Language learning in the United Kingdom ...

Whenever I go into my local city of Manchester, amid the sights and sounds and smells, I often pass by an enormous billboard decked out in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag, carrying a huge advertisement for the Instituto Cervantes, the official if you will Spanish language and cultural centre in Manchester.

We are fortunate to have such a centre in our city – there are only a handful of others in the UK, namely only in London and Leeds. The centre is funded and supported by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and employs an entirely native Spanish speaking staff. The building itself is located in the city centre, no more than 10 minutes away from the main square. As you go in, the place is divided up into three levels: the ground floor housing the reception team and a large and extensive Spanish-language library, the main – first – floor housing mostly classrooms, but also with more administrative offices, and a couple of large audience halls for cultural events, such as film showings, food tastings, and regular lectures on all aspects of Hispanic culture from cinema, history, literature ... the list goes on. The centre offers regular courses of Spanish made up of twice-weekly 2 hour classes, and ranges from the beginner level to proficiency.

I am all for language learning, and I myself was and continue to be an avid learner of Spanish – so much so I even completed a joint honours degree in the language and spent nine months living in northwest Spain. Language learning can be great fun, and as frustrating as it is annoying. One thing that it is not, is easy. Learning a language – any language, mind – is incredibly difficult. It is not just a question of learning words (that’s considered the easy part), but making these words into phrases and sentences and in turn into entire conversations. Think about how many words we use in English every day. Think about having to learn all that multitude of words over again, each one separately. But then each of these foreign words might have a different meaning altogether as well as the meaning you’ve learned. Or perhaps in a certain phrase it will mean something else. Or perhaps it does just have the one meaning after all. Of course, it works the other way as well – any foreigner who has learnt English will tell you that. Take for instance the verb “to lay”. Lay what? A table? An egg? Lay down? Or should that be lie down? Oh but “lie” is also a verb in its own right. But do we mean lie down or do we mean lie as in to not tell the truth? (and this is without even touching the past and future tenses, let alone the idioms). Knowing this labyrinth of language inside out is a years long, if not decades long, process – knowing how to say your name and ask how many hamsters your friend has in his house is not even touching the bare blocks. People often ask me if I am fluent in Spanish, to which I reply a resounding “No”. There are many different perceptions as to what is “fluent”, but to my mind it would be virtually native status, picking up conversation with a native and it flowing with ease, listening to the radio, television or reading a book and not being caught out by any word, or if you are being caught out by only a very obscure word that even a native could be forgiven for not knowing.

You might want to know exactly why, then, so many people around the world have mastered English so well. Go almost anywhere in the world and at least in major cities, and you will find someone who speaks our tongue. The gentleman at the airport behind the desk will most likely politely greet you and deftly process your tickets without so much batting an eyelid at the pleasant flow of English coming from his mouth. That waitress in the coffee shop will note down your order in the twinkling of an eye and promptly ask you which coffee you would like in your own tongue. That foreign minister will proceed to explain in intricate detail the problems facing his country in an English that might as well have been lifted from the pages of a distinguished economics weekly.

How do they all do it? Are they all masters of disguise, donning their adopted tongue at whim? Well, not exactly. The answer is simple: exposure. Learning any language all depends on the amount and intensity of exposure you have. Watch that news bulletin and learn the word “crisis”. Chat to the lady at the bus-stop and learn how the weather is. Click open the computer and download a torrent of writing or English language songs, of which there are a great many.

The beauty of English for those that are learning it is that it is so accessible. Many of the top songs are in the English language. The BBC has roots and offices everywhere and broadcasts to umpteen number of countries. 80% of internet access is in English. The most taught second language in the world is English. Go anywhere in the world and you will find English just one step away – it is the other language. Once I was on a Dutch plane taking off from Amsterdam bound for Hong Kong, and the pilot and air stewardesses all addressed the passengers in English, and then Dutch when needed. The Dutch air stewardess even explained the safety instructions of the emergency exit myself and two Dutchmen in English. In Barcelona I listened to train announcements in Spanish, Catalan and then English. English is everywhere, and you cannot escape it. Because of this speakers of other languages literally queue up to learn it. As a fairly proficient Spanish speaker myself, many of my so-called native Spanish friends have insisted or lapsed into speaking to me in English. I can count on one hand the amount of foreigners I have met with whom I haven’t been able to communicate (and I can count them because I remember them for not speaking it).

The amount of this English exposure is due to a combination of the influence of the United States and in part the United Kingdom. The world’s biggest film industry? In the United States. American films are often shown in countries such as Norway with the original soundtrack but with say, Norwegian subtitles, and that is how the Norwegians learn. I met a Danish girl once who spoke flawless English with an American accent, and I asked her the secret of her success. “Oh that’s easy”, she replied, “it’s TV. We’d watch American movies and tv all the time when we grew up”. This is corroborated by a Welsh girl I once met, who although of course would have been taught English in school anyhow, confessed that “TV was a big influence”.

Exposure is one thing, and age is another. Put the two together and you have explosive results. Expose a six-year old enough to a language and they’ll pick it up sooner than you can snap your fingers. My brother and his wife lived for a year in Switzerland, where his work took him, and his 5 and 6 year old son and daughter were put into Swiss-German schools and began playing with the local children, and within three months they were word-perfect fluent with strong Swiss-German accents. That is to say, they were naturally bilingual in each language. Such exposure is mimicked in countries where there is a multilingual language policy – in Luxembourg, where there are three national languages (Luxembourgish, German and French), children receive intense language tuition from the word Go. German is the language of instruction in primary schools, with 7 hours of French tuition weekly, until in secondary school French becomes the language of instruction. Luxembourgish, a largely oral language, is spoken at home.

You are unlikely to get this kind of exposure attending night school once weekly learning how to describe your bedroom. That is not to say that these lessons are useless, because they are a start, but from there to fluency is a matter of light-years. Even our standard language tuition incorporated into the national curriculum is sadly too little too late. After five years in the system English pupils can ask in Spanish for a glass of water or say the shower does not work, but are left far behind by their German and Dutch counterparts who by the age of sixteen in English will have virtual professional fluency. Kids these days are taught stock phrases and when to regurgitate them but they do not practise mastering the language and learning how to shape it with a variety of words. They might know how to say “I am” but might not know how to say “you are” or “they were” in a foreign language.

If you want to learn a foreign language, then do, but be clear about the reasons that you are doing it. Will it be worth it? Is it worth the hard work, time and effort? When, if ever, are you going to use this language? Are you going to pick up a novel and begin reading in that language? Or are you just going to ask directions in the streets of Rome? If you really do have a desire to learn a language, then do so properly. Do not settle for one or two hours a week. In short, go and live in the country where it is spoken, for then you will be using and, more importantly, living the language - for a language that is not lived may as well not be spoken. I lived in Spain for 9 months and apart from not becoming nearly as fluent as I had hoped, upon my arrival back in the UK I can find no use for the Spanish I learnt.

The sad truth is that here in the UK, as native English speakers, we simply do not have any need to speak a foreign language. When we already speak the global lingua franca, what other language is left for us to learn? English is the default language between cultures, and it just so happens that it belongs to our own culture. Are you going to start speaking French in a meeting with a Frenchman and a Spaniard? That would rest on the Spaniard knowing French. Would you speak German with a Chinaman and a Peruvian? Of course not. The language that everyone speaks, and with good reason, is English. The United States is the world’s superpower. We have no need to speak to the French or the Germans or the Spanish or to anyone else in their own language because the chances are that they will speak our language far better than we will theirs.

Necessity is the mother of invention, it is often said, and for better or for worse, we have no need to speak any tongue other than that which we already speak.