From: "Eric Dickens" <eric.dickens-AT-wxs.nl>
Subject: No languages please, we're British
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 19:07:14 +0200


19th June 2000 [bis]

Dear Postcolonialists,

Just a quick response to the quick responses from Dave Cummings, Brook
Nymark and Mac
Fenwick.

I'm not unduly bothered about the accusation of being reductionist. I think
Dave Cummings summed it up rather nicely: learning languages makes you a
better person.

Why? Because then you are at a disadvantage in conversation, and can't
always have everything your way like a spoilt child. Doesn't it ever occur
to native-speakers of English that every time something sophisticated is
being discussed abroad, British people and most other native-speakers of
English fall back on English, thus putting the debating partner at a
disadvantage? You're much more likely to win arguments if you have a whole
range of expressions available, rather than having to make do with
a  limited vocabulary. Explanation of the local situation is invariably left
to the foreigner (conversation slave), whilst the Anglospeaker (conversation
master) lords it over the other with cumbersome wit, heavy sarcasm, snide
digs, allusions to TV comedy programmes, and all the grand and wacky
rhetorical put-downs which only a native-speaker can muster ad libitum.

People who sit in "Continental" pubs scoring points off their "less able"
foreign intellectual sparring partners can only do so because the other
person has been good enough to go into the fray inadequately equipped.
And I have lived long enough in Europe to know that many a European's
knowledge of English is not all it's cracked up to be either. Certain
nations have a greatly inflated opinion of their knowledge of English. But
native-speakers of English confuse poor English with the possession of a
limited brain, since they themselves have never had to argue from a
position of language handicap.

There is a world of difference between the way, say, Malcolm Bradbury and
Timothy Garten Ash approach their fellow Europeans. The latter is shockingly
adept at speaking German, and has even been known to talk on German TV in
that language. The former wrote "Airport" and "Rates of Exchange"...

As for the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Dutch, I will allow that I
was making a rhetorical point. I only chose UEA for convenience as being
near to the Evil Continent. It is my alma mater where I studied Swedish
20-odd years ago. And I've made the 45-minute direct flight myself. Yes,
there are British universities where you can take a degree in Dutch, such
as Hull and London. But that makes it all the more puzzling that Dutch and
Flemish culture are so invisible in Britain. Britons who do learn Dutch
often do so for "business purposes", not for reading novels or debating in
pubs.

Mac Fenwick is at least honest in saying that, in Canada, he doesn't
actually need foreign languages. Maybe the Quebequois and citizens of
Montreal could find fault with that attitude, but North America is hugely
monolingual. Britain, on the other hand, is supposed to be part of the
European Union. The (pretty idealist) idea, despite the presence of
crooks in the European Commission, is to cement Europe together so that the
First and Second World Wars will not be repeated. (Instead of Britons and
Germans murdering one another in waterlogged trenches, we now have the
relatively genteel sport of chair-throwing, instead.)

Economically and culturally, Britain has had an easy time of it with the
Yanks. These are a handy bunch of post-Boston Tea Party people who speak and
write more or less the same language, and can be called upon to assist when
wars are being lost. (The Canadians, incidentally, also liberated parts of
the Netherlands where I live from the Nazis after World War II.) But now
sagacious Brits have realised that we've got to stop pretending. We can't
keep up this two-faced
language game any longer. On the one hand, all the economic advantages of
the Single Market. On the other: keeping those bloody Frogs and Krauts with
their funny lingos out. (The Dutch and Belgians, remember, simply do not
exist unless they're drug pushers or paedophiles.)

Finally, there are in fact about 20 million people with Dutch as their
mother-tongue - the Dutch in the Netherlands, and the Flemings in Belgium.
There are many dialects, but what all the dailies in the Netherlands and
Flanders are written in is Dutch. What 20 million people means is about one
third of Britain, France or Italy, or about half of the population of
Poland, or one quarter of the population of Germany. So all this stuff about
Dutch being "a small language" isn't really true. Flanders and the western
Netherlands are simply overpopulated by European standards.

Please think about the kernel of the problem - the fact that colonial
attitudes are being perpetuated by a lack of linguistic humility on the part
of native-speakers of the English language. Learning one foreign language
properly would suffice. The recognition of intellectual equality arrived at
would be just as important as which language you learn.

Perhaps the word describing the contrary situation should be:
"monogloating".

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens




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