Speaking a foreign language

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

We Brits are often criticised for not speaking a foreign langauge. Well few of us do but why should we? Two questions. Which one should we pick and where do we practice it?
Ah, French of course, say the French and ditto the Germans etc etc. Well French is no bloody use in Prague for a start and German (despite it being inflicted on much of Europe in WWII) is not well known in Madrid.
Practice it? Give me a break. Wherever I travel, much of the world wants to practice their English on me. Oh sure, they are amused (and sometimes flattered) to hear me attempt things in their own language and they even make attempts to get me to learn a few phrases but it's English they want.

A few weeks ago we had some UK Professor on the radio talking about the need to learn Chinese. His simplistic argument was that more people in the world spoke Chinese than any other language and they would soon be the dominant economic force. Can't argue with his statistics. But has the silly bugger been to China recently? They are all trying to learn English. And even Mao had the nous to realise that the characters alone would hold China back; that is why he ordered the development of pinyin - the romanized version of the putonghua or Mandarin as we know it. I spent a year at night school on this language. It's grammar is simple but otherwise it's hard. And no way is this one going to win.

A few key phrases are desirable in any language but do not underestimate the value of 'piss off' spoken with venom. They all seem to understand that.