Are languages important?

[Eric]

There was an article in today's Times (London) about further decline in language teaching in schools in Britain:

School languages crisis as pupils reject subject - Times Online

There will, no doubt, be similar articles in other British newspapers.

Given the fact that Britain "has" the world language English, is this decline inevitable, or should (living) foreign languages be promoted at secondary-school level?

It is interesting that the languages not suffering decline are immigrant ones. Should these be promoted, as they have been in Sweden in the "hemspr?k" drive, or should immigrants be encouraged to integrate and, ultimately, assimilate? If you claim to have Bengali or Turkish as your first language, as people have done according to the article, how many generations will it take before such people speak English as their first language? Or should immigrants have the right to have other languages as their first language in perpetuo?

[hdw]

After reading this, on impulse I Googled "Higher Urdu", because I know that the Scottish Qualifications Authority has recently introduced this qualification. The "Higher" in Scottish schools is an exam. pitched roughly between the English 'O' grade and 'A' level. The lower qualification in Scotland is called Standard Grade.

The first link took me to the modern languages department of James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh, a state school which is quite highly regarded in the city. The modern languages dept. has 9 members of staff, including the principal teacher, + language assistants for French and German. Of the permanent teaching staff, Mrs. Saqib teaches Urdu, Mrs. Sandilands, Gaelic; Ms. O'Connor, Spanish, and Mr. Fan Xiaodong, Mandarin.

It's interesting that Higher Gaelic is divided into separate exams. for Learners and Native Speakers, whereas Higher Urdu seems to have no such division, the implication being that it is only designed to help native speakers keep up their fluency. I think Chinese is also undivided, although there are lots of native speakers in Scotland as well as indigenous Scottish kids who want to learn it.

The new Advanced Higher, more closely aligned to the A level in England, was introduced recently to allow pupils to take their studies to a higher level and prepare for university entrance. Until the Higher Urdu was introduced in 2008, pupils wishing to go beyond Standard Grade were prepared for the A level.

Gillespie's seems to have a good set-up, but that's a popular school with a largely middle-class intake in Scotland's capital.

Harry

[beelzebubbles]

Well, I don't know about could or should but most of the second generation Americans I know speak nothing but English. My stepsister's aunt and uncle speak both English and Spanish but their children were not interested in learning Spanish or maintaining what they as small children had picked up from their parents.

I imagine those second generation Americans that still speak the language of their immigrant parents live in what amounts to a cultural enclave in which the knowledge of the immigrant culture is promoted. It takes a village and if the villagers are predominately English speaking, the children are going to go with the path of least resistance.

This may not be the case in cities that have longstanding populations of Spanish speaking natives like Miami or Chinese speakers such as San Francisco but it seems to be the case in my provincial burg.

[Eric]

Re Harry's mention of the various languages taught at Jane Brodie's, sorry, James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh.

French and even German (don't mention the War) have been traditional school subjects in British schools for decades. Not least as we live next to about 60 million French-speakers and 80 million German-speakers.

Urdu is the principal language of Pakistan. There are many Pakistani immigrants in Britain. What I would like to know is the motivation of people to learn or perfect their Urdu when living in Britain. Is it to make communication with grandparents easier, to enable them to cope when travelling to Pakistan, or for reasons of being able to read the newspaper in Urdu? There are many possible reasons, but my question is: is it the r?le of the English or Scottish education authorities to subsidise such teaching & learning?

Gaelic is an indigenous Scottish language. For that reason its tuition is logical to preserve what is but a shard of its former cultural self. But the Celtic languages have reached the point where they are unstable or dying when it comes to everyday communication. What a far cry from the Balts, peoples that also lived for centuries under foreign domination, but now do all their talking, business, pleasure and culture in their mother-tongues, not in the dominant colonial language.

Spanish gets a double boost, no doubt. Lots of British people travel to Spain for their holidays, and Spanish is an up-and-coming language in the United States. And it is the lingua franca in more than half of South America and the whole of Central America. So there are lots of reasons to learn Spanish.

Mandarin is no doubt boosted by the image of mainland China being an enormously successful and vibrant economy. So everybody wants to jump on the "if we speak their language we can sell them things" mentality. But I read in the paper only the other day that the Chinese economy might prove to be a huge bubble, as the West has already itself experienced. If the Chinese economy implodes, will so many people still be avid to learn the ideograms and grammar to read beautiful poetry, or will interest in Mandarin wither?

