to expect a Comparative Literature student to like reading?

[NadineBaggott]

On Weakest Link last evening there was a young girl doing a degree course in comparative literature.

Anne: so you like reading?
Girl: no, not really
Anne: so how does that work?
Girl: I use the internet.

Exactly- as someone commented down the thread (re. kids not being taught what verbs are), the very idea of languages as structured, complex systems just isn't getting through.

Such a terrible shame as learning languages can be so very rewarding and open your mind to new concepts generally.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Are languages useful ?

By that I mean to the general population, not specialists.
If you're a native English speaker you can communicate with half the people on Earth to some extent. French buys you an extra 10%, most of whom speak English anyway.
I can't see any reason to learn Urdu at all. The areas that speak it are hardly tourist traps, and we don't trade with them to any noticeable extent. Also we have many people in this country who speak it anyway, so we have far more of this skill than we could possibly need unless we intend to invade an occupy Pakistan.
We do bit trade with Arab countries. Sadly however they don't speak "Arabic". There is no single language, it is a complex set of dialects which although they share (mostly) the same script, are not verbally the same at all.
Same with Chinese, though the number of mutually incomprehensible dialiects is the same.
Russian is a single language, possibly the only useful thing to come out of socialism was a first rate education system, and everyone learned the same Russian. If you demanded to learn something else, the government would come and gas everyone in your village.
But Russia is a bit of a slum, and we sell it hardly anything at all. The educated ones there tend to speak English anyway these days.

I reject the notion that languages open many people's minds to new ideas.
Only a tiny % of English kids get to the point where they can read anything more complex than:
Jean Paul is in the garden.
Marie Claire sees him. She has a nice pink hat. Bruno the dog eats his bone.

Satre it ain't.

yes

I guess it depends on your point of view, DC. Personally, I prefer to have the wider perspective that speaking - and reading - more than one language offers, from getting different takes on what is happening in the news, to enjoying the subtlety of a novel in the language in which it was written, to (unfortunately) spotting that I am being ripped in a restaurant. But then, I speak as a linguist, living in a multilingual household. To communicate with all her relatives, dd will need to grow up speaking three languages, so in our household the view that "most other people learn English anyway" isn't an option, because it is simply not true.

Well said, Muminfife.

I once spent several weeks in the British Library obtaining research material for an Italian friend who was writing her thesis, but was unable to travel due to ill health. The depth that she went to was amazing, and when she asked me to read it through to check her English, well, frankly her grammar and grasp of the English language is better than mine . I'm ashamed to admit I didn't spend nearly so much time in libraries when I was in Italy, but I did end up paying rather a lot for excess baggage when I came home, which was mainly books.

you are right it is both lazy and obnoxious.
But is the one most kids have always had in this country. If you speak the language of Earth, why bother with the marginal tongues ?

I accept there are reasons beyond trade, but again my point is that trade is the least demanding. "How much for the Camel ?" does not require the language skills of "all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream"
Almost no kids rich the stage where the language extends their minds.
As it happens I put effort into languages. Got further than most Brits, but am shamed by a supermarket shelf filler in Paris. So what have I achieved with that ? My French and German is barely at reading Tom Clancy, not anything useful.

But then, DC, conversations with one's neighbours, wherever you are, tend to be more Tom Clancy than Camus.

Invade Pakistan indeed ! Is that the only justification for learning urdu ? May be Blair will get that one in too before he leaves office ? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

It is extremely narrow minded and short sighted to think that we don't need to learn languages because English is the language of Earth

It is obnoxious and rude to go to other people's country even as a tourist and expect them to speak English.

English won't be the language of Earth for ever because Russian or Mandarin/Cantonese will probably take over one day.

Most French people I know, and I know many because dh is a fluent French speaker, have NEVER read Camus or Satre, so no, you don't need to learn French to that level to go and be polite to the French/Swiss whoever speaks French in their own country. All you have to do is say a few words, order your meal, order a taxi, ask directions, etc and already the natives will be happy that you have bothered !

Since all languages have their particular idiom, syntax, etc, learning them to whatever level stretches the mind in ways you can't imagine until you actually apply yourself to the language. I'm all in favour of Latin and Greek continuing to be taught for this reason (awaits machine gunning from DC...) Seriously, I don't think a culture, living or 'dead', can really be understood unless you learn the linguistic systems it uses/used.

charliqe - quite right - there has been a great deal of research done on bilingual/multilingual children and the reseach i have read says that they tend to do extremely well in school and often have higher IQ than their monolingual peers. language ability quite literally stretches the mind as it uses complex areas of the brain. they also learn other languages in later life much more quickly than monolinguals. I have been raised bilingually and find it easier to learn languages than my monolingual friends.

Maybe so, but immersion in another language is not what British schoolkids get. I fail to see why learning a load of stuff parrot fashion, which you forge within a short space of time helps mental development at all.
Problem with "English" is that people associate it with a soggy bit of NW Europe, who represent about 2-3% of it's speakers.
I see the point about it being impolite to not know someone's languages, but there are of course so many legacy languages. Unless you restrict yourself to a tiny % of the world, it's unrealistic to hope you could learn enough.

I do love the idea that Mandarin will be the dominant language. Will happen right after the Klingon empire falls.

