Clarity begins at Home Office

There are plenty of linguistic things I could rant about on my first blog post of 2016. Perhaps I could poke fun at Larry Lamb and the British Council's drive to get people in the UK to learn a foreign language while UK politicians continue to do the hokey cokey on the subject of the country's membership of the EU. Rather than looking outwards and promoting the benefits of stronger engagement with our European neighbours and their languages, many of our deluded politicians demonstrate how isolationist you can choose to be if you live on an island.

At a house party over Christmas, a friend's sister excitedly told me how her 12-year-old daughter had recently shown talent and enthusiasm for learning German. Should I ever meet the 12-year-old, I have been instructed to chat to her in German - which I would be delighted to do. This is how any language-learning drive should work. Don't tell working adults with established careers, families, commitments and other distractions to learn a few phrases a day in another language - tell and encourage 11 and 12-year olds! They have more time and a stronger motivation. It is only by training them to become language graduates in a decade's time that the UK will have any hope of addressing the UK's multilingual malaise and missed trade opportunities. The sad reality, of course, is that language learning is on the wane in schools and universities and few people seem to care.

But I won't rant about that! I won't even rant about the new idea that forcing members of non-Christian minority groups to learn English will be an effective tool in tackling segregation and radicalisation. It's a confusing proposal, given that segregation rarely occurs due to language alone. Secondly, the majority of recent evil acts or excursions falling into this category were carried out by those who seemed perfectly able to speak either English or the language of the European country where they were based. I won't even highlight the plight of the many UK-based TEFL teachers who, according to writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen, have been made redundant in huge numbers over recent years - only to witness this apparent volte-face now that the political elite have suddenly decided that teaching English is a good idea, supported by £20m in funding.

I won't rant about 10-year-old schoolchildren who live in terraced houses and who inadvertently misspell the word and spark major police investigations as a result. In fact, I won't rant about anything today because I think this embarrassing error by a government department tells us everything we need to know about how important languages are in the UK.

Island of lost souls

Today, I'm returning to a topic I've written about many times before — the decline of foreign language learning in the UK. So I also apologise for repeating myself. But the situation is even worse than I thought. Take the case of export sales manager Sarah Grain, for example. The company she works for in South Wales does 70% of its trade exporting to European countries. However, she was unable to fill her most recent export sales position with anyone from the UK; describing the lack of development of foreign language skills as "soul-destroying".

This is surely the consequence of a sustained decline in modern foreign language learning for at least the last decade. The statistics make for depressing reading. According to responses received from 136 secondary schools as part of a recent study by the CfBT Education Trust, the number of students in Wales taking French and German at GCSE has halved between 2002 and 2014. The decline is blamed on numerous causes, including the perceived difficulty of languages compared to other subjects, the limited choice of subjects, and timetabling or inspection pressures. To my mind, these are all excuses made by those seeking to blame the seemingly fixed education system itself. This stance conveniently absolves them of any moral responsibility to stem the decline or put pressure on others in a position to take decisive action. 

Forgive me for focussing on my favourite modern foreign language (German). However, the fate of German, in particular, is indicative of the scale of the problem. Recruiting skilled German speakers in Wales must be difficult, given that the survey found that in 2014, just 114 candidates sat German 'A' Level. Germany is the UK's biggest European export market (11%) and globally, is second only to the USA (12%). Even Switzerland features in the top 20 UK export markets (1.7%), so German, French and Italian skills would also be useful to service that trade too.

But perhaps more worrying than the educational or economic aspects are the social ones. In the conclusion to the study of language trends in Wales, the outlook is bleak:

"Teachers' responses suggest that the majority of young people in Wales are neither aware nor appreciative of the benefits which skills in foreign languages and intercultural understanding can bring in terms of advantages for study, personal development and employment. [...] To stem the dramatic decline of Modern Foreign Languages in schools across Wales and to address the widely held perception that languages are unimportant and of little use will require concerted action at the highest level, in order both to address the systemic/structural challenges being faced by schools and to begin to tackle entrenched and unhelpful social attitudes."

