Our kids should be learning Arabic not French

Wednesday, 16th June 2010

Even the French know the game is up, says Rod Liddle. What’s the point in us teaching their language when, in the end, it will be as obsolete as Cornish

It’s a strange thing. Once they have been relieved of office, they start talking a modicum of sense. First we have Ed Balls suggesting that all foreigners should go home because the River Tiber is beginning to foam with much blood, just like Enoch — a Labour supporter himself for a while, remember — once advised.

And now we have the former minister Chris Bryant telling the French that their language is absolutely pointless and that nobody should bother learning it, not even the French. Teach the kids Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic instead, he said. The Tories, suddenly ennobled by power, insisted that this was ‘insulting to the French’. Yes, sure — and your point is?

It is about time someone got to grips with our French obsession, our determination to foist this absurd agglomeration of bastardised Latin verbiage coupled with histrionic tics and shrugs upon the nation’s schoolchildren. There is a move, in some recidivist quarters, to bring back proper Latin in our schools — I don’t see the point, I must admit. But rather that than persist in teaching children a language which is of no consequence whatsoever beyond the borders of France itself, a handful of desperately hopeless countries in West Africa and nine chippy Canadians.

At least Latin has history behind it and a certain logic to its construction. It is true, that as Bryant conceded, French was once the language of diplomacy — but that was more than 100 years ago. It is now the language of nothing, other than the French, and it is time our schools recognised this. Drop it from the curriculum entirely.

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C Cole

June 17th, 2010 10:57am Report this comment

It's a shame this article isn't available on Rod's blog: it would have sparked a terrific debate. My view: show French no merci...

DavidLondon

June 19th, 2010 9:41am Report this comment

Agree with the premise but not the conclusion. It's true that French is no longer an important language and there's no real need to learn it. But then there's no necessity to learn Chinese or Arabic either. As the article says, all international business is done in English anyway. That doesn't mean language learning is a waste of time - it's good for all sorts of reasons - but you might as well teach children a language of a nearby country with an accessible culture. At least, with French, Anglophone teenagers can try to chat up beautiful girls and boys in St Tropez, and later be able to order things in nice restaurants, or understand the guided tour going round a chateau. Who on earth wants to speak Chinese?

Eternal Pessimist

June 20th, 2010 11:33pm Report this comment

While Rod Liddle is right to question the over-emphasis on learning French, it is a pity that the article degenerated into an attack on other languages.

Far from killing off minority languages, the internet has helped them reach wider audiences - no printing or distribution costs, nor the need for broadcasting frequencies.

Liddle appears unaware that the language of Latin America's largest country, Brazil, is not Spanish, but Portuguese, and many more people speak it than German, French or Italian combined. While Spanish has more speakers, its global importance is exaggerated - do British people really care about Cuba or Nicaragua any more than they do about Brazil?

Given that Spanish hasn't been able to kill off Catalan in Spain or Guaran� in Paraguay, there is even less chance that it will kill off Portuguese in either Portugal or Brazil, never mind Italian in Italy. There are many Italian citizens, of Italian ancestry, who speak Spanish better than Italian, but only because they're from Argentina or Uruguay.

The idea that a Flemish businessman might communicate with a Filipino in Spanish instead of English is bizarre, given that Spanish lost ground to American English in the Philippines a century ago.

While Indonesian and Malay, unlike most other Asian languages, have the benefit of being written in Roman script, an ever-growing number of English loanwords, and phonetic pronunciation, more people still prefer to learn Chinese or Japanese. The only Western people who learn Indonesian in great numbers are the Australians, so that they can communicate with the country most likely to invade them. (By the way, calling Indonesian or Malay 'Bahasa' is an affectation, equivalent to calling Latin 'Lingua').

The idea that languages should be killed off is not Darwinian, but, ironically, one beloved of the Jacobins in France. Quelle ironie.

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