Speaking like a native

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] blog I follow, written by a Canadian expat in the Netherlands, recently posted an article about funny examples of “Dunglish”; horrible literal translations made by Dutch businessmen and diplomats when they speak English.

It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking; a man called Maarten Rijkens published a whole book on it, titled “I always get my sin” (Ik krijg altijd mijn zin in Dutch, meaning ‘I always get my way’). However, despite these mistakes, a study conducted by the European Union found 90% of the population of the Netherlands is able to hold a conversation in English. This is hardly surprising; most Dutch kids start learning English when they’re eleven or twelve, and we’re exposed to English music on the radio and English-spoken TV programs on television. In secondary school, most are also required to then learn German and French. If you’re really keen, you can add on Spanish, resulting in, according to the Eurobarometer 386, an average of 3.2 languages spoken and a median of 3. And still a newspaper lamented that Dutch businessmen didn’t speak their languages well enough, proclaiming it to be a danger to the economy.

The map for the UK seems less optimistic. Yes, over 95% of people can hold a conversation in English, but the average Brit speaks, according to the Eurobarometer, 1.6 languages, or a median of…. 1. English. A March edition of the Guardian in 2014 cried that A-levels in Languages were still dropping.

Now obviously there’s some differences between the two. First of all, outside of the Netherlands, very few people speak Dutch, so learning a second language is as much a necessity as anything else. Secondly, while English television programs are widely available on foreign national channels, UK channels don’t seem to regularly beam, say, French sitcoms into living rooms. But while helping with a GCSE Spanish class at a school in Coventry, the most common complaint was: why bother? Everyone speaks English anyway.

Yes, over 95% of people can hold a conversation in English, but the average Brit speaks, according to the Eurobarometer, 1.6 languages, or a median of…. 1. English

I’m sorry to say the Eurobarometer doesn’t agree. While the percentage of people able to have a conversation in English in the Netherlands was 90%, in Germany it was 56%, in France 39%, in Italy 34%, and in Spain 22%. During the three years I lived in China, learning basic Mandarin was essential. So learning a language is, indeed, invaluable.

Even if it is only the basics. While travelling to Italy for Easter, I endeavoured to learn some Italian. Partially because I’m a language nerd and had always wanted to learn Italian; partially because my friend’s cousin, eight years old and just beginning to grasp the basics of English, had made me a picture and a bracelet and I wanted to be able to say thank you and have a minimal conversation. Yet principally, because years of living abroad had taught me that being able to say something in the local language is just good manners.

Obviously in four lessons I didn’t learn much more than the very basics: how to order food, how to introduce myself, and how to ask for the way if I got lost. Also, I obviously made a lot of mistakes using said sentences, from forgetting to put nouns into plurals when buying not one but two stamps, adding unnecessary prepositions, and only understanding about half the replies. However, being able to at least ask for directions in Italian made me feel that much more confident and less like a completely lost tourist, though most of the time that was exactly what I was. People were a lot more willing to help me with directions and train stops, or at least that’s how it seemed. Also, expecting everyone to speak English felt wrong. We went out for dinner with some friends of a friend who was in Warwick on Erasmus last year, and one of the things I remember most is someone coming up to me at the end of the evening to apologise for their English and that they’ll try harder next time. I was in the minority so surely I should have been the one making the effort and apologizing for my bad Italian, rather than them apologizing to me for their ‘bad’ English? We had a conversation. It clearly wasn’t that terrible.

Obviously in four lessons I didn’t learn much more than the very basics: how to order food, how to introduce myself, and how to ask for the way if I got lost

Obviously, expecting to fluently learn the language of every single country you ever go to on holiday is slightly unrealistic. Clearly, I didn’t speak Italian nearly enough to complete an A-level in it. However, I had completed A-level Spanish, and between the little bits of Italian I had learned and the bits that were similar to Spanish, I managed to understand the majority of directions and conversations I needed to understand.

Some people complain that when they do try to speak the local language, people are much keener to practice their English and so they still end up speaking English. Say so. Explain that you’re trying to learn the language. Make mistakes and ask for corrections. But don’t just assume that just because they’ll speak some English, you shouldn’t try.