(Modern Foreign Languages in secondary schools in Wales

Findings from the Language Trends survey | 2014/15, CfBT Education Trust, p.57) 

England has fared slightly better than Wales in the take-up of languages at GCSE in recent years, with entries rising in 2012-2013 by 19% and 10% for French and German respectively. Though this cannot even begin to address employment needs, which require higher-level language skills. The situation is likely to only get worse in the near future, given the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU that has been promised by 2017. The political narrative on EU membership has been largely negative for decades, skewed by scaremongering over a perceived erosion of UK sovereignty and an overly simplistic, unhelpful portrayal of the movement of people between EU Member States.

Anyone in the UK currently under 58 years of age has never had a say on UK membership of the EU. That may be so, however, unless steps are taken over the coming months to highlight the economic and social benefits of EU membership — which can and should be driven by a redoubling of efforts to positively promote foreign language learning in the UK and freedom of movement to Europe, especially for younger voters — the country's future position in or out of the EU, though determined democratically, will arguably not be based on a balanced assessment of pros and cons.  

Echo and the funnyman

Besides learning how to teach, if there's one thing that completing the CELTA course has revealed to me; it's how I approach what I do – how I try and engage students. My go-to English teaching handbook, a well-thumbed copy of Scrivener (2011:14)* warns against 'entertainer teaching' – the practice of a language teacher regularly regaling students with hilarious anecdotes. Now, unlike 'teacher' Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society, for instance; I cannot bring a glittering career in stand-up comedy into the classroom. Where appropriate, however, I can recall a relevant, funny event to keep students engaged, provoke discussion or bring some 'real-world' relevance to the content under discussion.

The teaching manuals and TEFL tomes also rail against the practice of echoing, where the language teacher repeats the target language that has been correctly provided by the student. At various points in my teaching practice on the CELTA course, I was guilty of this. However, my qualification is geared towards teaching adults. Some recent discussions with the children I currently teach finally revealed to me why I was previously oblivious to my penchant for echoing. Consider the following interaction between myself and a pupil (speaking German) on a day spent in the great outdoors:

Teacher: So, what did you see in the cave?
Pupil: Spinnen, ganz viele! (Translation: Spiders, lots of them!)
Teacher: Wow, you saw lots of spiders! Were they big? ...

As far as possible at the school where I teach, pupils are required to converse with me only in English. For my part, I am required to speak to all students individually and often, and at a level of difficulty close to their ability. But whereas with adult learners, who would no doubt feel patronised by me echoing their correct English utterance; the example above sees me translating a child's response as confirmation that they have correctly understood my initial question. It is merely their own command of English that prevents them – for the time being – from responding in the same language.

It should also be noted that I teach in an environment where learning in individualised and student-led. As such, teacher-led, time-bound conventional classroom teaching is rare. Teacher input serves primarily as a means of stimulating learners and providing them with the tools to discover and implement knowledge (including language) for themselves. Consequently learning opportunities arise in both formal and informal settings: within school, outdoors, in breaks during games of basketball or table tennis, as we cook and eat meals together, on the bus to and from school, as well as at public events.

So I'm becoming increasingly aware of different methods of teaching and learning – and their respective merits. It is obvious that group-based lessons with conventional, group-based outcomes are only applicable to a limited extent in environments where learning and progress are deliberately individualised. In such a setting, echoing may continue in specific cases. Whether my English anecdotes make me an entertainer or even a funnyman is not something I can judge.

* Scrivener, Jim (2011) ‘Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide To English Language Teaching’, Third Edition, Macmillan Education, Oxford

Much ado about nothing?

Along with other commentators such as popular etymologist Mark Forsyth, I've been amused this week by reports of eyebrow-raising over the German language's inclusion of the English neologism der Sh**storm in its somewhat sacred Duden dictionary. Here in Switzerland, the term was also voted Word of the Year in 2012. The term denotes uncontrollable public outrage, usually online in the context of social media posts – and often insulting in its content. As I have mentioned in previous posts, neologisms interest me, since their ability to gain currency demonstrates a social need to construct a new term for a new concept. As such, they show that a language is healthy and can adapt to the culture it expresses.

