English isn't enough

[Loki]

In today's Observer the translator Michael Hofmann makes an eloquent plea for British people to learn foreign languages and takes a swing at the official policy of downgrading their importance in the school curriculum.

Agatha Christie's Poirot, in one of her short stories, says: "... he speaks too many languages for a good Englishman! (Pardon me, bon ami, but, as linguists, you are deplorable!)". This was back in 1923.

[Eric]

Poirot had presumably noticed that most Englishmen, even honourable ones, tended not to speak foreign languages. So that anyone with fluency in many must either be a spy or a confidence trickster.

[Loki]

Well yes, that's more or less what he intended. The "he" in the quotation was Irish, if I'm not mistaken.

[Eric]

The Irish and the English have not always seen eye-to-eye. But no one nowadays would dare to write a comedy or whodunnit with an Irishman typecast as a rogue or trickster.