To think it's understandable that English speaking people often aren't great at learning foreign languages?

[Treblecleff88]

When I was at school, I learned French. Do you know how many times I've been to France? 0. Do you know how many French people I know? 0. So guess how much French I remember? Pretty much nothing.

I used to a spend quite a bit of time in Germany and they are all so good at English. But they communicate with other foreigners using English as a language they have a mutual understanding of. They listen to pop songs sung in English. They are constantly exposed to English as are foreigners across Europe. It's easy to see why the stuff they learn in school seems to stick so much better. It is always being reinforced and they have a real, tangible reason for learning the English language.

I often feel we're given a hard time for our lack of knowledge with foreign languages but realistically, even if we pick one language in Europe and get to the point of being fluent, it's not going to be relevant when conversing with the vast majority of foreigners in this country. English is so widely spoken by comparison to say French, Spanish or German which seem to be the three languages which schools seem to teach in the U.K.

Interested to hear other people's views on this.

I think it's fair enough there is a commonly spoken language most people know.

It's just it happens to be English.

I wish in schools we had more choice. It's so different depending where in the UK you live, but my choices for languages in High School were French, Bengali or Urdu, with the last 2 not really 'taught' so much as for people who already spoke them at home. While I have no issue with people getting a formal qualification for that, I wish the classes had also been aimed at new speakers.

As for French, I have never in my life needed to speak it. Given the option I'd have loved to learn Spanish, German or Sign Language. I never want to go to France not have I ever been around people who speak French. That alone meant I didn't try as hard as I should and dropped the class as soon as I could.

But yes, in general we English speakers think the world should speak English and therefore we don't have to try.

It makes perfect sense for there to be one language which should stand a good chance of being understood in the majority of countries. It's English.

I disagree it's laziness really. Maybe there is less incentive. But you only get to a properly good standard in a language with plenty of practice and that is hard when you're English. I went to Germany on an exchange to try to improve my German and I couldn't get a word out as they all spoke English to me.

Incidentally I did french and German to a-level.

Spanish, I bought myself a self taught course and did it for a couple of months before I spent the summer in South America, where I found I used what I had learnt a fair amount. At the end of that summer I'd say I was probably as good as it not better at Spanish than the languages I had been professionally taught for 7 years.

Exposure to a language is everything and the English don't really get it.

It's funny

My OHs daughter is learning Spanish at school. She's year 8. She can barely speak a word of it. She's bright but she isn't being taught anything useful. She asks me to help her with her homework on occasion.
She's been asked to write about typical Spanish hobbies (in English) festivals (in English) no verbs, grammar. Its no surprise really that we are behind are European counterparts.
I lived in Spain and self taught (I'm nowhere near fluent) so thought I may as well continue when I returned to the UK. I enrolled myself onto a GCSE course in December after convincing the tutor I had enough knowledge to keep up. My Spanish was even more basic than it is now. I still struggle with verbs other than the present. Yet I got an A*
Its not the teachers its the whole system that needs a review.

Oooops! Posted too soon there!

Meant to say it's funny, but I studied in France for part of my degree and one of my classes was for non-native French speakers only. I was one of three native English speakers in the class and the rest were a mix of other nationalities and languages. I remember a woman putting on a video clip for part of a presentation. It was in English with no subtitles "because everyone speaks English". I remember being (very vaguely) miffed about it, like we English speakers didn't have a special language like all the other nationalities !

I've spent years trying to learn other languages and, like others, get easily disheartened when everyone responds in English. I am pretty lazy so I'd rather spend my time learning something that's actually going to be useful.

It's quite understandable, yes. But there's also the point that we don't have a great culture of learning languages or a great approach to teaching them. And that's a chicken and egg situation

You have to really want to learn one in this country to succeed. Whereas elsewhere, there's the expectation you'll learn English and the systems in place to help you do so.

If you have no connection to a particular country then as an English speaker it's hard to know what to learn. I've dabbled in German and Spanish (to roughly a-level standard but as an adult) and tried unsuccessfully to learn Gaelic. Last place I visited though was holland. I don't speak Dutch and likely never will.
If English is not your first language it's an obvious choice to learn.

We are noworse than others.

I know many,any accomplished linguists whose native language is English.

Most people from any country fullstop are not capable of getting fluent in another language IMO. They can get to B1 (intermediate) but cannot make the jump to advanced or proficiency. You need time + resources + discipline + brains. Lack any of those and you can't do it.

