While doing my usual Sunday morning thing, checking facebook to make sure that nothing important had happened while I was asleep (is the answer *ever* yes?), I saw that someone had posted an article on the BBC showing that Mitt Romney has been lambasted for being a speaker of French.
While it could just be another item on the ever-growing pile of anti-American sentiments you often get, I filed it under things that make absolutely no sense.
As a linguist (and a creator of linguists-to-be, hopefully), it seems counter intuitive that a skill which takes hard work, practice, and a heft of brain-power to achieve could be labelled as a negative; in this case, it's a show of 'namby-pamby European liberalism'. Or being a little bit too Canadian, perhaps. For while I've been on the receiving end of more than your fair share of apathy, this was the first time I've seen language skills openly sneered at. I was, it's fair to say, shocked.
As a linguist, I know what a foreign language can do for a person, how it can change and influence not only the course of their life, but how they see and feel everything around them. As I fight the tide of parents who declare that there's no point studying my subject, as their children will never go abroad anyway, I've had to question my beliefs about 'the point of learning a language'. I've come out believing that it's an essential skill, if not for every young person, then for a majority of them. As an introduction to a series about my own language journey, I will serve up my top-10 robust defences for language learning in schools and beyond:
1. The oh-so-obvious: if you travel abroad, a little language goes a long way.
A little research, a smile, lots of pointing, and a merci, a danke, an obrigado or a prozse will ease your passage no matter where you are.
2. Foreign language learning is a gateway drug
So, you're never going to France? Wish you learned Spanish? Don't be put off. Persevering with French will give you a solid grounding in grammar and vocabulary for the romance languages and will make that mountain of self-taught Spanish so much easier to climb. I spent a weekend in Spain and with lots of guesswork was able to navigate hotels and restaurants with considerable success, despite never having had a Spanish lesson (though I fell prey to some rogue peanuts, so not 100% successful...).
3. Metalinguistic knowledge
That solid grounding in grammar and vocabulary? Not just useful for German. It'll tell you lots about English too, how we use words, how our language came to be the way it is. And your essays will score higher with that new fancy-pants vocabulary too.
4. Transferable skills
Language skills are not in a box on their own in the dusty recesses of your brain. They interlink with so many others; pattern-spotting, logic and other goodies which intersect with maths, music and science, as well as communication, memory, creativity, self-discipline, confidence, and performance which overlap with the transferable social skills employers are so keen on.
5. The ability to see differently.
Interaction with non-English speakers gives a new perspective; you see with what Kristeva calls the eyes of the outsider. It's a valuable perspective to have sometimes. Linguistic research shows that language, to a certain extent, shapes thought.If you think of those languages with words for only 5 colours, or no numbers beyond 4, or no future or past tense, you see how language can be be a prison of thought. Double the size of your imagination by adding a new path for your thoughts to take. Just don't limit yourself to one way of being.
6. Travel doesn't only necessitate language skills, language skills necessitate travel. I would never have spent 2 years living abroad and running all over Europe to visit my language-buddies without the excuse of my language studies. It was awesome.
7. You don't just look like a more interesting person, you are a more interesting person. Arrogant, yes, but true, also yes. That story about that party you talked yourself into? Accidentally saying the worst swear-word ever to an 8-year-old? Exhibitions, bars, restaurants, landscapes that no one you know has seen? Books they've never read? Music they've never bothered to listen to? [Insert language here] opened that door. Whether it's your month in Senegal, your year abroad in Madrid, or the journeys to your family in Turkey, you can access something few English speakers can. It's a privilege.
8. It's not all about irregular verbs, it's about film, cinema, books, music, dance and art.
The hard work on those verb tables and vocab lists buys you access to so much cool stuff. Tea at the musée d'Orsay? Don't mind if I do. View of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in December? Yes please. Moonlight in the Sahara? Been there, done it. Without languages? I would never even have heard of 'em.
9. Employability.
I've had 3 jobs since graduating with a degree in German and French. Condition of all 3 was fluent French. These skills pay for me to live.
10. It's fun.
Oh, the carefree days of ice-skating in Rouen, the disastrously cheap alcohol, the daytrips to one of the cultural centres of Europe, the spontaneous trips to Morocco, gallivanting in Germany, roadtripping around France, the friends for life, the... everything. In 3 languages, I have no words to describe the awesome that languages have given me. It's been a gift. Though, the second internal monologue that chatters away in French is occasionally a burden...