*

The dilemma is still as I outlined before: should Britain encourage immigrants to learn their mother-tongues properly using state money? Or should Britain leave the tuition of immigrant languages to enthusiasts and private funding, so that there is a strong motivation for immigrants to learn enough English to survive educationally and socially?

I personally believe in the latter solution, i.e. immigrants must be strongly motivated to learn proper, not pidgin, English, so that their children grow up as native-speakers of English. If they are encouraged too much to learn the languages of their roots, they will never become fully British (or English, Scottish), but will have one foot in each camp. I believe that within a generation or two, immigrants must owe their whole loyalty to Britain. You can't serve two masters forever. And your mother-tongue is a key part of this loyalty and identity.

[hdw]

The biggest sector of the UK population unable to speak, read and write English is older Asian women. By Asian I mean mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi (usually Sylheti), but no doubt the same applies to some extent with Indian (including Sikh) women. The best way to persuade them to go to English classes, and I think the argument has been used already, is that it will empower them - to use a word I hate, but it's relevant here. In other words it's not us, the big bad bullying British state, trying to force you to learn our language - we just want to help you acquire this extra skill which will make living in your adopted country so much easier for you.

Going off at a slight tangent - when I taught English in a further education college (Berufsbildendeschule) in Germany I had one class of rather low ability, with quite a lot of children of foreign Gastarbeiter, especially Turks.

If there are any Turks out there reading this, please don't be offended, but there is a rather macho tendency among a lot of Turkish males, and I had a problem with a brother and sister called Halil and Fatma, he being a bit loudmouthed and keen to sit with the biggest louts in the class, ignoring his poor sister who was so timid and silent as to be almost catatonic. I was determined to get Fatma talking to me if it was the last thing I did. So I decided to cut out German altogether with the Turkish students, and to teach myself some Turkish, then when the rest of the class were getting on with their work, I would do a quick few minutes with the Turkish kids, letting them have a laugh at my Turkish pronunciation while I taught them the equivalent English phrases. It worked, and the Turkish boys seemed to enjoy going straight from Turkish to English (as one of them, Cetin, told me: "Deutschland nur Regen und Kartoffels!)". Which I duly put into English for him.

When I reported smugly in the staffroom that Fatma had been chatting away to me, they said in amazement: "Aber die Fatma hat nie gesprochen!". I think British teachers were at that time, in the 70s - I don't know about now - more clued-up about strategies for teaching immigrant kids than the Germans were.

Harry

[Eric]

I think that English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language may have come first, because for decades English has been the language everyone wants to learn. Other countries no doubt copied some of the methods to teach their various mother tongues to immigrants. How much methodological interaction there is between teachers of English to foreigners and their German, Swedish, French equivalents I do not know.

Although I like messing around with languages, I feel that it is crucial that you learn the language of the country you live in to a fairly high degree. And this means that all immigrants to Britain must, compulsarily, attend English classes for a year or two on arrival, to make sure that they are not locked away in a distant culture mentally, and have no affinities with, or feeling for, the one surrounding them.

Women seem to be especially prone to isolation in some immigrant cultures. They seem to stay at home and look after the kids, while the man deals with all the contacts with the outside world. This is a sure recipe for apartheid, and one exacerbated along gender lines.

One feature of the streets around where I live is the satellite dish culture. Every satellite dish on the balcony of a flat, or hanging from the wall, represents a family whose mental world is probably in North Africa or Turkey, not in the Netherlands. How can you get people to integrate if the culture they come from is already quite different, and they still cling to mental landscape their homeland? A further token of growing apartheid.

We used to go on marches to condemn involuntary apartheid in South Africa; now people are indulging in voluntary apartheid in European countries. Whatever its origin, apartheid breeds tensions, misunderstandings, and hatreds. And the language of the country is one key factor in promoting integration and eroding apartheid.

[Eric]

Are languages important if you want to become President of the European Union? Clearly so.

I read in the paper this morning that the Belgian Herman van Rompuy is favourite for this post. He is presumably a compromise candidate, as Blair has enemies in some quarters. And evidently, Germany and France have already agreed on a candidate.

