According to the well known author George Mikes, the true Englishman does not speak any foreign languages and is quite proud of it! His body of work is pure comedy genius and it portrays well the UK’s urgency to step up the game and upgrade the population’s linguistic skills.
The issue is no longer trivial as the nation is lagging behind substantially in economic, diplomatic, cultural and political terms. Contrarily to some people who still have a 19th century mindset, the world is no longer Eurocentric and the days of empire are long gone. Nowadays, the fastest growing economies in the world stage are China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa for example.
Learning someone else’s language is often taken for granted but it sure helps to bring people closer, build bridges, overcome psychological and technical barriers, read between the lines, understand the world from a different perspective as well as the local typical expressions, in addition it shows empathy and respect towards the other partie.
Following an EU survey, it became clear that the UK has got the worst linguistic record in the whole of Europe, as currently ¾ of UK adults cannot speak any foreign language whatsoever! A mere 38% of Brits masters more than 1 language.
The same survey also revealed that only 11.5% of British adults regarded themselves as competent in the foreign language they were best at. However, I do have my doubts…some deluded people do like to show off just to big up their inflated egos and gain some sort of status. Unless someone actually sits them for a written and oral linguistic test, I would not believe a word they say!
To be frank the scenario is quite grim: 62% of the national population can’t speak any foreign language, 38% of Britons speak at least 1 foreign language, 18% speak 2 and only 6% of the population are true polyglots, speaking more than 3 languages (I suspect this contingent is formed by specialists working in certain fields that require such mastery and range).
On a separate note, in the EU approximately 56% of the population speaks at least 1 foreign language, 28% speaks at least 2 and 11% speaks 3 or more. Coincidentally, the same study revealed that English is really the most popular foreign language as 51% of EU citizens are fluent in English.
On the other hand, the French language is the second most popular foreign language in the UK (spoken by only 15% people) followed by the German language (only 6%, 1 in 20 people in the UK understands it. I am not too sure myself about their pronunciation or oral fluency tough!), the Spanish language comes in third place (4%) alongside Italian (2%).
The true masters of foreign languages in Europe are without any doubt the Scandinavians and the Germans who have foreign languages instilled in them since nursery and by the time they leave primary school they are already fluent in 5 languages at least!
Unfortunately, in the UK studying a foreign language is not even regarded a popular option at school as kids start studying a foreign language aged 11 (by then the most important years when learning is faster and more effective are gone already!).
They abandon it when they are aged 14 because they struggle too much with it, so much so that UK schoolchildren are the least likely to speak a foreign language in the whole of the EU, even though the national curriculum has always included French, Spanish and German as options only.
Now the range is expanding to include Arabic, Mandarin and Urdu. Times are changing as national graduates and business executives are also reaching out to learn Mandarin Chinese as China has the fastest growing economy in the world.
Now the national authorities are implementing measures to address the issue but the situation is so bad that even they faced their own embarrassment when it was not possible to translate the Brexit White Paper into foreign languages!
In the meanwhile, a YouGov survey named Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese as most crucial languages to the UK in the upcoming 2 decades.
Anyway, Ethnologue exposed that 378m in this world speak the English language as a native speaker which only makes it easier for Brits to become lazy in domestic and foreign soil. The fact is that learning a foreign language is not for the faint hearted, it is a life skill that involves investing time, effort, dedication, passion and self-discipline to pursue a living field that is constantly changing in terminology, expressions, rules, grammar and even slang.
Bakasura Blog 