But just in case we are at a loss to understand the kind of public outrage that might warrant use of the term, the torrent of excrement gushing forth in the wake of the plagiarism row engulfing Germany's erstwhile defence secretary Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and then more recently, use of the term in a speech by German prime minister Angela Merkel are cited as examples. An interesting piece in The Guardian seems to highlight German's preference for swearwords with faecal rather than sexual origins, though quite how or why the term has managed to float to the top of public consciousness and usage is not really examined. Predictably, there is no shortage of verbal diarrhoea in the comments sections attached to these articles.

In this particular case, I think we are once again witnessing the Internet-driven obsession with quantifying and describing everything anew. We clearly need to find new ways to feel anger and to display it, now that previous profanities and practices so obviously date from a time when media outlets defined outrage. These days, I increasingly find that the same outlets are now more than happy to solicit public commentary, stir gently and watch events unfold. But surely this is journalistic laziness masquerading as legitimacy.

I had never heard of the term until I read it in a Swiss newspaper a few weeks ago. I do not believe it is used widely in English. As such, any attempts to cite the word as further evidence of an English assault on the German language are misplaced. Other popular pseudo-anglicisms – das Handy (a mobile phone), der Showmaster (the host of a TV show), der Beamer (a projector) among others – are then used wrongly by German speakers, who believe the term to be an English loan word. In my own experience abroad, I have occasionally used one of the above words as a kind of shorthand to aid another person's understanding. However, I then always point out that the word is a purely German invention. I believe the same is true of this latest addition to the language.

Happy death-day tu vous?

Today I must report the imminent collapse of polite society as we know it. That's what certain French social media refuseniks would have you believe, anyway. For it seems that the enfant terrible of the Internet – Twitter – and its users, have adopted the convention of referring to others online using the informal second-person pronoun tu rather than its more formal and polite equivalent, vous.

To monolingual English readers, this issue may be about as interesting as watching fifty shades of grey paint drying; but to anyone with even minimal knowledge of foreign languages, it's a huge deal. It's so important that when, aged 21, I was living in Germany and had joined a choir, an older singer asked earnestly and in perfect English:

"Can I say you to you?"

How could I refuse? I explained that English no longer had German’s distinctions in its pronouns and she was free to address me using you. We laughed about it. But back then, everyone knew their place and the Internet had yet to sound the death knell for deference and politeness. Fast-forward to 2012 and this current debate merely signifies – online, at least – the obsolescence of the distinction.

The use of tu and vous in French or du and Sie in German is predicated on certain key criteria: the age of the people involved in the interaction; their respective statuses relative to each other and the degree of familiarity between them. The article even asserts that tu is used as a form of violence between two drivers who do not know each other. But the prevalence of familiar forms online would suggest that, notwithstanding other contextual details to the contrary, no such offence is intended. Anyone offended is simply applying mutually accepted social norms from one social sphere in another – where no such norms exist. Or do people preface their online posts with phrases such as: "I am a mature person with a high-powered job. This makes me considerably richer than you. Hence I would never meet the likes of you in real life and you shall address me accordingly."? Alternatively, unless you were interested in dating your correspondent, would you request their age/sex/location/status before agreeing to engage with them at all?

Magazine director Laurent Joffrin may bemoan the perceived lack of respect that tu signifies. But can we demand it from the outset? Respect has to be earned. Status alone cannot confer it. There is also no mention of the confusion that may arise in French given that vous is also the second-person plural pronoun. The same pronoun may, context permitting, refer to one person and many people simultaneously. We often 'broadcast' online to as many people as possible. Equally we may address one person but hope that others read what we write. We may even wish to blur any such distinctions. But how do people tell the difference? Universally using tu for one person and vous for more than one person may make this Internet-specific distinction clear.

