When Good Is Merely Normal
Maybe we measure to different degrees over here.
The fact that I can speak a foreign language (well, to different degrees, a few) often causes people to express disbelief or reverence here in England.
Why? I presume because languages are hard and, so, having any degree of understanding in them ranks as an elite achievement. So be it.
It sometimes happens at work. I pronounce Indian names or foods as they should be, and people seem surprised. “I couldn’t do that, mate.” Heck, even the Indian carers themselves, who pick from a menu of Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Kutchi, and others seem impressed.
It must be relative. It’s not the fact that I can say “Tamaru nam su che?” when speaking with an elderly Indian lady who struggles with English that should strike them. I guess it must be the fact that I’m a white English person doing it.
And that’s the point of this post.
It seems to me that we grade things differently over here. Everything is categorised a degree or two higher than it would be elsewhere. People who routinely switch between two Indian languages and English view my very limited Gujarati sentences as something of an achievement, even though it pales compared to theirs.
My fellow Brits seem to think that my speaking of foreign languages is some sort of superhuman endeavour. And don’t even mention Esperanto. The fact that it’s designed to be relatively easy doesn’t enter the equation.
If I speak Italian or Esperanto, I roll an r. This mesmerises people. But why? I’m just producing a sound that millions of others on the planet do, and all without receiving the same fanfare that I do.
Similarly, French and German require an uvular r … so I throw them in. Why should I be congratulated on speaking normally? It’s scarcely an acheivement, yet my fellow Brits consider it to be one.
What’s got me started on this particular post is yet another observation I’ve made from a trip to Esperantoland.
I’m probably in the top 30 or 40 percent of intelligence here, at least if you class it in the sense of book-knowledge, intuition, and paper qualifications. More to the point, I consider myself to be relatively smart, modesty be damned.
And yet I am thick beyond measure when I look at others in Esperantoland. On my recent trip, there was an Esperanto version of The Weakest Link. Hand on heart, I probably knew the answer to under a quarter of the questions. There were so many occasions when the panellists answered things that I wouldn’t have come within a mile of answering.
And the same was true of an event in Germany over new year. This time, the game was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. The panellists answered, I tried to look disinterested.
Honestly, a smart person in Britain appears to be a unshining person abroad. I can speak a foreign language, and that’s lauded here. Over there, it would be the minimum expected of any functional member of society.
August 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Unfortunately, I think your observations are spot-on! I am a ex-Brit (although I no longer live there), and had a good working of both French and German by the time I left highschool more than 50 years ago. I also taught myself Esperanto as a teenager, but had no one to speak it with till several years later. Since then I have picked up a practically useable knowledge of another handful of languages and generally get the same reactions as you do from monolingual English-speakers, including all my relatives. I have to confess to a certain embarrassment at their very parochial attitudes to other languages – and how it constrains even their choice of a holiday location. Likewise, native-speakers of some of these other languages which I speak express wonder that I would even bother to learn their language. I think grammar-phobia has a lot to do with the difficulty that most English-speakers have with other languages. Things have obviously changed a lot (and for the worse!) in UK schools since 1950 re foreign languages! Such a pity that more British schools will not consider something like the Springboard to Languages project for increasing general language awareness:
http://www.springboard2languages.org/home.htm
And by the way, when it comes to mathematics, geometry, algebra, science etc. I am the dumbest of the dumb! Maybe I’m some sort of idiot savant?
August 7th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Yep, I think the standard of education is in general just higher overseas. Forget whatever the Pisa studies do or don’t prove, if you compare the depth and breadth of education which our Alevels provide compared to the leaving certificates in other countries, we come off ridiculously poorly. Our students may attain a decent level in three subjects, but their counterparts in Europe are attaining the same level, or higher, in six or more.
And when you look at languages, it gets even worse. When I was thirteen I drew pictures of farmyard animals and pizza toppings and wrote the French/ German words underneath. Meanwhile when my German friend was thirteen, his English class were reading Robert Louis Stevenson.
The fault lies in the National Curriculum which forces teachers to teach kids how to jump through the exam hoops rather than giving them a genuine knowledge of the subject