I've heard it said that folk who studied languages, in particular the classics, make the best computer programmers, as even making a machine do what you want it to do involves using the right grammar - it is extremely frustrating when the computer smugly says "syntax error". Such is life these days that if you don't get the language right, then even the machine won't co-operate! Not that most school leavers these days know what syntax is outside of computer speak.

So, if our kids our leaving school unable to order a coffee in a language they have studied for 4 years or so, then maybe it's time to look at how languages, including English, are taught, and consider whether the latest trendy effort to dumb down education to the lowest common denominator is doing our children any favours.

Don't be too sure - English hasn't always been the "Earth" language as you put it, has it ? Languages rise and fall with the rise of empires and the US and UK Empire may not have long to go judging by their foreign policy disasters !

Hi, Roskva - nice to see you on a thread again

Just met a lovely woman from Slovakia today and she said so very proudly that her 9 year old niece speaks, Slovak, Russian and English like a native. Lucky girl and good for her parents !

No, linguists seem if anything to be about the worst for programming. The best are generally taken to be philosophy grads.
There is a correlation between being articulate and programming ability, but I've seen nothing that puts that outside what you get from generla intelligence.
As someone who's been a programmer, and now vets them for high spec jobs, I'm not sure I'd even interview a language grad. Would be sniffy about a Britis CompSci one as well for that matter.

If English were dependant upon the British Empire or even the American one, then it's future would seem very finite.
But it has become overwhelmingly people's choice as 2nd language. A German trying to speak to a Japanese will use English, not Mandarin or Russian.
The sheer volume of cultural output in English utterly dwarfs anything else. I don't just mean TV, but part of my job is reading academic stuff like PhDs from foreigners, and that's only possible because so many do their work in Enflish. Many foreign universities have it as one of their teaching languages, even when nealry all the students are locals.

If I had free choice of what my kids learned it would probably be Spanish followed by Arabic. Not Urdu.
Both have vastly fewer speakers, but are used by people in many countries, and attribute hardly applicable to Russian, Urdu or Chinese.

Actually Russian is spoken in many different countries. All are in the former USSR and East block but it is used by millions of people in different countries amoung different ethnic groups who have it as a common language, just as English is the unifying language on the subcontinent.

I agree that Urdu is not a widely used langauge, just like Italian, but that does not mean it is not useful. Every language has a use in its own context.

I don't think Urdu needs to be taught at school in the UK, but French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and French are all world languages and need to be taught.

I agree that Russian persists in it'sw former empire, but seems to be decaying as people get the opportunity to learn English.

I just don't see how if we can't teach French and German, languages from which English evolved what the point of even trying to do Chinese.

The government is pushing Urdu, out of dumb arty politics rather than any attempt to help kids.

Pushing a minority language spoken by very few people in the world (although it is a very important language in the UK) like Urdu is pathetically politically correct. English and Urdu speaking children should be learning a world language to help them find interesting, well-paid jobs and to enable them to read world lit. if they are keen to do so.

The point of doing Russian and Chinese is that you can get extremely interseting well-paid jobs. I had a friend who had learned both at uni. though did not speak either well, put it on her CV and got amazing jobs in the City. Of course she was also very confident and reasonably intelligent so did well in interviews.

Likewise I have always been able to push my language ability on to employers, even though I have rarely had to use any of my languages at work. I was once asked to translate a letter into German and to listen to a message on the phone, but that was it. I rarely use my languages outside a social context, but that is good enough for me. I intend that DS becomes bilingual and also learns good French from DH, rather than crap French at school

Hi Yellowrose. I agree that linguists do tend to land well paid jobs, I think possibly because people who have looked outside their own culture are perceived to bring something other than pure techncial expertise, and if you can learn a language, you can probably learn other things as well.

We'll have to agree to disagree, DC. I think just about all the computer programmers I know, some of whom are very highly paid, btw, are also linguists. I do agree that people from former soviet republics and satellites prefer not to speak Russian if they can avoid - I once listened to a painful conversation in bad English and worse German between a Lithuanian and an Estonian who were both determined not to speak Russian, even though they both spoke it fluently. However, if you want to do business in Russia, ultimately you need to speak Russian or have a translator you can trust, because those who have the money there these days may not be those who did particularly well at school. Also, the one person in some obscure ministry who has to rubber stamp the permit for whatever you are trying to do there probably doesn't speak English (and if they can, won't). On the negative side, if you wander round Moscow obviously unable to speak the language, then you stand a good chance of being fleeced by someone pretending to be a police officer and issuing an on the spot "fine".

roskva - interesting what you say about former Russian republics and satellites, of course they hated the USSR and so would not wish to associate with its culture or language, I hadn't thought of it that way ! Good point. Will ask my new Slovak friend what she thinks of Russian. She says she speaks loads of languages, I lost track of what she likes the most !

Yes, Moscow is a scary place. It is far from unknown for contracts to have "suspicious death" clauses.
But my main business is finding very smart people for banks. Winners of national physics olympiads, or for officially lablelled gifted young people form a good % of my database.
Russia has a quite disproportionate number of smart people, and we do miss some because they can't speak English. That's not so bad (for us) because without that the banks have no interest.

Banks are very big business, with a common language that is English. However, dh and I are involved in much smaller businesses, where people are good at what they do, but may not necessarily speak another language, or if they do, it may not be the language they need for a particular project.

A friend of ours in China at the moment, sourcing electronic components for his business. He is really uncomfortable at having to trust a translator. However, as the people he is dealing with don't speak English, and he doesn't speak Chinese, he has no choice.