Speaking a second language?

[starlight32]

I spend a great deal of time working with people of different nationalities. What comes to the forfront in my mind is how we are lacking as a country in speaking a second language.

 

The Germans learn English as a second and quite often leave school fluent in French also. The French learn English,as do the Portugese,Swedes,Dutch and many other European countries.

 

There is the added bonus also for example, if you are native Dutch you can understand German and vice versa, same as if you are a Swede you can understand Danish and Norwegian enough to get by without learning.

 

So do you think we are behind with all this? Most leave school in the UK only knowing how to order an ice cream in French and what your name is in German and that is forgotten by the time you are 20. Not very good is it?

 

I will admit I do speak German well enough to hold up in conversation, but get stumped. It is often easier though for me to hold the conversation in English as 99% of the Germans I meet speak better English than I do German. I only learnt from spending a long time working there in the 90's.

 

This made me think all this because I was in a meeting last night with some Brits, Swedish,German and French guys and to be honest we really come out as the odd ones on top. The German could speak French and English,The Frenchman vice versa and the Swede,English and German.

 

Do you think our curriculum should have more emphasis on our children leaving school with a second language? I certainly do.

 

Co-incidentally how many on here speak another tongue?

 

(That does not include any Essex Trotters with Bonjour's or au revoirs to their vocabulary)

[Sprinter]

From what i see in life, 99% of Germans/Swedes/French that i come into contact with speak better english that the vast majority of our university students. Getting some of our own young people to communicate in english is difficult enough.

[Bleeh]

I'd agree.

 

I think half the issue is that most other states teach english from a very early age (From Year 1 I believe), and keep it a major subject throughout, in the UK it is pushed aside till year 6, and never heavily done anyhow.

[TheDarkPassenger]

We are fortunate in that many countries learn English as a second language simply due to its prevalence and that it is known as "the' business

language.

 

I spend a lot of time in central Europe (Czech/Poland/Hungary) and the majority of people I come across have a working knowledge of English.

 

However, I do believe that we should all learn another language (French/Spanish whichever is second most common after English) from early on

in the school career. It would make us better equipped to communicate and probably (although I've no evidence to back this up) better at our own

native language too.

[kdubya]

So just what exactly are we supposed to learn? other countries simply go for English as it is a very universal lanquage and adopted in a lot of multinational occupations aviation and shipping etc , so do we go german french spanish japanese mandarin, swedish polish russian etc etc or would a better choice now be urdu

 

KW

[V8landy]

So just what exactly are we supposed to learn? other countries simply go for English as it is a very universal lanquage and adopted in a lot of multinational occupations aviation and shipping etc , so do we go german french spanish japanese mandarin, swedish polish russian etc etc or would a better choice now be urdu

 

KW

 

[Ozzy Fudd]

i learnt german at school, did a bit of latin and spanish as well. but i think you answered your own question when you said

 

The Germans learn English as a second and quite often leave school fluent in French also. The French learn English,as do the Portugese,Swedes,Dutch and many other European countries

 

if they all learn english then theres no dire need for us to learn french, etc. bearing in mind a lot of the main developed/financial leading countries speak mainly english as a first language (australia, usa, canada, uk) then it makes more sense for the rest to learn english

[starlight32]

i learnt german at school, did a bit of latin and spanish as well. but i think you answered your own question when you said

 

The Germans learn English as a second and quite often leave school fluent in French also. The French learn English,as do the Portugese,Swedes,Dutch and many other European countries

 

if they all learn english then theres no dire need for us to learn french, etc. bearing in mind a lot of the main developed/financial leading countries speak mainly english as a first language (australia, usa, canada, uk) then it makes more sense for the rest to learn english

 

Taking that attitude just puts us second best in my book. Just because someone else speaks English is no excuse to stand aside, be lazy and not upstage of that.

 

I mean Queen Elizabeth was fluent in how many languages?

 

What I am trying to say is we should promote ourselves forward by being able to speak their tongue, it has its benefits because particularly when it comes to business in a face to face you could be on the losing side.

[MJN]

Chinese is the language to learn if you want to get on !

 

Murky bucket,

Tschüss

Auf Wiedersen pet.

Do svidanja

Caio

Hej då

Wa ki liao

[Flashman]

[/b]

Taking that attitude just puts us second best in my book. Just because someone else speaks English is no excuse to stand aside, be lazy and not upstage of that.

It pains me to write this, but I have to agree.

 

I find that making even the smallest effort abroad with the language makes all the difference with the natives. Yes, they should all speak English because they were probably a colony, but ordering a meal and asking the price for jiggy jiggy in the local lingo shows a little class.

 

The two places where I struggle most with the language are the USA (who are terminally stupid regarding the Queen's English) and Scotland (who are terminally stupid, full stop).

[Markio]

I too deal with a lot of Europeans at our various offices in Spain, Belgium, Germany etc. They seem to get about a bit as well, i wonder if the lack of water bordering each country means they are more likely to move about from country to country for work and play and therefore it's reinforced at school and home(*) and most importantly, practised regularly throughout their adult life. Whereas we are in a relative infancy as regards to ease and low cost of travel to Europe.

 

(*) reminds me of the Muzzy DVD the BBC try and peddle. It's for teaching young kids other languages. I'm all for it but the sales pitch is all wrong. My 3 year old can try and learn all the odds and **** of other languages but without the adults in their environment being able to talk in that same language i can't imagine that the child will ever have it reinforced.

[Chard]

It pains me to write this, but I have to agree.

 

I find that making even the smallest effort abroad with the language makes all the difference with the natives. Yes, they should all speak English because they were probably a colony, but ordering a meal and asking the price for jiggy jiggy in the local lingo shows a little class.

