I won’t have time for thoughtful posts for the next few days. Please make do with web articles for a while. (Unless Sujatha decides to write about the virgin Komodo dragon!) The following mildly amusing essay about learning or not learning a foreign language is from The Economist (subscription link). This one describes the Brits but it applies to most Americans too.
If the world is learning English, why on earth should the British learn the world’s languages?
THE trouble with Johnny Foreigner, as the British have long remarked, is that he can’t understand you. But the trouble with the British is that they can’t learn his language: most of them simply cannot get the hang of all those conjugations and gerundives and adjectives that have to agree with nouns. Now, as luck would have it, the whole world seems to be learning English. Problem solved. Moreover, the British government seems to agree. Two years ago it decided to drop the requirement that all British 14-16-year-olds should study at least one foreign language. Of course, the numbers doing so went into free-fall, leading to a twinge of official concern; but a committee of inquiry is likely to advise this week that there can be no going back. Brainy Britons may master several tongues; the others will continue to converse with the rest of mankind in God’s own language, English.
The advantages of being able to speak more than one tongue are so obvious that they scarcely need spelling out. Despite globalisation, not everyone everywhere yet speaks English, so fluency in a second language would enable monoglot Britons to talk to many more people than they can at present. They could conduct business with fewer misunderstandings. They would have fewer surprises in restaurants when they discovered they had inadvertently ordered brains in black butter or a portion of potted intestine. When confused on holiday they would understand what was meant by the syndicat d’initiative (tourist office), the Krankenhaus (hospital) or, most mysteriously, the вокзáл (or “Vauxhall”, railway station).
Unfortunately, however, forcing children to learn a language does not ensure success. If you doubt this, just stop a passer-by in Japan, where English is universally taught, and in that language ask the way. Moreover, a mastery of languages is not the only accomplishment that every child might like to have when leaving school, or even the only one that society might like to bestow upon those it tries to educate. Physics and chemistry are similarly going out of fashion in Britain, and who is to gainsay the value of knowing the laws of thermodynamics and the place of polonium in the periodic table? A little knowledge of history would be enormously beneficial, especially to would-be politicians who believe they can sort out Afghanistan or the Middle East with a simple invasion or two.
Others would benefit hugely if they left school able to carry out some basic plumbing, or to fix their computer, or merely to fill in a tax return or benefits form. And then there are the more traditional attributes of a decent education, such as judgment, manners, elementary morals, the ability to get on with other people, the capacity to recite from memory a small anthology of English verse, and the ability to think and to express oneself—in English, for a start. Some might add a respectable grounding in Latin and Greek, a stern respect for the injunction never to play a cross bat to a straight ball at cricket, and the ability to flick an ink pellet of well-judged saturation.
Yes, the British should learn languages, and they are easier to acquire when young. But be realistic. Make knowledge of at least one foreign tongue mandatory for university—and be ready to change policy if Chinese starts sweeping the world.
Accidental Blogger 