Where languages come in is that it is rumoured that the present Dutch premier Balkenende isn't suitable for the post because he speaks too little French. I'm not sure how much Blair speaks, but some, I would imagine.

Whether you approve of the EU, or think it to be a monolith and a plot against national sovereignty, English is not the only language that counts in the European Union.

[hdw]

Are languages important if you want to become President of the European Union? Clearly so.

I read in the paper this morning that the Belgian Herman van Rompuy is favourite for this post. He is presumably a compromise candidate, as Blair has enemies in some quarters. And evidently, Germany and France have already agreed on a candidate.

Where languages come in is that it is rumoured that the present Dutch premier Balkenende isn't suitable for the post because he speaks too little French. I'm not sure how much Blair speaks, but some, I would imagine.

Whether you approve of the EU, or think it to be a monolith and a plot against national sovereignty, English is not the only language that counts in the European Union.

That's funny, I read an approving comment by Angela Merkel the other day to the effect that Balkenende speaks good German. And didn't Guido Westerwelle tear a strip off some luckless Brit journalist who asked a question in English at a press-conference? It's good to see the Germans flexing their linguistic muscles (just as German is dying off in British schools).

As for the French, they are permanently appalled by the fact that the rest of the world insists on speaking various frightful patois and argots (like English). Quel horreur! Remember when Chirac made a noisy exit from some international meeting when one of his cabinet ministers started making his speech in English?

Harry

[Eric]

I can imagine the conversation between the diminutive Hungarian Brunihusband and the Ossie pin-up developing:

- Zat Bollocknendeure does not speak ze Franche - no good, hein?

- Vel, he is speaking ze Cherman kvite gut. He'ss ze men for ze chop.

- You mean "dzheub"? Let us compromise, mon vieille. Vee take a Beljohn - eef 'ee can decide whezeur to prononce 'iz name fon Rawmpwee or fon Romp??. Ze Beljohns are foreveur seeting on ze fence.

[gonfler]

Are languages important?

Yes, it's our wealth.
I live in a country with 170 languages and dialects.
I don't want them to disappear! It's our heritage!

Classes are thought usually in Filipino and English. I think it would be better if schools would offer elective classes that teach regional languages. They shouldn't force kids to develop a high functional level in the use of language - but at least they should be able to appreciate the other aspects of Philippines culture - to know that there are other kinds of Filipino, not just the dominant ones from the Tagalog region and also to avoid extreme regionalism in the part of some really conservative people.

As for learning major international languages such as French, Japanese, Spanish, etc. - I'm all for it. At least in the college/university level. (It shouldn't be forced though; Not all are interested and I respect that.) Most Filipinos read through English translations. But these translations are specifically targeted to native English speakers - not for us. What happens is that we see the world through its Anglo-Americanized version. Not bad in itself but you know... it's quite limiting.

[Eric]

Gonfler brings up several interesting points:

First, that languages and dialects are part of your heritage. But if you have 170, this presents quite a problem for those wishing to preserve them at a level that they remain a living part of that heritage.

So, like a juggler, you maybe can't keep all 170 balls in the air, but can at least keep some of them moving.

The Scylla and Charybdis of centralism and regionalism are true dangers. If you err on the one side, you will get an anodyne national "Esperanto", with no one really feeling it is their mother tongue. Err on the other, and you will have 170 squabbling factions, all claiming their language or dialect deserves proportionally to be paid most attention and supported with most state funding.

Major international languages should be learnt. This is the Achilles' Heel, to use yet another metaphor, of Britain and the United States. As "everybody" speaks English internationally, very few British and American people can be bothered to learn any foreign language. They force all international conversations to be conducted on their terms. Is this not language imperialism?

[Eric]

A little footnote to the recent European election for President / Chairman:

Of course languages are important. They help remove the hubris of thinking that one's own country is the only civilised one in the whole world.

If you cannot even read what the rest of the European Union is writing in the newspapers and in other publications, let alone communicate with the locals on their own terms, how can you become anything else than Eurosceptic? Fear of the unknown. What does the average Brit really know about the EU and the countries that form it?

[gonfler]

Goedemorgen!

I heard Indonesia has it worse. They have 500!

