On ne parle pas français / No hablamos español / Wir sprechen nicht deutsch

As Alyn Smith pointed out in his blog the other day, and as we were told all over the Scottish media yesterday, the number of Scots today who speak in anither tung is at some scarily new low. This is of course one of these stories that keep on getting regurgitated by the media, kinda like 'Glasgow has the worst murder / heart disease / poverty rates in the UK /Europe / The Western World', and like that other old chesnut, no-one actually does anything about it.

I amuse myself often during the week by listening to the Morning Extra phone-in thats on after GMS, and this morning the topic was all about our inability to speak anything other than English. We like to content ourselves up here that we're somehow better than the Saxon hordes South of the Border who embarrass themselves when abroad by shouting things at waiters like "EGG AND CHIPS! CAN YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?! EGG. AND. CHIPS!", but from the evidence of this show we're just as bad. Why speak foreign? Seemed to be the consensus, although there were a few enlightened souls who were willing to put their head above the parapet and point out that we're letting ourselves down big time. I have a few problems with those monolinguists, as you'd understand, being a student of French and all that.

1) Learning foreign languages is too hard - Is it hell! If I could have a pound for everyone who has said to me "oh you must have such a knack for languages. I tried, and could never do it. Im sciency you see..". Yes, to an extent, you have to 'get' languages, but not to study them at an elementary level. Anyone can get to a certain level in any modern European language (OK, take away the Slavonic ones and Finnish & Hungarian) because all you actually need to do is learn them by rote. I've had folk who could understand long physics equations tell me that they could never learn verb tables. Its a nonsense. We build languages up to be some elite thing that only arty clever people can do, when in fact it is no more difficult, or harder to get, than anything else. Anyone can get to a passable level.

2) Everyone speaks English - It is the world's second language, I'll not dispute that, but it is a myth to think that everyone speaks it, or indeed wants to. And just because you can get by in English doesn't mean you should. To quote Scotland's youngest MEP, you buy in your own language, but you sell in theirs. Even knowing a little can go a long way, if only putting the shitters up someone who's being awkward with you on holiday because you make them think you can speak their lingo.

3) We need to get the 3 R's right before we worry about anything else - Again, utter tosh. I've learned more about the English language, and how to manipulate it, from learning modern languages than I ever have in an English class. When you learn to appreciate how language works, it becomes easier to make it work for you. Being able to step out of one's own linguistic cage from time to time is also immensely important in one's intellectual development. Charles V's famous "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse" isn't as daft as it first sounds. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses. English is a good all-rounder, and posesses a wealth and depth of vocabulary unmatched by anything else, but it sure can't do it all - I spent last year trying to understand things like Mallarmé's L'après-midi d'un faune (ok, cheese baguette!) , and I certainly didn't get there by translating it. The implicit meaning of the poem is lost in translation. That's why the Illyiad is apparently boring a fuck when you read it not in the original Greek. That's why people recite the Koran, and don't always translate it (ok, there are other reasons for that!), shall I go on?

As Alyn pointed out in his blog, most Europeans have got so used to our linguistic sloth that they simply assume no-one speaks anything other than English, and for the most part we don't. What worries me most is the dearth of students learning Modern Languages in conjunction with more applied courses - the year I spent in Marseille I met Spaniards studying pharmacy, Italians studying marketing, and Hungarians studying astrophysics. The EU offers students, through the Erasmus programme, a whole range of options to study elsewhere in the EU. Why are our engineers not going to Germany to study for a year? The biggest exporter of high-end goods in the World, and we're depriving our students the opportunity to go and work there because we're suprised when they want us to be able to speak German? It's bad for our students, because they aren't getting this great experience, and it's bad for our economy, because we're not sending Scots over there, and we're not setting up enough links with Europe.

And the solutions? As Christopher Harvie points out in his excellent wee book Mending Scotland, our status as an anglophone country can be worked to our advantage in this respect. Why should we not be inviting over students and teachers from other EU countries, give them some time learning English in a native-speaker environment, and then as part of the bargain, get them to speak to us in their language for a while, so as many people as possible can see the benefits of speaking something else. The death of the school exchange must be lamented, but this could go some way to remedying it.

Ultimately, why should we not aim to be the best wee polyglot-but-anglophone country in the world? Why should each and every University graduate not be passable in at least one of French, German, Spanish, Italian or something more exotic? We've got to start 'em young, and keep 'em there, by getting more Modern Languages teachers in the primary schools, (so more jobs for me!) and an end to the cop-out of letting people drop the subject before Intermediate 2, because 'it's too hard, Miss'.

But alas, again we probably won't se anything done about it, like the poverty in Glasgow, because it'll probably be too difficult to accomplish, and there is not exactly a whole host of polyglots in the upper reaches of power. When was the last time you saw an MSP speaking something other tha English? Answers on a SAE please...