looking for answers

[howsmyenglish]

I'm reading currently Terry Pratchett's Snuff - many thanks to small hobbit! (um... how do you add links to user names?)
So, last night, while I was reading in bed, there was a thought - thought by the werewolf Angua - that struck me. They were talking to a goblin, who had adopted a human name, and tried to fit in as best he could. The "they" were Angua, a werewolf, and Carrot, an almost-dwarf - both police officers, looking human, behaving human. And then they meet this goblin named Billy, and Angua thinks something like: "so this way we all are becoming more and more human and forgetting who we were born as". And Carrot, the almost-dwarf, ha-ha, says: "Isn't it sad, when people forget their own traditions?" And I think: "does this apply to me trying to write in English?"

Seeing as I've never even really been to an English-speaking country.
(do geographic entities speak?)

Anyhow, here's the answer: oh no, I am not forgetting who I was born as, I'm using English as the language of foreigners. What do you think a German and a Swedish person talk to each other in, if they don't know the respective languages of each other? Or a Lithuanian and a Bulgarian? Or a Serbian girl and her Russian friend? Or a French-Israeli 10 year old in a German school. I've known most of these people. They all spoke English. English is what Esperanto wanted to be. And those people - the multi-national, travelling, complex, mixed-up in a way that you can not immediately place them, are the people that interest me most*. What other language could I choose to speak to them, right?




*actually, that's not true, all people interest me, especially the ones from nations I don't know yet. consider yourself meant** by this.


** how strange does this sound? is it still understandable?

Comments

[smallhobbit]

As an native English speaker I sometimes feel I miss out on expressing myself in another language because all my thoughts are directed by a single language, one that is dominant. I'm like Vimes, who knows there are werewolves and dwarfs and goblins but can only really see things from the viewpoint of humans.

[howsmyenglish]

In my experience, native English speakers rarely feel the need to learn a foreign language. Why should they, if everybody speaks theirs? Still, I'm glad you're like Vimes, he's one of the good ones!

As a matter of interest: do people have to learn one or more foreign languages in British schools? And if yes, how wide is the selection?

[smallhobbit]

I try to learn sufficient that I can say some basic things when I'm abroad. Although generally I begin in my best 'insert language' and the reply comes back in English. But occasionally the person doesn't speak English and we struggle through with my poor 'language'.

Children in primary schools (age up to 11) learn a bit of language - locally it's either French or Spanish. Secondary school pupils (11 to 16) at the two closest schools learn French, one of the others does both French and Spanish.

Both my son and daughter learnt French and Spanish (they were at a different school, this was before we moved). My son's year everyone took French and then chose German or Spanish; my daughter's year they either took French or German and then chose Spanish or Japanese. I'm not impressed with the amount of language teaching.

[howsmyenglish]

Thank you for the detailed answer! Japanese at school is nice - up until now I've only heard about people learning it at universities. (in Europe, I mean)

[smallhobbit]

It's a nice idea, but when the only choice is Japanese or Spanish, unless the student has a particular strength in languages they don't really have a choice.

[howsmyenglish]

Well... I don't think language study in schools should really be so much about learning to speak a foreign language. Languages, just like travelling, open horizons and help prevent things like xenophobia, which is why I find looking over the European border a very good idea, even if the students don't speak fluently in the end.