Well, I'm not expecting equal treatment for all 170. (Wait, we used to have 166... Did we generate 4 more or did linguists discover 4 more? Hmm...) But some major regional languages deserve some attention too.

I agree with point regarding the anglophones' Achilles' Heel. I have noticed that monolingual native English speakers to be less "understanding" of foreign accents. (This is based purely by extrapolation. I have never found any research-based data regarding this.)

Last night, I met this Japanese woman in an event. Even though my Japanese is very poor and her Filipino is not perfect, we still managed to joke around and find a common ground. But when I'm talking to some North Americans and when they would make a pop culture-based jokes and I don't get it, I feel stupid or rather, I am being made to feel stupid. Even if I have access to North American sitcoms, you cannot just expect me to understand the sociolect developed through those shows. They force all international conversations to be conducted on their terms, you said. I think my experience is one example of this.

Then again, I don't really have much experience communicating with people on the northeastern side of the pacific. Please, do not take this against me.

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hdw, how long have you been teaching English as a second-language? I think your experience is very interesting. I have read Chiellino's Fremde and Emine Sevgi ?zdamar's Life is a Caravanserai. That is my only limited exposure to gastarbeiter culture. Can you speak Turkish fluently?

[Eric]

Don't worry, Gonfler, it's not only Filipinos that miss a lot of American jokes. We Brits, who did after all "invent" the English language, now have to suffer in-jokes from a very similar, but nevertheless different, culture to our own. Even within a nation, there are generational and class differences when it comes to culture.

There was also an item on British TV the other night about the revival of an American rap musician ("the legendary godfather of rap") of whom I'd never even heard: Gil Scott-Heron. Sorry, but I live in a different world to rap, in the same way as baseball means nothing to me.

[kpjayan]

I heard Indonesia have it worse. They have 500!

Oh, look at us ! Officially a 1000+..

[hdw]

Goedemorgen!
------------

hdw, how long have you been teaching English as a second-language? I think your experience is very interesting. I have read Chiellino's Fremde and Emine Sevgi ?zdamar's Life is a Caravanserai. That is my only limited exposure to gastarbeiter culture. Can you speak Turkish fluently?

I taught English in Sweden and Germany, and in language schools in the south of England, back in the 1970s, then from 1979 onwards I did a quite different kind of job. But in recent years I have done some unpaid volunteer teaching of English to economic migrants from Poland in Edinburgh.

Harry

[Eric]

There's a Gastarbeiter novel, written by a Latvian woman who was working as a migrant worker picking mushrooms in Ireland. It's not available in English (so the Irish can't read it!) but it does exist in German. A review in English:

Writer digs deep for story of a lifetime - Frontier: Europe- msnbc.com

[Eric]

Language has been in the news quite a lot recently. Look at this:

Citizenship language scam exposed - Times Online

Imagine how you would feel if you were living in a country you were desperate to enter, but were prevented by a test or two. OK, you fiddle the exam, or forge the certificate. But what then? You are a total stranger in the country you've adopted, can only communicate with members of your close family and a few friends. Wouldn't you feel rather isolated?

Turn the tables round. Imagine that you, and English-speaker, are trying to sneak into someone else's country.

Many people, skimming the surface of countries on a fortnight's holiday, may think they speak English everywhere, but wait till you sit in the corner at social gatherings because you can't communicate, and everyone's "jabbering away in their own lingo" and leaving you right out of the conversation, time and time again.

This is presumably how immigrants to Britain, the ones that cheat the language test system, feel after about a year into their stay.

Aren't languages important to give you a sense of belonging? So you can talk to people, phone them up, apply for a job, and even read literature (!). How do the Brits of M?laga survive for decades? Only by isolation and walls round their villas, physical and mental, I suppose.

[Colette Jones]

My son's school used to teach both French and German to the top set. Now they have taken the decision to stop that and have limited it to one, but they have chosen what the children will study (there was no choice).

My son will be learning German and if he wants to do a language at GCSE, that will be the only option. Of course, since the choice has been taken away from him, he prefers French (teenagers!)

Anyway, I know a lot of parents are upset over this as they would prefer French (presumably some other parents are being forced with French and would prefer German).

We as parents, neither of us having learned a second language, do not actually have a preference. Should we?

[kpjayan]

Two more languages extinct..

The Hindu : News / National : Andamanese tribes, languages die