and multiple word-languages excellence.
Perhaps you were prematurely ‘jumping into your Black hat’ rather than first clarifying the blue and white hat matters herein ?
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Language is held to be our Human Race’s‘crowning’ evolutionary achievement……..
That is a non sequitur, in England, at least. You are conflating language and linguistics.
Programming languages of various levels are the finest evolutionary achievement if the Web and internet are anything to go by.
Instant communication worldwide; instant translations of all languages on earth ?
Why bother with second, or third languages when you have got a universal language?
JSDM: Your monologue does not explain why “…at least two languages should be learned…in schools…”.
I have no problem with your vision of holistic teaching and somewhat agree with you, though stop well short at the imagery of pseudo-academic tree-hugging.
It can be argued that every (non-language)subject contains vast elements of a new language. Chemistry is perhaps the most obvious example; does the teaching of it satisfy your appraisal?
The original post began by bemoaning the global lack of linguists, followed by an assertion that British applicants for translator jobs were below par because the teaching of a foreign language had been downgraded, curtailed, or axed by schools. Such actions happened also at tertiary levels, as did other subjects in the Arts and Humanities faculties. Stuff like this happens all the time but especially in recessions.
Student’s money today is following subjects such as media studies. There are few jobs at the end so why not wring hands at the lack of jobs in the media?
England does not have a Taliban approach to the teaching of a foreign language. There are plenty of language schools and evening classes available which are either free or offered at low cost. The issues, for me, is whether a school must teach a language and if they must, which language, and why not several?
What has not been mentioned is last year’s intention to make teaching of a foreign language compulsory for all seven year olds from 2011, though taught courses for over 14 year olds would remain optional. Whether this will survive the coalition cull is uncertain.
“English is the only language that is essential for the vast majority of us and”
It does not alter the fact that there is a drastic shortage of linguists between the 600 odd language translation needs of the EU.
Generally languages, like Welsh, when linguists are needed, are found amongst the pool of the nearest dominant language.
This is not condescending in any way except that many people who have Welsh perfect in the home, and English perfect in the public place,as children, may also study a third or fourth language to perfection.
THAT is a linguist! Encouraging such people
to be linguists, rather than insurance brokers, is what we are all about.
I don’t understand your third and fourth paragraph, which leaves little else on which to reply.
Would you kindly put your points again? Thanks.
D’accord, Twm O’r Nant; super linguists;
provided they first have an All-Round Foundation in The All-Round Human Language (,,,)
The real problem here is not that the English cannot speak foreign languages, although I agree that is a problem. It is that many cannot even speak English properly, and this is not surprising when it is no longer taught properly.
I thought readers might enjoy this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCjYejpqYBE
Quoted from the web: the RCA staff production duo of Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore helmed some of the biggest hits of the early rock era, among them the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Little Peggy March’s “I Will Follow” and Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Why The Face?
Le visage? S’il vous plaît expliquer!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/television/23modern.html
The answer is at the end of the third para.
🙂