 

The two places where I struggle most with the language are the USA (who are terminally stupid regarding the Queen's English) and Scotland (who are terminally stupid, full stop).

 

[ME]

I work in shipping and used to work for a French company many years ago.

 

If you want someone to tell you in French to double stack a pallet, raise the forks on a forktruck, spell out an address or ask other transport related questions then I am your man.

 

I went to Paris a few years ago with an Australian mate of mine (as his drinking partner / translator). After 4 days on the lash everyday we found our level at the Guinness bar. My mate was amazed that the taxi drivers could even understand my pigeon French at 1am !

 

The problem with languages is that if you dont use them, you start to lose it.

[leeds chimp]

i leant spanish at school....as said hardly ever used it...now would be stuck

[Gareth W]

The company I work for employs almost 40 different nationalities at the place I am based, everyone (apart from a few frenchmen) speak English well enough for us to have in depth technical discussions, not just europeans, but Malays, Indonesians, Thai's, Brazilians, Paraguay, Chilean's and even Australians.

 

Most of the Europeans speak at least 3 languages it actually makes me ashamed to be English sometimes. Apart from the french everyone will switch to English if they are having a conversation and one of us Brits is there. Listening to 4 Indonesians rabbiting away in their own language then seamlessly switching to English is something else.

[kdubya]

Think it might be best if we got our educational hierarchy to concentrate on teaching English here first?

 

KW

[Ozzy Fudd]

[/b]

 

Taking that attitude just puts us second best in my book. Just because someone else speaks English is no excuse to stand aside, be lazy and not upstage of that.

 

I mean Queen Elizabeth was fluent in how many languages?

 

What I am trying to say is we should promote ourselves forward by being able to speak their tongue, it has its benefits because particularly when it comes to business in a face to face you could be on the losing side.

 

thats far from what i was getting at. as i said i speak german (although very rusty), learnt spanish and latin to a lesser degree as well, and have dabbled with russian and irish too, i am far from lazy when it comes to languages.

 

its great saying that we should make an effort to learn another language, but two points. firstly, with the state our education system is supposedly in, would it not be better raising standards across the board with maths/science/english before worrying about foreign languaues. but secondly, and mainly really as someone else has already pointed out, china looks to be the next big economic power so - apart from choosing which european language to teach kids, bearing in mind that the eu has ALOT of different languages and i doubt they could learn every single one - in reality what use is spanish/portuguese unless youre going on holiday, or russian unless you want to buy a few ak's, or german if you want to understand what the nazi's are saying in old ww2 films??

 

if we had to pick a language, id go for mandarin

Edited April 19, 2010 by Ozzy Fudd

[humperdingle]

Don't Brits abroad just shout a little louder in English to try and get their point across?

[jmooney]

Don't Brits abroad just shout a little louder in English to try and get their point across?

 

 

American's do that too.

 

We're not as "international" as you lot, meaning we can't drive through 3 different nations in 8 hours here. Except for the people in Quebec who still want be French, English is the main language for the most part. Problem is that we are getting overrun with illegals from Mexico and South America to the point that you need to speak Spanish to get along in some places. There are lots of people pushing for teaching Spanish to our kids so they can get along in their own country......for some reason we can't teach them English, so let's the rest of us learn Spanish so they don't feel uncomfortable as they use our resources and don't pay taxes......

[MM]

have you ever noticed in movies that show Gods, they are all English speaking? This is to show that we are THE MIGHTY ENGLISH!!! and we dont learn the filthy tongue of smelly countries like France and Germany

[Bigweed]

and Scotland (who are terminally stupid, full stop).

 

Scotland is a place not a person (the use of who!!!) - who's stupid now then

[chippy18]

My Wife is French and speaks German (Her Dad is German) and Italian fluently. All my kids speak French and German because of growing up with it and I also speak French and German, the French mainly because I had no choice when we first moved in together and the German because I fancied it and had someone there to teach me.

The thing I find though is whenever we visit her Parents or any of her Relatives be it France or Germany or them coming to us, they wont speak English even if they can.

My Brother in-law is the worst of the lot and even though he was taught it in School he flatly refuses to speak English, which gets on my wick as I made the effort and this causes no end of arguments, especially whenever we go out when they visit us. They may be taught it but a lot are not interested in using it.

 

Cheers

[Al Downie]

From what i see in life, 99% of Germans/Swedes/French that i come into contact with speak better english that the vast majority of our university students. Getting some of our own young people to communicate in english is difficult enough.

 

Absolutely, 100%. I'm ashamed and embarrassed by the spoken English I hear around our streets, and wonder how foreign visitors can understand a word of it. And to make matters worse, people now seem to be not only accepting but celebrating the 'new' language of youth - you know, the language where they 'feel' each other and try to talk like dey is black innit.

 

When I moved down here (Cambs) from Scotland, the first voices I heard were two ladies talking in the breakfast cereals aisle of a supermarket. One pointed at a box of something and said: "Deyr gwayt dem int dey?" (they're great them, isn't they?). I honestly thought they were foreign! Regional accents and dialects are all well and good, but that's just not even like English. Compare it to the English spoken by any German visitor, and then tell me what's great about our education system...

[cocker3]

i holiday in france every year and can speak french to a degree and yes french people do have more time for you if you try and make an effort to speak there tounge .i think its just a case of most brits cant be ***** learning another laungage because most countrys speak english so why bother

and if you need to speak a second laungage it would be polish cause there so may over here now

 

Scotland (who are terminally stupid, full stop).

your from essex how can you call any one stupid .and anyway when your in scotland what are they doing in essex for a village idiot

[Bigweed]

your from essex................ and anyway when your in scotland.................

 

mmmmmmmm you're (as in you are) not your