So the vast majority don't.

It is laziness, to a great extent, but unfortunately it comes over as arrogance.
I regularly have people address me in English (no bonjour, not even hello, just their question) because I live in a tourist area, they even interrupt our conversation (French) to ask their 'important' questions.

The rude English-speakers to whom I am referring have no idea at all that I can speak English, they just go ahead in English and that sad old cliché about shouting at foreigners (me) is unfortunately true. It even goes for some who have lived here for a long time.
Dutch, German and Spanish people (our other main tourists and immigrants) don't do this, they try to speak French.

English is the international language for the world and business. German and French people have to learn it to do well in their businesses/careers. In 100 years the international language of choice might be Mandarin or Hindi in which case you'll find lots of British people learning it.

Schools didn't teach languages so well when I was younger. I did French, German, Spanish and Latin which are all complimentary with each other and English. It's hard to start learning 4 languages in your teens. It would have been better to just learn one or two more intensively.
And I do get annoyed when non-English speakers assume that if I can't speak "their" language, it's because "you only speak English".
Actually my second language is Greek which isn't so widely spoken, unfortunately there are over 145 languages I don't speak, funnily enough.

It's explainable but still shows a lack of curiosity, laziness and arrogance, tbh. You may not have been to France but I suspect, like most people, you have been abroad. So, you choose to learn some of another language.

I agree with you op and actually I think we should scrap French Spanish and German in schools and make bsl compulsory instead. It's ridiculous that we don't teach it

I sort of agree, OP. I remember the French teacher at the first school I worked at saying that she didn't blame the pupils for not being interested as 'they don't need to learn another language'. I was . But it is REALLY hard to become proficient in a language you never use, and most English speakers don't use any other language regualarly enough to become fluent.

Re, feeling disheartened when you attempt to speak another language and then someone automatically responds in English. Well, it is understandable that this happens. People who aren't native English speakers are probably right to assume their English (if they speak it) will more often than not be better than the English speaker's French / German / Italian. So I get it.

However, I remember getting irked by a couple of young men when I lived in France, responding to my perfectly eloquent French in terrible English, (and a fucking rude tone). I knew they were being dicks and not trying to be helpful / practicing their English. So I claimed not to speak English. Only french and Irish. I managed to keep it up for a fair portion of the evening, although my only Irish is the national anthem and a few swear words . All the people who already knew me continued to address me in french or Irish. Was quite funny.

I don't mind that English speaking people only speak english. What really pisses me off if people comment on mistakes in my posts (which happens a lot on mumsnet) while it's my 3rd language. My german, afrikaans and french are worse (in that order). This is the internet, most people's first language is something different. We're not dumb, we just make mistakes in a language that we learned later in life and do not use as much as our first language. You would too.

I entirely agree with you, OP, and I'm a languages teacher!

Lack of one single obvious language to learn

Lack of exposure to foreign languages in UK popular culture (and a failure to realise how all-pervasive and important this is with English in other countries)

Lack of sensible English grammar taught in schools makes it hard to transfer knowledge of rules to help learn another language

Lack of consistency from primary to secondary in terms of which language is taught, meaning that everyone has to start again from scratch in year 7 because some are total beginners

No proper MFL curriculum in primary, and most of it taught by non-specialists

Low status of MFL in schools due to all of the above

You can help to keep up a language with a whole host of things you can find on the internet. A newspaper in the language concerned, perhaps films (depending on the language), for example.

I think it's an age and confidence thing. My family moved to a Scandinavian country 3 years ago. I still cannot speak the language, yet my 10 years are fluent having arrived in the country only knowing how to count to 10 and say thank you. I feel awkward and foolish at my attempts to speak this language. It's not how I imagined I would be. I have noticed the younger ones pick it up sooner.

English is either a first or a second language for a lot of the world

Google that. You might be surprised.,

I enjoy learning languages and have just been inflicting my French on the locals on holiday, but rather to my sorrow I have to agree with you.

brightlight

YES!!! This gives me the absolute rage . I was on a thread recently where there were some extremely patronising / insulting comments directed at the op about her grammar / vocabulary not being perfect. I said on the thread what id have liked to have seen the bitchy posters try a conversation with the op in her first language and see how they get on.

And anyway, the worst English grammar I see on MN, or anywhere, is frequently from native English speakers. I wouldn't even pick them up on it, as correcting people's grammar, (unless that's what the thread is about), is completely unhelpful, irrelevant and makes the person doing it look very patronising.