We must concede, however, that while a move from the formal to the familiar is possible by mutual agreement; the reverse is impossible. Maybe it’s this irreversible trend that Joffrin despises. But without the smokescreen of respect and deference, his attitude merely demonstrates a refusal to accept the egalitarian ethos of the Internet itself.

It's all relative

In February 2011, students started telling me they thought English was a "really difficult language to learn" and that German was "much easier". Comparing languages based on their perceived degree of difficulty for the learner is clearly a subjective and relative concept. In his fascinating book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages, on page 108, author Guy Deutscher makes the point that the relative difficulty of learning a given foreign language crucially depends on the mother tongue of the learner concerned. Most people would rightly assume that learning Italian is easy if your mother tongue is French, for example. But German and English also have many similarities. So in a bid to enthuse my disillusioned students, and thinking back to my 14-year-old self discovering similarities between the two languages; I designed a fun lesson on cognates – words used in different languages that derive from the same form.

So without going into the High German consonant shift (also called the second sound shift) or the first sound shift (also called Grimm's Law, after the linguist and editor of fairy tales Jacob Grimm), charts available online show that English and German are full of cognates. The most obvious of these are the ones whose spelling is essentially intact in both languages: hand (German: die Hand), finger (German: der Finger), ball (German: der Ball), salt (das Salz), pepper (der Pfeffer), light (German: das Licht). The list goes on and on but you get the general idea.

Now, my reason for drawing attention to the similarities was to show that in lots of ways, by sharing many of the same words, functions and ideas; many languages are not as different from each other as they seem. So you can imagine my delight at reading this morning that researchers in New Zealand looking into cognates – using analyses more commonly employed in evolutionary biology – have discovered that the origins of English, along with those of other languages in the Indo-European family of languages (comprising around 449 of the world's languages), were first present around 5000 years ago. The use of a family-tree theory about language is not new. The technique was first conceived by German linguist August Schleicher in 1853. Though having applied it in this new way using 207 cognate words, the team at the University of Auckland now believe that this Indo-European family is rooted in the Anatolian region of what is now Turkey, and as a result is actually around 8000 years old.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, we are aware that language is subjected to many different influences such as loan words from other languages, semantic shifts and cultural change. However, this new research suggests that cognates can be seen as 'linguistic DNA', such that cognates describing key concepts in the physical or natural world (such as body parts) are much more resistant to change over time. As a result, they may prove to be more reliable indicators of a language's origin. 

Thought for food

The next time you visit the local branch of that German supermarket chain, spare a thought for the translator who has lovingly translated the ingredients and description of your chosen German delicacy. In recent weeks I've come to realise that cross-cultural differences are most apparent in the world of gastronomy. Forget the urban myth about the Inuit having anything up to one hundred different words for snow; German speakers have around seven different types of croissant to contend with!

The reason why English speakers have trouble accepting multiple words to describe the same thing is precisely because in their native cultures, they are anything but the same thing – they are entirely different entities. And having a seemingly infinite number of different types of croissant or bread clearly matters in the German-speaking world.

Cross-cultural differences are one thing, but it's also about different levels of specificity. One German word that crossed my path recently was the word Schalenfrüchte, which literally translates as 'fruit with a shell on it'. A quick look in five dictionaries revealed that this word is universally translated as 'nuts'. I still cannot find a reason why anyone could not use the German word Nüsse when talking about nuts. We clearly need to understand that we are only dealing with those nuts that have a shell.

But before we start believing that German, just like Inuit, is overcrowded with multiple words to describe the same concept, there are also instances where one word is used to refer to two very different things. Take my current favourite – the German word Sellerie. This word is used to refer to both celery and celeriac. In German these two vegetables should, strictly speaking, be modified and referred to as Stangensellerie and Knollensellerie, respectively. When they are not, I have to make an educated guess. All of this might sound trivial, though as a translator it's my job to care.

It's why I love my work, though. As a fellow translator once said, it's the only job in the world where you get paid to learn something new every day. I've now experimented with fennel and have also discovered an utterly hideous member of the cauliflower family called Romanesco. I won't be buying that! Enjoy your Sunday lunch, folks!