Recently in Languages Category

So the British are rubbish at languages, that much we know. What's the problem, though? Why are we rubbish? I don't know, but I have a few ideas.

The British Academy thinks bringing back compulsory language GCSEs is a good idea.

Onora O'Neill, President of the British Academy, said that “A prompt return to mandatory study of foreign languages at GCSE is crucial, since otherwise schools will not have the complement of staff to teach any languages to a reasonable standard.”

The Academy also believes that longer-term measures are needed to incentivise foreign language study and to improve teaching and learning opportunities. Robin Jackson, the Academy's Chief Executive, added that 'The decline in school level language learning results in damage to language-based degree study and also to the many other university subjects that involve linguistic skills, with further malign effects upon the standard of UK research in these fields“.

Hmm, actually teaching children languages might help them to speak languages? Why hasn't anyone thought of that before? Silly government.

But I have a question. We all know that the Dutch, some of our closest neighbours and fellow speakers of a West Germanic language, are incredibly multilingual, speaking English, French, German and Dutch fluently almost to a man (or woman). Now, there are probably plenty of reasons for this, including easy access to foreign language TV stations, thanks to signal leakage from neighbouring countries and cable TV, and a healthy number of people to speak those languages with.

All the same, I can't help but wonder this: why don't we just send a fact finding team over to The Netherlands, find out how they teach languages there, and just do that here – rip out our entire language-teaching system and use theirs instead?

It's just an idea.

Half the planet's languages will be dead by the end of the century. Interesting that there are 60 with only one speaker left.

Spoke too soon. Looks like we're both doing Italian now.

We've worked out which language class to go to. Sarah's going to go to French level 3, I'm going to go on Spanish level 1. That way Sarah will be able to get her French up to the level of fluency she'd like, I can get my Spanish up to the same level as Sarah's and next year, we'll be able to do Spanish level 2 together.

For some reason, Italian just doesn't appeal. German was on the wrong day and the others had a ceiling that was too low. Plus this way we don't get too competitive too early.

Updates and related entries
July 24, 2006: Spoke too soon. Looks like we're both doing Italian now....

Cool Gorilla are doing some free language packs for iPods, including German, French, Greek and Spanish. Get 'em while they're hot!

So Sarah and I are thinking of signing up for language classes at City University in the Autumn. There's a choice, but the trouble is matching it to our levels of ability.

Now I did two language GCSEs - French (eight years' study) and German (three years' study) - getting on for 20 years ago. I've had to use German in my work, French to a lesser extent. I've also learnt some Greek, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, but only at a very functional level

Sarah, however, has A-levels in Russian, French, German and Spanish. Her Spanish is much better than mine; her French is better than mine; her German is about the same as mine, maybe not quite as good.

Here are our choices for languages to learn:

• French (all levels),
• Spanish (all levels),
• Arabic (level one only),
• German (level two and three),
• Italian (level one, two and three) and
• Japanese.

Level two means "rusty GCSE" or better. Level three means "rusty A-level" or better.

So which should we pick?

• German's on a bad day for both us, but would probably be the most useful for me, since I'm frequently dealing with German companies and we'd both enjoy getting ourselves properly fluent again
• French is interesting but we'd essentially be attending different classes for that, which defeats the point of learning a language together.
• Ditto Spanish (no hablo Espa?ɬ�ol mui bien).
• Japanese would be utterly useless for us both but would be interesting
• Arabic would be interesting, but we'd have to stop after a year
• Italian would be fun and potentially useful since we might actually go on holiday to Italy again. But I've already done a few lessons, so I'd be at a very slight advantage.

It's looking like Italian at that moment, with German the main contender. Anyone recommend a different choice?

Updates and related entries
July 21, 2006: We've worked out which language class to go to. Sarah's going to go to French level 3, I'm going to go on Spanish level 1. That way Sarah will be able to get her French up to the level...

Then try one of these nice here dead words. Marvellous, all of them.

A nice little animation, showing how the alphabet evolved from the Phoenician alphabet of 900BC to the modern day form.

I've updated the flashcards for Teach Yourself Instant Italian, week one: I hadn't included the flashcard sentences in the deck. Whoops.

This shows you how far I've got since the start of the year. In part, the problem is because I don't have a deadline. The other problem is it's just so close to Spanish. I'm finding it really hard to keep the two different sets of words apart in my mind: is it siempre or sempre in Italian? That's the kind of problem I'm having. Maybe I'll switch over to Welsh, just to try a language that's really different to Spanish.

Following on from my little rant about Gordon Brown's new plan to force immigrants to learn English, this particular item of news from Private Eye came to my attention today:

“Since November, immigrants wanting to take the UK's citizenship tests must be able to demonstrate an 'acceptable degree' of skill in the English language. But how are people supposed to learn it?

”An interim report from a study by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education has uncovered 'enormous problems' with the availability of English classes for speakers of other languages (ESOL). As demand for the classes has risen (by 65 percent in the past two years), little has been done to boost the number of courses and there is a national shortage of qualified ESOL teachers.

“Many areas have long waiting lists for courses and the inspectorates looking after colleges and adult education services say ESOL is 'probably the weakest curriculum area' in the whole learning and skills sector.”

So not only has Gordon come up with a policy that is really just an extension of an existing one, albeit a stupid extension that couldn't possibly work in practice (how exactly are unemployed immigrants going to be able to afford these English lessons? etc, etc), he's overlooked the fact that there's no one to actually teach English anyway. Assuming this isn't pointless posturing to attract the Daily Mail vote but which he's never going to actually implement.

It's his hands on the economy, folks, and soon he'll be looking after the whole country...